The Comic Cave – Uncanny X-Men: The Dark Phoenix

Amy Walker

2 years ago

The Comic Cave is a fortnightly feature where we spin the Wheel of Comics and see what graphic novel story it brings up for us to deep dive into! This week we take a look at Uncanny X-Men: Dark Phoenix, one of the most influential, and most adapted, X-Men stories of all time.

When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created The X-Men, the book was far from the comics juggernaut that it would go on to be. In a Marvel landscape where characters like Spider-Man dominated the scene, and The Fantastic Four were the premier team, no one had time for this strange collection of mutants. After barely more than a decade on the shelves the series was cancelled in 1975. But, it wouldn’t be gone for long. Later that year the book would return with a new creative team, and a whole new host of characters.

Of the original five team only Cyclops would remain, continuing on as the leader, joined by a hastily assembled group of mutants from around the world, including Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus. After rescuing the original team these new heroes would stay on as the Uncanny X-Men, and under the control of Chris Claremont, would go on to become a series that dominated sales. The X-Men that people think of today, the kinds of characters that you’d pick first for a line-up, the colourful costumes unique to each member, and the wild stories involving not just evil mutants but time travel, space entities, and other universes, all came about during the Claremont era.

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One of the biggest changes made early on, other than the new team, was Jean Grey sacrificing herself to save her team on a mission to space. With their ship having to pass through dangerous radiation on the way back to Earth, Jean locks the others in a chamber that will keep them safe, and flies the shuttle. After the ship crashes into the waters of Jamaica Bay the team assume Jean lost; but then she rises from beneath the waves, in a new costume, surrounded by flames, and calling herself Phoenix. After this Jean would come and go from the team, with most of the stories between Phoenix’s first appearance in X-Men # 101 and X-Men #129 (the start of this story) being as a minor character.

Despite not being on the team much her powers continued to grow, and she became an easy solution to most of team’s problems. The creative team were faced with the question of what to do with Phoenix if she could wave her hands and save the day every time. It was then suggested that perhaps Phoenix would better serve the series if she became a villain. The groundwork for this was laid across several issues, as Jean kept meeting the mysterious Jason Wyngarde, which resulted in her having visions of herself in the Regency era as his lover. But it wasn’t until X-Men #129 that things really kicked off.

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The story begins with Professor Xavier detecting two new mutants that he wants the group to approach. The team splits up to go meet these new mutants, with Cyclops, Jean, and Nightcrawler heading off to meet the musician Dazzler, whilst the others go to introduce themselves to the parents of 13-year-old mutant Kitty Pryde. However, there’s another group looking to get these mutants, the Hellfire Club; which includes Jason Wyngarde. This group tries to recruit Pryde into Emma Frost’s school, whilst sending their troops to kidnap Dazzler. Cyclops and the others in New York fend off the Hellfire Club, but when Frost sees that her plan isn’t working, sends troops in to capture Kitty and the other X-Men.

Thanks to her new powers, Kitty is able to get away, but the other X-Men are captured. Using her powers, she follows the Hellfire Club to their base, and calls for the other X-Men to help. With the help of Dazzler, the others manage to infiltrate the facility and free their friends. During the rescue, Jean gets into psychic battle with Emma Frost and defeats her, bringing the entire building down upon her. Having learned about the Hellfire Club, however, the X-Men decide to look into their new foes.

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Days later, the team infiltrate a swanky party at the club’s New York premises. However, thanks to Wyngarde’s previous manipulations of Jean’s mind, he’s able to fully put her into his illusionary world, and convinces her that she’s not only his wife, but the new Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. Using their mutant powers, the leaders of the Club are able to beat the X-Men and take them prisoner. Fortunately, thanks to Wolverine’s combat skills, and the psychic bond between Jean and Cyclops, the team are eventually able to defeat the club and escape into Central Park.

However, it seems like the strain of everything Jean has gone through, and the increasing growth of her powers, have pushed her over the edge, and she changes into Dark Phoenix. Wearing a red version of her costume, she attacks the X-Men and quickly defeats them. Following this she set out into space, testing her new powers. Needing to recharge, she flies towards an alien sun and feeds upon its fires, a process that ends up destroying a nearby planet and killing all five billion inhabitants. She also engages a close by Shi’ar ship, which gains the attention of their Empress, and X-Men ally, Lilandra.

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Returning to Earth, to her family home, Jean appears confused, slipping between her normal personality and the murderous Dark Phoenix. The X-Men arrive, and manage to get through to Jean, who regains control of herself. Things look to be back to normal, when the team is beamed aboard the Shi’ar Imperial Cruiser. Lilandra tells the X-Men of Jean’s genocide, and how the Phoenix Force within her must be stopped, and to that end, Jean must die. Xavier invokes a Shi’ar tradition that would allow the X-Men to fight for her freedom, and so the team engage the Shi’ar Royal Guard on a special arena on Earth’s moon.

