{"id":11592,"date":"2025-12-04T22:29:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11592"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:29:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:29:55","slug":"binary-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11592","title":{"rendered":"Binary #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>BINARY #3<\/strong>
\nWriter: Stephanie Phillips<\/strong>
\nArtist: Giada Belviso<\/strong>
\nColourist: Rachelle Rosenberg<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nEditor: Annalise Bissa<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER:<\/strong> Um… well… it’s a woman running away from Phoenix. I assume she’s meant to be Carol Danvers, but she looks absolutely nothing like Carol Danvers beyond the fact that she’s white and blonde (as far as you can tell given that she’s coloured entirely in grey-blue, which means there’s a murky shape as the centre of focus). Her expression doesn’t seem scared, but more like she’s leading the Phoenix after her. I have no idea what it has to do with the story.<\/p>\n

This is the final issue of\u00a0Binary<\/em>, which in turn was a continuation of\u00a0Phoenix<\/em>. That book isn’t returning in January, so the series truly does end here.<\/p>\n

PAGES 1-7.\u00a0<\/strong>Binary realises that she’s dealing with Madelyne Pryor, and Jean Grey manifests.<\/em><\/p>\n

The basic plot so far is that Carol Danvers inherited the Phoenix Force after Jean Grey apparently burned herself out while containing the X-virus on Earth; that Carol has been using the Phoenix Force to protect her home town of Beverly, Massachusetts by shielding it from the X-virus in a psychic dome; that she started seeing Jean again last issue, since Jean and the Phoenix are one and the same as per\u00a0Rise of the Powers of X<\/em>; and that Madelyne Pryor has been scheming against Carol in an attempt to get the Phoenix powers for herself.<\/p>\n

Carol doesn’t immediately recognise Madelyne Pryor as a clone, but apparently decides that she’s returned from the dead with a drastically revamped fashion sense. She has, however, heard of Madelyne Pryor – I don’t think they’ve had any significant interaction, but Madelyne must have had some degree of public profile via the Limbo Embassy, and no doubt the X-Men have filled in the Avengers on the general details.<\/p>\n

Carol’s recap of Madelyne’s back story is high level but covers what’s relevant to this story, which is essentially that Madelyne is a clone of Jean who doesn’t want to exist in Jean’s shadow. Of course, chasing the Phoenix Force just helps to continue defining her by reference to Jean, but Madelyne hasn’t always been rational in this regard.<\/p>\n

Jean seems to suggest that she literally cannot die because she will always be resurrected via the Phoenix – which, to be fair, is something we’ve pretty much seen in present day stories, such as\u00a0Phoenix Resurrection<\/em>. In this one, she seems to have been using Binary as a kind of incubator while she prepared to return. For some reason, it seems that Binary is still controlling the Phoenix power even though Jean has returned; we’re told later on that the Phoenix Force is now split between them.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-10.\u00a0<\/strong>Hank’s followers turn on him.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are the people who Hank roped into attacking Binary last issue, achieving absolutely nothing. Hank is allied with Madelyne Pryor and, as he says here, he’s been spreading propaganda to try and turn the population against Carol. (Professor Bill Hanover, referenced here as someone that Hank had manipulated, previously got a mention in issue #1.) Madelyne explained in issue #1 that the idea was that this would crush Carol’s spirit and weaken her.<\/p>\n

Hank doesn’t suggest that he actually got anything personal under his deal with Madelyne – it seems he may genuinely have been trying to get the population safe passage out of Beverly because he believed that Madelyne would be able to deliver it when Carol couldn’t, although he also seems to take umbrage at having a woman in charge.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-19.\u00a0<\/strong>Madelyne is<\/em> defeated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The upshot here is that the townsfolk, having realised that Hank tricked them, rally around Carol after all. The Phoenix Force then needs to be reunited in order to keep the townsfolk safe from the virus, and Carol heroically sacrifices herself so that Jean can be the sole Phoenix again.<\/p>\n

PAGE 20.<\/strong> Abigail and Cecilia visit Carol’s<\/em> grave.<\/p>\n

Cecilia was one of Hank’s disillusioned followers, Abigail is the mayor from issue #1.<\/p>\n

Jean has apparently decided to stay and keep the virus out of Beverly for the moment, but this sits oddly with issue #1, where Carol said that the Phoenix Force was pressing her to leave. That would make sense, since protecting one town seems like an underwhelming use of the Phoenix power in these circumstances, but for some reason Jean has decided to stick around anyway. Perhaps this is simply a choice to honour Carol – and of course it’s hard to see how Phoenix can<\/em> leave the town to participate in the wider event without breaking the plot immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BINARY #3 Writer: Stephanie Phillips Artist: Giada Belviso Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg Letterer: Travis Lanham Editor: Annalise Bissa COVER: Um… well… it’s a woman running away from Phoenix. I assume she’s meant to be Carol Danvers, but she looks absolutely nothing like Carol Danvers beyond the fact that she’s white and blonde (as far as you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11592"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11595,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11592\/revisions\/11595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}