Entertainment
 

Phoenix Force (Earth-616)

From Marvel Database

Character Template Help
Real Name
Current Alias

Aliases
formerly Dark Phoenix, Black Queen, Jean Grey, Phalkon, Chaos Bringer, Star Child [1]
Former Avatars: Rachel Summers, Quentin Quire, Emma Frost, Rook'shir[2], Feron, Necrom, Madelyne Pryor[3], Diamanda Nero, Korvus Rook'shir[4], Giraud, Prime, Amber Hunt
Current Avatars: Jean Grey-Summers (Phoenix), Celeste Cuckoo

Identity

Alignment

Affiliation
None, (as Phoenix) formerly X-Men, Hellfire Club (Inner Circle)

Relatives
Phoenix (genetic template)

Universe

Base Of Operations

Characteristics
Gender

Height
5' 6"

Weight
110 lbs

Eyes

Hair
, Red

Unusual Features
It takes the form of a large Phoenix.

Status
Occupation
Cosmic entity, Celestial Elemental

Origin
Origin
The Phoenix Force is one of the oldest known cosmic entities, representing life that has not yet been born. (Cosmic Being)

Place of Birth
Big Bang

Place of Death


First appearance

Contents

History

Early History

The Phoenix Force is one of the oldest known cosmic entities, representing life that has not yet been born. The Phoenix Force is an immortal, indestructible, and mutable manifestation of the prime universal force of life. Born of the void between states of being, the Phoenix Force is a child of the universe. It is the nexus of all psionic energy which does, has, and ever will exist in all realities of the omniverse, the Guardian of Creation, and a de-facto guardian of the M'Kraan Crystal. Phoenix is among the most feared beings in the entire universe - having the power to cut and regrow any part of the universe, as well as destroy it entirely, which is part of the Phoenix's purpose: "The Judgement of the Phoenix": to burn away what doesn't work. Recent interventions of the Phoenix suggest that "what doesn't work" is what has become stagnant instead of naturally evolving.

During its time as a sentient entity, it traveled the cosmos just like other cosmic beings though at first, the Phoenix Force was a formless mass of energy, but thousands of years ago, it came to Earth, and met a magician named Feron (who worshipped the legendary Phoenix), whose daydream-like visions prompted the Phoenix to adopt the firebird form it has today. He asked the Phoenix to help him by lending its energy to project a stone pillar (which resembled a lighthouse) across the multiverse. The pillar became the lighthouse base for the British superteam Excalibur (a team its future host Rachel Summers herself would join).

Jean Grey

Phoenix Force left Earth, but was called back when it felt the mind of a human transcend the physical realm, a mind that resonated with the Phoenix's energy. A young Jean Grey had telepathically linked her mind to her dying friend, Annie Richardson, to keep Annie's soul from moving to the afterlife. In doing so, Jean's mind was being dragged along to the "other side" with Annie. Phoenix lent its energy to break the connection, and kept close watch on young Jean, as it felt a kinship with the young mutant.

Phoenix Force

Years later when Jean was dying on a space shuttle, her mind called out for help and the Phoenix Force answered and saved her. The cosmic Phoenix Force entity, which had created a duplicate body of Jean, believed itself to be Jean, and acted in her place while the real Jean lay in a coma in the ocean.

The Phoenix entity became too strong to control for the merely human aspects it had acquired from Jean, but the other X-Men had no way to know what was happening and little chance of preventing a tragedy. Professor X helped Jean establish "psychic circuit breakers" in her mind, but they became less and less effective.

She was thus an easy target for the illusionist Mastermind, who needed a trophy to join the Inner Circle of the prestigious (and infamous) Hellfire Club. With the help of a psionic device created by the club's White Queen, Emma Frost, Mastermind made Jean believe that she was his 18th-century lover Lady Grey. Jean joined the club as their Black Queen, which would allow her to relish the extremes of human emotion and sensuality. When the X-Men came to her rescue, Jean's true love, Cyclops, faced Mastermind in a psychic duel and was defeated. His "death" broke Mastermind's hold over Jean's psyche--as well as any control Jean had had over the Phoenix. It brushed aside the X-Men and departed for the heavens.

Dark Phoenix

As the Phoenix is the light and life of the universe, the Dark Phoenix represents power and destruction. The Phoenix will become Dark Phoenix if it allows human emotions to cloud its judgment. In this state, Phoenix is the strongest, but also is an evil entity. It thirsts for power and destruction. Totally uncontrollable, it is a force to be reckoned with as it is not bound by a human conscience. When Dark Phoenix flew back into space, her true firebird form was seen across the entire universe and even attracted the attention of Eternity.