Fighting as hard as they can to save their friend, the X-Men are defeated one by one, until only Jean and Cyclops remain. With the Dark Phoenix personality beginning to re-emerge, Jean knows that if it does it will kill everyone, including those she loves. Jean activates one of the discarded alien weapons within the ruins of the arena, and fires it at herself. Jean is reduced to ashes, the threat of the Dark Phoenix defeated by her self sacrifice.

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The corruption of Jean Grey, one of the very first X-Men, and her eventual death was a story that rocked comic readers at the time. Marvel used to have a rule: dead means dead. Death has become a revolving door in comics, and characters dying and coming back has become so second nature that even just this year Marvel announced that they were killing off Ms Marvel, and then announced her return three months after her death. But, in the ’80s a character death was a big thing, and this story sent shock waves through X-Men readers. But it might surprise people to learn that this iconic comic book death was never actually supposed to happen.

The original plan for the final issue of the Dark Phoenix story was for the Shi’ar to not want to kill Jean but strip her of her powers. Much like in the final issue, the X-Men end up losing their battle on the moon. However, rather than Jean sacrificing herself, she’s placed inside a device on board the Shi’ar ship that strips her of her mutant abilities. Of course, the X-Men argue against this, saying how taking her powers not only makes her human, but makes her less than that; Wolverine has some wonderfully ableist slurs to describe this. Once stripped of her powers, Jean returns home with the others. This version of events was eventually released in a special issue, Phoenix: The Untold Story #1.

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This plan never made it to print though due to Jim Shooter, who was checking out the proof copies of X-Men #135 and saw that Jean kills five billion people. Shooter had been part of the discussion to turn Jean into a cosmic villain for the team, but had been mostly hands off the production after that, so was not completely aware of the creative teams plans for her. Upon seeing that, however, he became more actively involved, and vetoed the idea of her being de-powered. In an interview in Phoenix: The Untold Story #1 he described the scenario as being like taking the German Army away from Hitler and making him live a quiet life somewhere else.

It was during discussions on what to do in the final part that creators Claremont and artist John Byrne explained that they saw the Phoenix entity as possessing Jean, and that she was therefore innocent. However, after going through the issues again they could agree that that wasn’t clear in the text, and that a more drastic punishment would be needed; and thus Jean Grey was killed off. This was a decision that the creators would later agree worked best for the story, and it was one that would impact the X-Men for decades to come.

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Eventually Jean was brought back to life, with the explanation that the Phoenix Force has created a duplicate body from Jean, and that the real Jean was still beneath the waters the original Phoenix emerged from, getting around the fact that ‘Jean’ was guilty of genocide. Over the years the Phoenix Force and its relationship with Jean would continue to evolve, but Uncanny X-Men: Dark Phoenix is where this still evolving saga really began. And it caused such a stir at the time that it has become one of the most adapted and revisited story in the entire X-Men catalogue.

The story was adapted in the hugely popular X-Men: The Animated Series where both the introduction of Phoenix and the Dark Phoenix saga were told over nine parts. Unlike the comic, however, the Phoenix entity eventually left Jean, so as not to kill the character off permanently. Phoenix was heavily hinted at in the X-Men: Evolution series, and was planned to take place in its fifth season, but had to be shelved when the show was cancelled. It was also a big plot point in the final episodes of the single season show Wolverine and the X-Men.

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It wasn’t just the small screen that made use of the Phoenix though, as the film X2: X-Men United saw Jean tapping into a fiery new power and sacrificing herself to save her friends, with a large, fiery bird seen briefly beneath water in the final moments. This would lead into the Dark Phoenix being a central plot point in X-Men: The Last Stand, in which she would kill several characters before eventually being stabbed to death by Wolverine. This would be revisited in the prequel films, with Jean using Phoenix-like powers in X-Men: Apocalypse, before becoming the villain in X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Interestingly, both movies that used Dark Phoenix were written by the same person, Simon Kinberg. Both movie versions were received negatively by fans.

The lasting impact of the story, its continued adaptation, the repeated use of the Phoenix Force in the stories that would come after show just a small part of the impact that the Claremont era of X-Men would have. Just in this story alone several new characters are introduced who would go on to become huge characters that would have hundreds of appearances over the years; characters like Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, and Dazzler. Claremont would create dozens of characters and stories that would become so popular and so ingrained into the X-Men mythology that he might be one of most influential comic creators of all time, especially when it comes to one who worked on a series they didn’t create.

If you’re wanting to look at early X-Men stories, Uncanny X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a perfect book. It’s early enough into Claremont’s era to be easy and accessible, and showcases some fantastic issues. From here, the series continues to have some fantastic stories, with the hugely popular Days of Future Past only a handful of issues later. Claremont made the X-Men a group worth following, and Dark Phoenix is, for many, the story that made them realise that.

Uncanny X-Men: Dark Phoenix was published in X-Men from October 1979 to June 1980 by Marvel Comics.

Next time on The Comic Cave – The Nice House on the Lake by James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno.