Mar
05
The Phoenix
By Byron Brewer, Contributing Editor • 03/05/10
The Phoenix Force: Mutantkind's New Hope
By Byron Brewer, Contributing Editor
X-MEN SECOND COMING #1 VARIANT
When I first read about the
Phoenix, it was bringing a simulacrum of Jean Grey up from the bottom
of Jamaica Bay after a space shuttle crash. As we later learned, Jean
herself was placed in a healing “egg” at the bottom of the bay by
the Phoenix Force and stayed there for years.
To myself and other readers
of Marvel back in the 1970s, the first appearance of the Phoenix just
meant that fan fave artist Dave Cockrum had updated Jean’s costume
in keeping with the rest of the Legion-ized “All New, All-Different”
X-Men. It was not until years later when it/she went mad because of
the mental tinkering of Mastermind and consumed a world (killing its
people) that we really got the first inklings of what we were stepping
into: a cosmic opus with years of planning.
It seems that the being behind
all this, the Phoenix Force itself, is an immortal manifestation of
the prime universal force of life and passion (not to be confused with
“life avatars,” such as Warlock or Drax). Born of the void between
states of being, it is a child of the universe, the nexus of all psionic
energy which does, has and ever will exist in all realities of the Marvel
Omniverse.
The Phoenix is among the most
feared beings in existence, having the power to cut and re-grow any
part of the universe as well as destroy it entirely. The Phoenix Force
is described as being “the embodiment of the very passion of Creation
– the spark that gave life to the universe, the flame that will ultimately
consume it.”
Is the Phoenix set to rise
from the ashes again this month in X-Men: Second Coming #1, a
one-shot which begins a multi-month crossover event for most of the
X-books? Hints have been dropped, and they all seem to center around
Hope Summers.
Some history: During its time
as a sentient and nameless entity, the Phoenix Force traveled the cosmos
just like other cosmic beings. At first, it was a formless mass of energy,
but thousands of years ago it came to Earth and met the magician Feron;
it was his daydream-like visions which prompted the Phoenix to first
adopt its firebird form. He asked the Phoenix to lend its energy to
project a lighthouse across the Multiverse. (The lighthouse later became the
base of operation for the British super-team Excalibur.)
Afterwards, Feron was attacked by arch-rival Necrom and, in the confusion,
the Phoenix Force fled back into space in agony.
The Phoenix Force later returned
to Earth when it felt the mind of a human transcend the physical realm,
a mind that resonated with the Phoenix’s energy. A young Jean Grey
had telepathically linked her mind to her dying friend, Annie Richards,
to keep Annie’s soul from moving to the afterlife. In so doing, Jean's
mind was being dragged along to the “other side” with Annie. The
Phoenix lent its energy to break the connection, and kept close watch
on Jean as it felt a kinship with the mutant. Years later, when Jean was dying
on a space shuttle as it crashed into Jamaica Bay, her mind called out
for help and the Phoenix Force answered and saved her, transforming
itself into a Grey doppelganger (also called the Phoenix)
while sealing Jean in a healing egg beneath the waves.
Since the entity’s first
recorded “death” in the Blue Area of Earth’s moon, many beings
– Rachel Summers, Madelyne Pryor, Korvus, more – have hosted the
Phoenix Force. One of its last possessors, the Starjammer Rachel Summers,
was prepared to use the power during her team’s battle with the Shi’ar
in X-Men: Kingbreaker, but the Force for no explained reason
abandoned both her and Korvus, weilder of the Blade of the Phoenix.
This was directly before Marvel’s War of Kings event.
It is interesting to contemplate
what difference that power may have made when Vulcan, half-brother of
the Starjammer Havok and then-emperor of the Shi’ar, went to war with
the Kree, led by Black Bolt of the Inhumans. Had Rachel been a major
force in this war, likely the T-bomb would not have been necessary and
the conflict would have ended with Vulcan’s defeat but without the
circumstances now extant in the Marvel Cosmos due to the Fault, a rip
in space/time.
Now come the rumors that the
Phoenix Force will visit Earth again in the crossover event that begins
this month with a one-shot of the same name, X-Men: Second Coming.
Will the Phoenix Force return to Rachel Summers, or will it seek out
a new host in the form of the girl named Hope, surrogate daughter of
Cable (a.k.a. Nathan Summers)?
Newly returned from the future and believed by many to be the savior of mutantkind, Hope Summers has been the first – and only – mutant birth since M-Day. What will her fate be if, and when, the Phoenix Force rises from the ashes yet again?
X-Men: Second Coming #1 hits stores on March 31st
MORE FROM THIS WRITER: Avengers Assemble: The Big 3
Seems Like Old Times: Kang Is Back And The Avengers Have Him
COLUMN: What The D'ast?
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