X-Men #105

To sate its hunger, the Dark Phoenix flew to a distant galaxy and devoured the star of the D'Bari system. The resulting nova killed billions of innocent people. A Shi'ar vessel attacked it and managed to alert the Shi'ar Empress Lilandra before they were destroyed.The empress called a council of her intergalactic counterparts, including the Kree and Skrull empires. They concluded that, for the rest of the universe to live, Dark Phoenix must die.

Dark Phoenix Returns art by Greg Horn

Meanwhile, the Beast had found a way to neutralize Phoenix's power temporarily. When it returned to Earth, the X-Men held it at bay while Professor X rebuilt the circuit breakers in Jean's mind. At that moment the Shi'ar arrived and teleported everyone aboard their flagship. Lilandra announced that Phoenix, and thus Jean Grey-Summers, would have to die. Jean recieved a Kree weapon so that she could "do the right thing." Professor X, unwilling to give up on one of his pupils, but romantically involved with Lilandra, challenged her to Arin'n Haelar, a Shi'ar duel of honor that cannot be refused. Professor X named the X-Men as his champions in the duel, Lilandra her Imperial Guard.

The duel took place the next day in the Blue Area of the Moon. The Imperial Guard made short work of the X-Men, leaving Cyclops and Phoenix to make a final stand. A stray bolt hit Cyclops. Jean's control broke, and she became the Dark Phoenix again. Lilandra ordered Plan Omega, which would destroy the whole solar system in hopes of eliminating Dark Phoenix as well. Professor X ordered the X-Men to subdue Jean so that Plan Omega would not be necessary, and they managed to subdue the Phoenix for a brief time. In this moment of lucidity, Jean took Cyclops to a back alley, where she bade him an emotional farewell and turned the Kree weapon on herself.

Madelyne Pryor

It was at the moment of the Dark Phoenix's death that a spark of the Phoenix Force was accidentally bestowed on Jean's clone, Madelyne Pryor. After Dark Phoenix died on the moon, the Phoenix had sought to return the "borrowed" portion of Jean Grey's soul back to her body which was in suspended animation. Jean instinctively rejected the Phoenix and it wandered the globe, lost. Eventually it became attracted to Madelyne Pryor since she was an exact genetic clone of Jean. The Phoenix Force mistakenly gave a spark of itself to Madelyne, granting her a life force and some of Jean's memories. Part of the Phoenix Force remained with Madelyne until she also committed suicide. As Madelyne died, a r reawkened Jean recovered the part of her soul the Phoenix Force had mistakenly given to Madelyne.

Over the years whenever Jean Grey's powers flared, many of her teammates feared Dark Phoenix's return, although Dark Phoenix had never actually been Jean Grey. After once again merging with the Phoenix Force, Jean had all of Dark Phoenix's memories and she felt the weight of five billion lives upon her soul.

Rachel Summers

Rachel Summers

Another person who possessed a portion of the Phoenix Force was Rachel Summers, Jean's daughter from an alternate future. She was able to access the Phoenix Force and allow it to possess her to use limited amounts of its immense powers. Years in the future, when the Phoenix Force took Rachel Summers into the cosmos to heal her, it ran into Galactus, the world eater, who was consuming a planet. The two battled and the Phoenix Force was able to stop him. Unfortunately, the world it tried to save was destroyed by their combined powers. The Phoenix told Galactus to stop because he does not have the strength to continue. It said that it wanted to save the life of the planet Galactus was devouring and its actions were just. Galactus, however, accused it of being a hypocrite. He claimed that while he devoured life on planets, the Phoenix in turn took life energy from the future - killing countless beings that have yet to be born. Later, when Rachel was sent into the future, Jean assumed the code name of Phoenix once again. She even began to manifest the Phoenix raptor without the Force.

White Phoenix of the Crown

Jean and the Phoenix Force later merged into one being. The Phoenix Force told Xavier, that "Jean is only the house where I live." Jean Grey was the closest thing the Phoenix Force had to a true earthly Avatar or physical embodiment and further that the Phoenix Force empowered Jean with life in a kind of mutualistic relationship or psychic bond.

Tricked by the Magneto impostor, Phoenix and Wolverine ended up trapped on Asteroid M drifting closer to the Sun. Dying, Wolverine killed Jean and awoke the Phoenix Force within her. Using her incredible powers, Phoenix returned with Logan to New York City to face "Magneto". Defeated, his last act was to give Phoenix a stroke on the planetary level. Dying in Scott's arms, she urged him to live on.

