Phoenix #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #2
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
She’s still running around answering every interstellar distress call she can find, and she’s still terrifying to all the aliens she’s trying to rescue. We’re told that she doesn’t require food, oxygen and so forth, but that she’s still “exhausted” – presumably emotionally, though I suppose it could mean that because she has a human mind, she still needs sleep. She doesn’t much like or trust Corsair, but see below regarding this book’s take on Corsair.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
Corsair is rescued by Phoenix from a damaged spaceship which is about to explode. According to Corsair’s account – which it’s strongly suggested that we should be very sceptical about – the Starjammers have abandoned him “for no good reason”. This has prompted him to try and become a hero. He started investigating a series of disappearances from Gameworld (the casino planet that featured prominently in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men run), and discovered that the captives were being smuggled away by the Black Order to a small moon in a nearby star system. He says that the Black Order shot at his ship, which is why it was damaged when Phoenix found him.
Phoenix is deeply sceptical that the Black Order have nothing better to do than kidnap people from Gameworld. Corsair also claims that he was trying to find Phoenix for help, but that doesn’t quite make sense, because his ship was on the verge of falling apart, and it was a straightforward proximity alert that drew Phoenix’s attention. Nonetheless, the moon Corsair identifies really does have a bunch of aliens help captive by the Black Order, so at least part of Corsair’s account seems to be true.
This book has a very unusual interpretation of Corsair. It takes his space pirate gimmick literally and thus portrays him as an incorrigible, untrustworthy rogue, a would-be charmer who Jean sees straight through, and someone for whom heroic acts would be a surprising new turn. Cyclops tells us that “He’s a pirate, Jean… He lies and cheats to get what he wants, and I don’t think he’s capable of anything close to remorse.” Phoenix seems to agree.
The Starjammers’ billing as pirates always implied that they were involved in much dodgier things than they were shown doing on the page. And Cyclops and Corsair have always had a strained relationship based in large part on Corsair choosing not to return to Earth and reunite with his family when he had the chance. Even so, Corsair has been written consistently as a trusted ally of the X-Men for somewhere north of 40 years by this point, and the bottom line is that his depiction in this story feels incredibly out of character.
Cyclops is still having long-range chats with Jean, as in the previous issue. He’s in this issue partly to remind us that he exists and partly to stress how awful this Corsair guy is.
VILLAINS
The Black Order used to be Thanos’ henchmen, but they’ve largely been off doing their own thing in the last couple of years. For whatever reason, they’re abducting alien civilians to a freezing moon, which turns out to have a lot of dead Asgardians lying around. Only two of the group actually appear in this issue: Proxima Midnight and Black Dwarf. Corsair draws our attention to the absence of the rest.
Perrikus and Adani are still off in their subplot, which has yet to tie in with the main plot. Adani buries her father, who was killed by Perrikus last issue. Perrikus then apparently recruits her as a follower and shares power with her. Her narration – which we established last issue is given with years of hindsight – claims that Perrikus only takes an interest in her as a matter of amusement, and that her own motivation is simply to survive.
Nonetheless, if we look at what Perrikus actually does, he seems to be advancing an argument against religious belief, which does resonate with Adani’s views. He behaves as if he honestly wants to take her under his wing. In his view, religious people think that belief gives them power, but power is nothing to do with that at all. In his original Thor stories from the late 90s, Perrikus was the god of power in his pantheon.
Perrikus is much more philosophical here than he was in Thor. In those stories, he had just escaped from millennia of imprisonment and his main motivation was to get revenge on Thor for an earlier defeat. We never really saw what he was like when he was left to go about his business. The best source on that is Thor #9 (1999), which has a flashback to the Dark Gods’ world at the point when the Asgardians first discovered them. In that story, the Dark Gods have a subjugated human-like population worshipping them, and offering up child sacrifices. Perrikus himself doesn’t appear in that flashback, but it makes sense that in his experience, worshipping the gods – including himself – is a dead end.
OTHER SPECIFICS:
Page 10 panel 5: “Let me ask you something, child. Your father … what did he love most in this universe?” Adani’s father was a religious hardliner, as seen in the previous issue – Perrikus’ implication is that he loved God more than his daughter.
Page 13 panel 5: “And leaving my sons behind on Earth…” Corsair was abducted to outer space by the Shi’ar, as shown in Cyclops’ origin flashback in Uncanny X-Men #156. But he could reasonably be referring to his decision to return to space even after being reunited with them.
