As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

PHOENIX #4
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa

PHOENIX:

Jean has volunteered to help out Captain Marvel, presumably as part of her ongoing efforts at rehabilitation. Instead, Carol invites her to a festival. Carol thinks Jean is overworking herself in an attempt to atone for something that wasn’t really her fault anyway. Carol argues that while Jean seems to have control of the Phoenix, she’s still afraid of it and needs to overcome that in order to really have control

GUEST STAR:

Captain Marvel is basically here to serve as a sounding board and warn Jean not to burn herself out. She mainly references rebuilding her own life after losing her identity to Rogue, but her concern about burnout and self-control might resonate more with her late-90s alcoholism storyline.

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:

The Galactic Council – basically an intergalactic diplomatic talking shop – is mainly a Guardians of the Galaxy thing, though several of the diplomats also showed up in X-Men Red. Their base, the New Proscenium, appears here for the first time – the original Proscenium was another diplomatic conference centre, and was destroyed in the last run of Guardians.

The members here are:

• Nymbis Sternhoof, representing the Kymellians, whose only previous appearances were in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 6 #7-8 and SWORD vol 2 #6 (and is thus making her first appearance outside an Al Ewing comic).
• Mentacle, a Rigellian telepath who debuted in Avengers #676 and again was last seen in SWORD #6.
• Paibok the Power Skrull, representing the Kree/Skrull Empire, who was hanging around on the fringes of Arakko stories during the Krakoan era and was last seen in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #103.
• Smasher from the Shi’ar Empire, Cannonball’s wife
• Kuga, the Empress of the Zn’rx (the race that Power Pack called the Snarks), who became empress during SWORD vol 2 #5 thanks to the machinations of Abigail Brand.

VILLAINS / ANTAGONISTS:

Since Smasher is representing the Shi’ar Empire, presumably Gladiator is not actually a member of the Council. But as he’s still high up in the Empire, it seems unlikely that he’d be making this pitch without the Shi’ar government being on board to some degree. He’s arguing that Phoenix is too dangerous to be allowed to wander around lawlessly, which isn’t an entirely unreasonable point as far as it goes. However, Gladiator has been somewhat obsessive about Phoenix in the past, and the Shi’ar in general have tended to see Phoenix as a dangerous threat, even more than other alien races.

Gladiator has allied himself with Perrikus, who said last issue that his agenda was to deal with “others in this galaxy wielding powers that do not belong to them”, presumably meaning Phoenix.

Gorr the God-Butcher has been roped in by Perrikus to fight Phoenix, apparently in order to prove his point about her power levels. Gorr lures her to the Temple of Creation, which seems to be unrelated to the Quarry of Creation from last issue. Then he kills her in battle, only for her to pop back up, because she’s Phoenix.

Gorr is a villain from Jason Aaron’s Thor run, who was tied in to the symbiote mythos during King in Black. Much like Adani, Gorr is a disillusioned anti-religionist who resents gods for their treatment of the world; his definition of a god seems to be based on power level rather than follower count, and so he considers Jean to qualify. Gorr died in Thor: God of Thunder #11, which he refers to here and handwaves away, claiming that despite all appearances, his connection to his symbiote was made stronger than ever.

Adani shows up briefly as narrator to spell out the parallels between Gorr’s origin and her own back story – and claim that she won’t be making the same mistakes.

OTHER REFERENCES:

Page 4: “Throneworld II”. As the caption says, this is the current capital of the Kree/Skrull Alliance, introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021. It’s built in the ruins of the Kree homeworld Hala.

Page 5 panel 1: “collapsing black holes, dying suns, Asgardian zombie armies, lying fathers-in-law or generals trying to build Thanos an army”. Recapping the plot of issues #1-3, which apparently just took a week.

Page 6 panel 1: “a cosmic entity that took complete possession of your person and committed atrocities in your name”. The Dark Phoenix Saga is a little more complicated than that, since it was retconned in such a way as to try and maintain the idea that Dark Phoenix was in some sense still Jean. But it’s a fairly conventional reading that Jean wasn’t at fault in failing to control Phoenix at that point. (Ironically, the more later stories demonstrate that Jean can control it, the harder it becomes to make that argument…)

“Recovering from having my powers and memories taken and learning to control my Binary form…” Carol’s powers and memories were removed by Rogue in Avengers Annual #10. She became Binary in Uncanny X-Men #164.

Page 11 panel 3: “Terminating the entire human bloodline of the Phoenix”. Uncanny X-Men #466-467 (2005).