I love the comic book threads here, so I figured this was the place to ask. Can someone please describe, in detail, what happened in the Phoenix storyline? All I know of it is just a vague memory that it appeared on the old cartoon X-Men, but now that it looks from the ending of X2 like it will be the plot of the next movie, I’m suddenly curious about it again. So what happened?
After Jean died, she was replaced by the embodiment of some cosmic thingy called the Pheonix Force in the mortal form similar to Jeans but named Madelyn Pryor (sp). [I may be very wrong in this]
After some time of fighting the good fight and seeing her powers go completely off the scale, the mortal Pryor goes nutso 'cause she is pretty much a god who can’t handle being a god, flies out into space and blows up a whole star system, and then decides she can’t keep going like that supposedly does herself in by flying into the heart of a sun.
This may, as I said, be extrordinarily incorrect, as I never actually read the books myself.
At any rate, I would seriously doubt they make this the focus of the next film because it is just way too far beyond the “racial” problems and the war of human vs. mutant that has been what the films are all about.
I think Singer has better ideas.
Hm. Maybe the Pryor thing had to do with the “Hell on Earth” fiasco.
Somebody want to come and help us fools out here?
Gorgon Heap jumped WAAAAY ahead in the story when things got kind of piled up on top of the original.
The X-Men were escaping an orbital platform where they had to have a big fight but the craft they were on lacked propper radiation shielding for the cockpit for some reason. Jean Grey telepathically took the knowledge of how to fly it from one of the pilots and forced everyone else into the shielded area of the craft and managed to get the craft down. Everyone escaped but her and when they had just about given up on her she rose out of the water with her telekenisis now manifesting as a large flaming bird.
Her powers had increased to the kind of scale where she could effectively create objects out of thin air, crush planets, and do other things that make most superheroes feel rather inadequate.
So they have some adventures for a while but eventually she goes crazy and starts doing some havok including eating a star that had a habitable planet near it. The X-Men managed to talk her down but that whole “eating star systems” thing pissed some powerful aliens off and they demand her head. They manage to get a trial by combat and it looks like they’re going to win but Jean realizes it’s just a matter of time before she loses it again intentionally kills herself.
There’s a lot of crap that follows but that’s the storyline that captured everyone’s attention when it was published. It’s easily available in the “Essential X-Men” reprints (volumes 1 to 3 cover the story in it’s entirety as I recall).
Here’s the short version:
[spoiler] The X-Men, on short notice, went into space in the then-newfangled Space Shuttle. Jean in particular got bombarded with the same kind of radiation as the Fantastic Four, boosting her tekekinetic/telepathic powers. She took the name Phoenix, and whenever she used her power, she grew her hair linger and a fiery image of a bird appeared behind her as a kind of halo.
Gradually, she got more and more powerful. While she wasn’t inclined tocorrupt abuse of her power, she was targeted for seduction and assimilation by a cabal of very rich men (most of them mutants, most of them billionaires) called the Hellfire Club. A man trying to join this elite club, a marginally powerful (and marginally poor) mutant named Mastermind (who could cast illusions) corrupted her as her powers hit a new level.
Jean, growing in power, snuck off into space at one point and devoured a populated planet. Great cosmic entities began to take notice, and there appeared to be a connection between Jean and a destroyer god called the Phoenix Entity. A cosmic empress (and an ally of the X-Men, whom Jean personally had helped regain her throne. Long story) wanted to keep the Phoenix Entity from returning, and sicced her own legion of superheroes, the Imperial Guard, on the X-Men with instructions to kill Jean and any X-Men who got in their way. A huge, all-out battle between the two teams took place on the Moon’s terraformed “blue area” (Aliens sometimes live there; another long story). The X-Men held their own against the more powerful Guard, but ultimately, Jean couldn’t pretend that she was anything other than a ravenous cosmic monster and she allowed herself to be destroyed.
The team soldiered on for about six years. Scott, her fiance, actually married another woman who was a dead ringer for Jean. Then, in the worst example ever of desecrating a decent story for the sake of promoting a new book no one wanted to see, Marvel started a new book called “X-Factor,” featuring the original X-Men (of which Jean was one). Apparently, the sexy redhead in a green body stocking wasn’t Jean at all, but the Phoenix Entity impersonating her. Jean was still in that space shuttle at the bottom of New York Harbor, comatose and in a coccoon that the Phoenix had crafted for her. She came back, unaware that six years had passed, and resumed her old life. Along the way, she has acquired the memories of both the Phoenix Entity and the Goblin Queen (Remember that other redhead Scott married? well…) She’s starting to manifest the Phoenix Effect (the bird halo thingy) again, and has taken to calling herself Phoenix. She has a time-travelling daughter, also calling herself Phoenix, from the future (currently, the FAR future), two time-travelling stepsons who are both Nathan Summers from different future timelines, and a steady teaching gig at Xavier’s. She and Scott are married, but it’s a mess.
That is the short version. [/spoiler]
Okay, Madelyn Pryor was a clone of Jean Grey created by Mr. Sinister. The Pheonix Force tried to possess her once it’s body was killed, but didn’t succeed and only ended up bringing Maddy to life. Then she met and married Cyclops because she reminded him of Jean; he abandoned her; she eventually fell in line with some demons after being ditched by the X-Men, became the Goblin Queen, then died (only to be brought back by X-Man, but that’s something else entirely, and we’re already off track).