Page 17 panel 2: The two aliens in the foreground are Skrulls, obviously. The blue guy in the background with the red fin on his head is a Centaurian, the same species as Yondu from the original Guardians of the Galaxy. The rest seem to be generics.
Page 23 panel 1: “Is Supergiant around by any chance? Maybe I could fight Corvus Glaive?” Other members of the Black Order.
So, I’m way out of the loop. Jean is Phoenix again? I swear, that thing is cosmic herpes.
This comic is 0/2 with me.
Agree that it has a left field presentation of Corsair. I’d argue it also has Jean barely having a character at all here. It’s clear that a certain level of aimlessness is intended but it’s made both the character and the comic feel unfocused and a bit boring.
so
much
tracing
Moo-Jean became Phoenix again in Gillen’s Rise of the Powers of X in order to defeat Essex as Enigma.
I suppose Corsair has to move, because Star Lord has taken up his niche.
I’m sure Jean knows not to trust the type of father in law who still sports that Burt Reynolds mustache.
Pretty sure that “flying around space trying to help every single person, and terrifying the locals” was exactly how Genis-Vell’s madness and heel turn started. Granted it was his cosmic awareness rather than actual distress calls, but Jean should probably have had coffee with Rick Jones before heading off on this trip.
Yeah, Scott being distrusting of Corsair makes no sense. Both Xavier and Carol Danvers were with the Starjammers when Corsair was their leader and Scott was never worried about Corsair. Scott even tried to convince Maddie to join the Starjammers with him when she had NO POWERS- that’s not something Scott would do if he thought Corsair has a habit of causing trouble. Corsair was never an evil Space Pirate like Captain Reptyll or pre-Guuardians-of-the-Galaxy Nebula.
But issues with characterization seem to be a common problem with the From the Ashes books. Darkstar is inexplicably evil in X-Factor. And Magneto has reverted to his pre-Ewing characterization in X-Men.
Perrikus continues to fail to be an impressive villain. Maybe that’s the point and he’s supposed to turn Adani into the real villain of the series. But still…
Part of the problem is that Breevort planned to use this book to restart Marvel’s cosmic line, so instead of Vulcan, who actually has a personal connection to Scott, he used more generic cosmic villains like Perrikus and the Black Order.
@Zachary Quinton Adams- Rick Jones don’t speak to Jean. He’s still mad at her for not telling him about the whole Maddie-being-tricked-in-a-dream-thing.
Rick: Whew, glad Marlo was freed from Mephisto. Who knew that a deal with a demon made in a dream was binding?
Jean: I did. It happened to Scott’s first wife.
Rick: And you never thought to mention it?!
Jean: I figured, what are the odds of it happening twice?
The way I see it, Scott doesn’t often have a good reason to express how trustworthy he feels Corsair to be… nor does Corsair stick around enough to give a lot of basis for judging his character either.
Most of Scott’s current opinion of Corsair would come from the most recent interactions, if he is being fair. Of which I remember two: the very brief meetings in Duggan’s X-Men run and the Captain Marvel issues that ran at the same time, and before that the “Cyclops” limited series by Greg Rucka and later John Layman, published in 2014-2015 and that crossed over into “Black Vortex” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”.
I assume that most of the characterization of their relationship that we see here is informed by the 2014 series. It sort of has to be; the two of them actually share very few scenes together, and nearly all of it happened in that series, which was about time-displaced young Cyclops and his father Corsair.
My impression is that this series in very deliberately choosing to ignore that outside of that series the two of them have been getting alone without much incident at all and establishing that Scott has unresolved issues with Corsair – and quite possibly Corsair has his own unresolved issues; some of his lines in this issue hint that this meeting with Jean may not be very coincidental after all.
It is also possible that we will learn a bit of how Scott feels currently about those times when he was himself a wielder of cosmic power – from his own perspective, first due to the Black Vortex, then the one or two occasions when he was a Phoenix host (in the probably non-canonic crossover with the New Titans in the mid-1980s and in Avengers vs X-Men in 2012 or so). It might be an interesting subject matter for him to discuss with Jean and expose some of his unsecurities, shames and fears.
I am baffled why Jean has a solo book if she’s not going to have a personality or voice of her own.
