Sometimes you just have to get away from Earth.
Creative Staff:
Story: Stephanie Phillips
Art: Alessandro Miracolo
Colors: David Curiel
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
What They Say:
LIFE! FIRE! POWER! POSSIBILITY! PHOENIX! She is JEAN GREY. She is PHOENIX. She saves the world. She brings death. One woman, alone in space, who not only must do what no one else can: she yearns to. A desperate S.O.S. from NOVA brings the Phoenix to the edge of a black hole, where hundreds of lives hang in the balance…and whatever Jean does – or fails to do – will bring darkness to the universe and haunt her in ways she can scarcely imagine…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I held off on checking out the Phoenix series while sampling other new X-books simply because it’s such a complicated character in general, never mind being disconnected from it since the mid-90s. What helps is that Stephanie Phillips is a solid writer and can try and bridge the gaps a bit and pull it together, though the structure of this opening installment didn’t quite do it for me. What helped was knowing some of the characters coming because that’s the appeal at the moment. The other draw is Alessandro Miracolo on the artwork as they’ve got a good sense of layout and design and handle the whole space element and that Jean is largely flying most of the time to give it the right look. The characters look good and while there are a few simpler areas here and there, it’s a solid release, especially with Curiel’s color design.
The basic premise for this is that Jean is off in the galaxy doing different things in trying to help people. It’s loose in its connection to any recent events but we do get a sequence with her communicating telepathically with Scott about what she’s doing and why she needs to do it. That he worked up a spaceworthy Blackbird for her so she had a taste of home and humanity is smart and she recognizes that. What we mostly see initially, with some narration by a child that will become important later, is how Jean is continuing to use her powers as the Phoenix to do amazing things. It opens on her draining off some of the excess energy of a sun that’s going to cause a lot of problems for a nearby populated world. One that’s familiar with the Phoenix and fearful of it. But it’s what she does, though spending time with the locals just felt like a foolish move instead of simply doing the work.
What changes things up a bit is when a super black hole is going to collapse which has a special intergalactic prison there with very powerful individuals. This is something that Nova and a few others are trying to prevent happening but it’s a chaotic situation since some of those inside are fighting as soon as the chance to escape opens up. Jean ends up showing up here as well thanks to Nova’s call and I’m amused that she just casually suggests that she might try to stabilize the wormhole, which makes sense considering how they’re trying to place her as an omega-level mutant on top of a cosmic being. It’s kind of silly but it works well as a showcase of how she balances her humanity and her power since a very powerful being is escaping, which sets up the main story for the next few issues, with her trying to save a couple of hundred criminals and those that work the prison. It’s messy but it gets the job done.
In Summary:
Phoenix does a couple of things I don’t care much for with first issues in that we get a bunch of different perspectives and while it does finally wrap around at the end, it makes for an initial read that I just find unfriendly. It needed more time just giving us a chance to see Jean and who she is now beyond just the rescue/action aspect of it. The downtime in talking with Scott was a big plus but I’d have loved to have seen her aboard her ship and just humanizing her more before going to the big use of power stuff. The villain coming out of this is interesting considering their past and who they’ve defeated before and the use of Nova was nicely done even if it was just the reader being dropped into another chaotic situation. The book works in general but it has some clunky areas that kept it from feeling like a smooth read that had some solid artwork throughout it.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: July 17th, 2024
MSRP: $4.99
