A history of the Phoenix in her own words

[salinea]

Been reading through old X-Men related comics for a while now, and I've just reached this point in Excalibur that provides an interesting counter point to, shall we say, current event:











I'm skipping a lot of Rachel backstory for size. Also, it's pretty convoluted.

Comments

[shadowpsykie]

and all this has of course been thrown out the window.....

[nyadnar17]

Well you didn't expect Bendis to read or care about Excalibur did you? I mean everyone knows that all you need to know about the Phoenix is contained in the Dark Phoenix Saga trade paperback.

[auggie18]

Not that AvX is following that story all that well...

[salinea]

I don't think the creators of AvX cared much about doing their homeworks ^^;; which is a shame because the way it address that cosmic force + human host holds both potential for corruption and redemption is much more interesting and nuanced that what we've had about the Phoenix 5 so far -- and that despite the fact that it's done through exposition monologue with ridiculously convoluted stuff about Rachel's backstory.

[nyadnar17]

wow...I am such a Summers fanboy that I read that and went "yup, makes perfect sense" Didn't even realize of crazy convoluted and bizarre that story was until you mentioned it.

So does this mean Scott has been married 3 times? Jean, Phoenix, Madeline?

[salinea]

He didn't marry the Phoenix-as-Jean (if it's even still canon that "Jean" was the Phoenix at that point), just dated (and proposed, I think?) her.

[don1138]

Missed this during the original run, but I love it. I'd love it to be canon, but stories about thinking through your problems instead of shrieking at them seem painfully out of fashion.

[spacebetween]

Bendis ignores his own work so not surprised he is ignoring this. I really doubt he read this. I really hate the fact that he is going to GotG after this.

[amaniwolf]

I thought he was doing X-men, not GoTG?! Please don't tell me he's going to ruin that!

[salinea]

He could ruin both. He's a prolific ruiner.

[lucky_gamble]

Wow Marvel really has failed in so many ways.

[salinea]

I don't think they were trying very hard on that one.

[nyadnar17]

So the Phoenix has had two host that loved Cyke. One as lover and the other as father. Its new intended host is his granddaughter. Do you think we are actually going to see some kind of payoff from that in AvX?

[salinea]

I think the Phoenix has ties to the Grey line, rather than to Scott Summers, but I guess you're free to read it that way.

[icon_uk]

Well, Rachel is Summers AND Grey, and it seemed to like her better than it did Jean.

[salinea]

what I was trying to say is that when a cosmic force is strongly tied to three female characters belonging to three different generation of the same family, it's a little bit contrived to say it's all about that one male character rather than, you know, about the female characters of the family.

[icon_uk]

I must be out of it today, Jean, Rachel and.... who's the third?

Hope isn't genetically a Grey or a Summers, she was adopted by Cable after her unrelated to any X-person mother died, and did we ever know who her genetic father was?

Not that I'm saying an adoption doesn't make someone a part of a family I hasten to add, but if there's no Grey DNA in her, it's relevant to discussion of lineage.

Or am I overlooking someone else terribly obvious... it's late and it's been a long day at the end of a long week...so that's quite possible.

[salinea]

No, I meant Hope Summers. Which I was counting as part of the family despite the lack of (known) genetic link. We don't know what the Phoenix looks for, maybe it has nothing to do with genetics. Maybe Hope does have one we don't know about. Maybe it's just Jean and Rachel, and Hope's only in the family because she was tied to the Phoenix and therefore Cable adopted her.

[greenmask]

It says it loved him itself, too, despite "being" Jean at the time. I'm not keeping up with the event at ALL, but could that relate to the namor/Emma smooching? Psychic nudging? :/

[auggie18]

That's a clever idea, so that's probably not going to be the case.

[don1138]

Fingers crossed.

Personally I'm waiting for Psycho-Man to show up and reveal that he manipulated Cap and Cyke into being douche-bags. How else to explain the way they disregarded their own experience and immediately opted for the most reactionary and confrontational positions possible. I mean, seriously, the quality of "leadership" and level of "maturity" demonstrated by Cyke and Cap during all of this brings to mind Itchy and Scratchy.

[arilou_skiff]

Honestly, I've never liked the Phoenix. Always preferred the Eternity/Death/Galactus/Tribunal gang.

[salinea]

okay?

[auggie18]

See, I'm the opposite. I've always loved the Phoenix, but the whole "giant space dudes in large hats" thing really never appealed to me.


Different strokes, I suppose.

[robinzegblu]

The X-ladies back then were certainly, for lack of a better word, bodacious. I'm used to super-people in skintight outfits, but not quite this skintight. I daresay most of the costumes resemble a nude figure with bits colored in.

[queenrikki]

Excalibur-era Rachel Summers was my fictional girlfriend. She just had the best hips ever and the red spiky costume *sigh*.

[icon_uk]

Though the spikes would kind of make it difficult to hug your girlfriend if you went to the cinema.