In this issue, the narration is from Adani. The exposition is from Corsair. Jean just stands around asking “what do you mean?” for multiple pages.
The last time Jean was Phoenix for any length of time, she did not put up with anyone’s crap. Now she’s mostly a cosmic sounding board, I guess.
Maybe Phillips is leading up to something, but so far Jean a) saves people and b) is tired. I’m not impressed.
The single most boring creative and editorial decision is to lean into continuity in a back to basis approach – and get it wrong.
This felt like ten pages of content, with Jean’s characterization climaxing around the memory of Scott’s terrible coffee…
Which I thought would be the meat of the issue, rather than a momentary detour.
It doesn’t help that I’ve finally got around to read Hickman’s Avengers (about to reach Secret Wars), which makes the “villain of the week” use of the Black Order feel particularly dissonant – like an error in scale.
The Phoenix brings an entire universe into existence in comics that came out just a couple of months ago. So why should we care in the slightest when the surprise threat is a bunch of space zombies…?
It’s worth remembering that Corsair was pretty clearly on good terms with Cyclops in Hickman’s X-Men 1 – was this their most recent scene together?
He did screw the New Mutants a little a few months later, also in a Hickman story, but that shouldn’t erase the family bonding the Summers clan did at the onset of the Krakoa era
@John
Yes, back in 2019 that #1 had Corsair and Scott on good terms, having a friendly conversation around dinner time, when Scott was on his best spirits during the dawn of Krakoa.
An informative datapoint, but hardly evidence of contradiction in an entirely different situation years later.
Most significantly, there was no need at that time to decide whether Corsair could be trusted as a source of information about the risks and dangers of a whole alien community.
As a secondary consideration, we should also note that the Corsair of that time was also on good terms with the Starjammers, while this current version claims with no detail nor evidence that the group turned against him for no reason. A claim that is just too casual to be taken at face value.
Had this Corsair asked whether he could have dinner with Scott again instead of requesting a leap of faith with the well being of others on the line, I expect that Jean and Scott would be more accommodating.
It would also help if he were not showing himself so casually to Jean. There is enough there to wonder about his identity and mental state, at least.
@Michael It’s too early to say what MacKay’s take on Magneto is, he only used him in two brief scenes so far. I don’t think he spoke more than five sentences in total.
Is Wolverine: Revenge getting the same treatment or is it’s out of continuity-ness going to make it just a capsule review?
I don’t remember where I read that, but apparently “Revenge” isn’t out of continuity; it is being published before its proper place in continuity, which will presumably come in a few months in the future.
I’m not sure I’ll do all the ongoing books in From the Ashes once the line gets fully up and running. But Phoenix #2 was the only book out this week.
At any rate, no, I won’t be doing Wolverine: Revenge. It’s a miniseries and it’s obviously out of continuity. (The original Nick Fury is running SHIELD, for example.)
@Luis- I mentioned it- that’s what Hickman claimed in an interview. But it features, for example, 100 million people dying at Magneto’s hands, Cap and Bucky being killed off permanently, Colossus turning evil, etc. – no way is Marvel doing that in the future. Hickman should have said out of continuity.
[…] #2. (Annotations here.) Hmm. I generally liked the first issue, but I’m rather less convinced by this one. The art is […]
@Luis- I just noticed something. It wasn’t just Hickman in an interview who claimed it took place in the future. It was Breevort in his blog:
https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/125-can-you-see-the-moon
“And finally, a big deal book edited by Mark Basso, WOLVERINE: REVENGE, a series that combines the talents of writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Greg Capullo to deliver a brutal and uncompromising tale of Wolverine in the near future.”
This is Breevort outright lying.It’s an out of continuity story, not a story that takes place in the near future.
I had herpes, thought this was impossible to get cured just like my doctors told me, not until I took a life changing step by using this Herbal method and completing it. It cured my herpes and i am negative. I also had to get for my wife. It worked for her too, and that was how we eradicated Herpes from our home.” With his love spell I was able to win my ex boyfriend back who left some other girl, my boyfriend is much in love with me right now and has promised never to break up with me again..
Corsair has turned into Finn’s dad from Adventure Time.
@Michael: That text doesn’t say “In the near future of the mainstream Marvel Universe.” So it may just mean the story is set in a speculative near future of Hickman’s devising.