Reading Through 2021 96: Phoenix Resurrection, by Matthew Rosenberg, Lenil Yu, and more

Phoenix Resurrection, by Matthew Rosenberg, Lenil Yu, and more

2018

2015 to 2019 were the dark ages of X-Men for me, and this book might just be the eye of the storm.

It burns! It burns!

Let's go back to those dark days of 2018 and think about what was going on. The franchise was headless. The books had been spilt into Blue and Gold books to try to capitalize on aging fan nostalgia, and there was a concurrent Astonishing X-Men book out to capitalize on slightly younger fans nostalgia for that title. Basically, the line had been overextended for years, and the concept of a central "main" title had been lost.

At the same time, in order to "shake things up", the franchise had 

-killed Wolverine, only to immediately replace him with Old Man Logan, a time displaced version of him as an old man.

-killed Cyclops.

-left time displaced versions of the 1960's X-Men in the books rather than having Brian Michael Bendis finish off the storyline he'd begun with them. This was particularly egregious, as nothing those characters did after Bendis stopped writing them was compelling to me, or to most readers. The solo Jean Grey book had its fans, but I only lasted a few issues with it.

-left Jubilee a vampire.

-made Sabertooth a good guy, as opposed to a bad guy on a leash like he was the times he was an X-Man before.

-made X-23 the new Wolverine, despite Old Man Logan immediately filling the role on the team.

We have vampire Jubilee, teenage original X-Men minus Jean, and Wolverine is dead, just the old version of him

Most of this was pretty ugly stuff, though I was fully approving of killing Wolverine off for a few years, and letting X-23 step in. Ultimately, the company went with Old Man Logan, and never really let X-23 become the star she might have.

Kitty, Colossus and Nightcrawler were in a pretty traditional place.

With this special mini-series, that's the environment it was trying to thrive in, and it's an uphill battle. It's not a great book, it's not an all-time classic, but it has elements in it which place it firmly in the neighborhood of Claremont X-Men (good), as compared to Bob Harass X-Men (very bad).

Why would X-Men still bury bodies? Why wouldn't they at least have alarms and scanners on the corpses at this point?

The book is very continuity heavy, as in, if I weren't already a hardcore X-Men reader, I wouldn't even bother with it. Beyond the fact that a casual reader would have no idea who half the characters are, the versions of the famous characters aren't themselves, and there's no attempt to explain any of it. Why are there two Iceman characters? Figure it out, check Wikipedia. The book assumes you know exactly who everyone is, and why most of the main characters are nothing like they were five years earlier, much less twenty. Every Marvel team book needs a character page at the front or back, this one being a prime example.

Annie (in the glasses) is the key to the story. Annie's death during Jean's childhood triggered Jean's powers originally

The prologue and much of the story is focused on Jean Grey's origin story, which is also not explained in the book. If you're a diehard fan, you'll know that Jean was playing frisbee with her friend Annie when Annie ran out onto the road and was hit by a car. Jean's telepathic powers were triggered and she experienced her best friend's dying pain. You've read the black and white Marvel magazine from the 1980's Bizarre Adventures #27, which had the origin of Jean Grey, right? I'm sure it's been retold elsewhere, if only in single panel flashback, but it's just not that well known. Writer Rosenberg's choice to make this a key part of the story is the correct choice in order to make a story with an emotional core that's true to the character. The choice not to retell the story in the book, or even reprint a single page for newer readers in the ancillary material at the back, is... I don't want to say baffling, because Marvel makes comics for 40 year olds these days. I'm too accustomed to it to be baffled by Marvel. But it is symptomatic of a bad publishing strategy.

The art is very understated for a modern X-Men comic, and that is really nice

So far, almost all the problems I've described are things that are the responsibilities of the editor and publisher. Given that the X-offices decided Jean needed to come back, that the "X-Men" were in a sorry state, how did Rosenberg do with these lemons? I think he did fairly well. The plot of this is that dead mutants are appearing and disappearing, and it's the Phoenix Force at it again, the cosmic entity that can't quit Earth.

In terms of double page spreads, I found this one lacking

The dead mutants are merely a distraction from the Force's real plan: bringing back Jean from the dead to be the new avatar for it. The Phoenix has had multiple avatars and they've never been stable, not like it was with Jean. So it's incubating her a new body to bond with. Why the Phoenix creates a town populated with dead mutants and a diner run by a grown up version of her dead childhood friend is vague, but sure, maybe the emotional resonance is soothing. It's a superhero comic. 

It's such a weird concept to make another book about dead X-Men... Necrosha was probably a year ago in Marvel continuity

What I liked about this is that, despite the fights, this is not a fight book. When it's all resolved, it's an emotional resolution. I've been reading pieces of the Claremont run recently, and when that book was at its best, it wasn't because characters were punching each other. It was because the characters talked and expressed themselves. It was a sensitive book. 

I'm not going to make the thesis that that is what an X-book has to be; books and characters evolve with the times. But if you think about what made X-Men stand out on the stands in the 1980's, when it was the number one selling book in America, it was the heart of it. It was the way the characters expressed longing and fear, and supported one another through it all. 

The book has battles, but ultimately it's about personal relationships and philosophies on living

Rosenberg, at least with this book, got that, and made it a story about Jean's heart, not about overcoming a cosmic being. 

He went on to write the short run of Uncanny X-Men before House of X/Powers of X, and I think it was pretty terrible. So I don't know if it was the assignment here that raised his game, or if the assignment of killing time (and a ton of characters) before HOXPOX left him uninspired.

Even if it is only for one book, I like seeing this variation on Phoenix's costume

In the current HiX-Men continuity, death has been removed from the narrative of the X-Men. All characters now can be reanimated in a snap, so I wonder why this book was even editorially mandated to be made. Shortly after, Cyclops also would be mandated to return, using some other comic book logic. Why did they bother to do that when in HOXPOX, they brought back everyone any writer wanted to use? 

It's baffling, and makes me question just what the point of this book even was, when it's unlikely to ever be referenced in continuity ever again. But, if you ignore the convoluted continuity it was based in, and that within a year, all of the continuity in this would be ignored, the book itself is pretty good! It has some of the stuff that good X-Men comics are made of.