Okay, here’s what I can remember: The Pheonix force is a cosmic entity that, for some reason or another, decided to posess Jean Grey when the X-Men were returning from a mission in a severely damaged ship. Jean had everyone run into the back so she could use her powers to stop the radiation from killing them, but in the process, died herself…or so it seemed, because somewhere between getting vaporised and crashing into the ocean, she was taken over by the Pheonix Force and appeared to be perfectly fine. Then, things started getting a little out of hand, she started going crazy, turning evil, became incredibly powerful, and somewhat evil. Then, as Gorgon said, she destroyed a solar system, which brought the attention of the Shi’ar Empire. They came and tried to stop her, and decided to blow up Earth instead. She jumped in the way, was vaporized, and everyone figured “poor Jean, she was crazy, killed a lot of people, but in the end, she was pretty cool.” Cyclops goes threw a horrible depression and quits the team.
Later, the Fantastic Four are searching the area where the ship crashed and find a strange cacoon. It opens to reveal Jean Grey, and they discover that the Jean that was vaporized was just the Pheonix Force in JEan’s form, and it had put her in a little cacoon to help heal her from the radiation she was exposed to, and kinda keep her out of the way. With her ressurrection, Cyclops, who’s was now married to Madelyn and had a child, Christopher Nathan Summers (or Nathan Christopher, I forget), gets a phone call, and leaves his wife to go be with Jean.
That pretty much ends it for a while, until Rachel Summers shows up. Somehow, she managed to travel back in time from a horrible future where mutants were hunted by Sentinels and basically, the world was shit (This is from the “Days of Future Past” storyline). Upon coming back (or maybe before, I never really knew much about her powers), Rachel becomes the next host to the Pheonix Force. Apparently, it liked mom so much, that it felt nice and cozy being bossed around by her daughter. This time, Rachel had more control over it, wasn’t actually possessed or replaced by it, and became an imensly powerful telepath and telekinetic.
After leaving the X-Men, she joined Excalibur, and after being on the team for an incredibly long time, ended up dying while fighting some big vampiric villain who was one of the three forces that created the earth and the Lighthouses (I know Merlin was one of the others, but I can’t remember the other two). She basically pumped him full of so much energy, he blew up, she went into a coma or something, then flew off into space. Eventually, she snapped out of it, met up wtih Gallactus, fought him, and he revealed that, apparently, the Pheonix force gets its energy from the unborn lifeforms of the universe. So, the more one uses it, the more little babies end up dying in their mother’s wombs. I don’t really remember much of what happened after this, because I stopped reading Excalibur, and I don’t think the character really ever came up again till the Adventures of Cyclops and Pheonix storyline involving Cyclops and Jean going into the future to meet little Cable and help him control his powers and fight the good fight in a horrible post apocolyptic future. Apparently, Rachel Summers ended up here as well as the founder of some big religious group known as “The Ascani” (maybe spelled with a k), and at some point in time, died.
Jump to present day, where the whole thing has been missing for a looooong time, but apparently, Jean is now back in control of it again. Don’t know how that happened, so if anyone else out there can expand, that would be great. And I’m sure I’ve missed a few other things, so any other input or corrections is welcome.
El Elvis, yeah … soem of this makes sense to the massive amount of info I am lacking.
Yeah. Not sure how Rachel fit in with this, but the son of Scott and Madelyn - Nathan - was infected by a techno-organic virus that couldn’t be stopped in this timeline. Askani came from who-knows-where and took him to the far future where they could cure it. Then years later, we meet the Cable, who whups ass but nobody knows about. After forming X-Force and having a helluva time with a psycho named Stryfe, we discover is named Nathan Dayspring Askanison. As in Nathan Askani’s son. Who may or may not be Scott’s son returned from the far future.
As I said, the whole Rachel Summers thing was overwith by the time I was getting into comics (and who actually read Excalubur, anyway?).
This, of course, has nothing to do with either Pheonix or a guy who popped out of another dimention from the future calling himself Shatterstar, who was rumored to be the son of Dazzler and Whatsis- shot - and was finally (almost) confirmed in X-Men #7 ro 8 in the early '90s.
Nor does it have much to do with the nearly all-powerful Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue, who veeped off to the future to return older as maybe the most powerful mutant in the world.
There. Does that make it better?
Good Christ, the X-men really sucks! I can’t believe I used to read all these books and know all this stuff.
No, Krokodil had it right. They Shi’ar empire demanded her execution because the power had gone to her head literally, causing her to become Dark Phoenix. With a costume change and everything. She needed energy so she sucked the energy out of a star which caused it to go nova, destroying 5 billion sentient occupants of a near by planet. This, coupled with her destroying their flagship, really pissed off the Shi’ar. After a MAJOR psychic battle with Prof. X it seems that Dark Phoenix is under control, put under mental lock and key by Prof. X. Then the Shi’ar show up and demand Phoenix be put to death. The X-Men obviously object, thinking that Jean is fine now. They obtain a trial by batte with the Imperial Guard. The Guard whups them, leaving only Jean and Cyclops. Jean starts losing control again, becoming Dark Phoenix. None of the team has the guts to kill her, not even Wolvie, even though they know it must be done. So, using the last bit of her humanity, she activates latent weapon machinery on the Moon (where they are fighting) and blast herself into oblivion, after a tearful goodby to Scott.
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