150 years in the future, a Phoenix egg hatched and Phoenix was reborn once more. It was revealed that instead of rejoining the X-Men after Phoenix's death, a mourning Cyclops quit the team leaving a desperate Beast to pick up the pieces. Using the drug Kick, actually an aerosol form of Sublime, Beast was corrupted and set a chain of events that left the world in ruin. Phoenix removed the Sublime entity from Beast and absorbed the future reality into the White Hot Room. In the White Hot Room, Jean appeared in her White and Gold Phoenix costume and was referred to by the Phoenix Consciousness as a White Phoenix of the Crown. Jean had felt like she was "supposed to fix something that was dying" but the Phoenix Consciousness said that she had "lost concentration in there". Met by other Phoenix avatars, Jean was urged to let her universe die but she decided to heal it. With some guidance from the Phoenix Consciousness, Jean took her universe in the palm of her hands and decided to create a new future by nudging Scott to continue Xavier's school and his relationship with Emma Frost.

Dark Phoenix (by Dan Brereton)

The Phoenix Force returned to Earth and resurrected Jean Grey from her grave. Through a number of incidents; including Jean having Wolverine kill her a number of times, Jean trapping herself in a glacier, the Phoenix Force jumping into Emma Frost, and parts of the X-Men being trapped in a Shi'ar-generated event horizon, Jean Grey managed to assert herself and gain control of the Phoenix Force, becoming the White Phoenix, and rescued everyone from the event horizon. As a result of a Shi'ar attack on the Phoenix Force, it is currently in an incomplete state.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

Future Life-Force Tap: The Phoenix Force can tap into the energy provided by life-force reserved for future generations, thus denying them existence. The Phoenix Force possesses limitless cosmic energy. With or without a host, it is one of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Universe.

  • Concussive Force Blasts: It can wield this energy to project beams of immense concussive force.
  • Quantum Singularity: It can transmigrate throughout time and space by folding its energy back into itself, causing it to collapse akin to a black hole. It then reforms itself upon reaching its destination.
  • Energy Absorption: It can directly absorb energy such as Cyclops' optic blasts or the entire energy of a sun.
  • Force of Life: The Phoenix Force can control life and death itself.
  • Psionic Nexus: As it is the nexus of all psionic energy, it has powerful mental abilities, including telepathy and telekinesis, and often seeks out hosts who have psionic abilities. When bonded with a host, the Phoenix Force amplifies their abilities to incalculable levels.
  • Matter Transmutation: It can manipulate matter on a sub-atomic level (e.g., turning wood to gold, stone to crystal, etc).
  • Teleportation: It can teleport others across vast distances.
  • Resurrection Force.

Its powers appear to be at their strongest when bonded to Jean Grey (possessing the powers of telekinetic/telepathic godhood, complete control over the realms of matter, energy, and thought), as the two have a strange, profound connection to each other (Jean is the closest thing the Force has to physical form).

  • Like Jean Grey-Summers, the Phoenix used telepathy and telekinesis, but at a much higher level. She was able to rearrange the molecular structure of matter and fly at supersonic speeds. Using the Phoenix Force, she could travel through hyperspace and destroy Shi'ar battlecruisers with little effort.

    Abilities

Because Phoenix was linked to Jean's psyche, she maintained a psychic link with Cyclops.

Strength level

As Jean Grey-Summers, the Phoenix possessed the normal human strength of a woman of her age, height, and build who engaged in moderate regular exercise. Using her cosmic powers and telekinesis, Phoenix could lift an unknown amount, probably in the range of thousands of tons.

Paraphernalia

Transportation

Flight under her own power, intergalactic flight through hyperspace, X-Men Stratojet, Shi'ar stargates

Notes

  • As originally written, the Jean Grey incarnation of the Phoenix was not a separate cosmic entity, but Jean herself, having attained her ultimate potential as a psychic, only to become slowly corrupted by the manipulation of such foes as Mastermind and Emma Frost; unable to adapt to her enormous power, Jean was driven mad. In order to return Jean to the fold several years later, this storyline was retconned to reveal the existence of the cosmic Phoenix Force entity, which had created a duplicate body of Jean, believed itself to be Jean, and acted in her place while the real Jean lay in a coma in the ocean. This let Jean be revived as a member of X-Factor. The extent to which the duplicate and Jean are separate entities depends on who is writing the character(s) at the time.

Trivia

  • The Dark Phoenix Saga raised the standards for graphic storytelling. Claremont's use of foreshadowing, motivation, and pathos took comics to a new level and made the X-Men franchise one of the most popular titles ever.
Dark Phoenix - Statue
  • There are several Dark Phoenix statues. The latest [1] is depicting Dark Phoenix as she appeares in X-Men Last Stand.

Links

Discover and Discuss

  1. ↑ All of these are actually aspects of the Phoenix, and thus all are still present, even if not actively manifested.
  2. ↑ Ancestor of Korvus Rook'shir, obtained a portion of the force via the Blade of the Phoenix
  3. ↑ Obtained a portion of the force by being brought back to life by it
  4. ↑ Obtained a portion of the force via the Blade of the Phoenix
Retrieved from "http://marvel.wikia.com/Phoenix_Force_(Earth-616)"