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#Dark Phoenix Saga
wwprice1 · 5 months
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Scott and Jean by John Byrne. From the original ending of the Dark Phoenix Saga.
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zyalahdoodles · 8 months
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Saw this panel of Dark Phoenix and just had to draw it for myself.
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The Beast in X-Men #137 by John Byrne
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xmencovered · 4 months
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Uncanny X-Men 125 / Published: Aug 1979 / Artist: Dave Cockrum
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martianbugsbunny · 7 months
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YES HOLD THAT HAND!!!!!
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Do you prefer Phoenix as what was originally intended, as Jean at the peak of her powers, or as the cosmic force it became that wound up getting involved with Jean (to put it in the most basic terms)?
No, it always had to be both. If the Phoenix is just Jean Grey, another Omega-level mutant, the story ends in cosmic oblivion. Even as an Omega, Jean Grey alone can win a battle, but she lacks the cosmic transcendence of Tiphareth to remake the universe in the image of the tree of life.
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At the same time, if it is just the Phoenix inhabiting an empty vessel, the narrative collapses into hollow stage play. To borrow the language of my earlier post about Cristological controversies, if there is only a divine nature and no human nature, there is no sacrifice and no salvation. As Claremont understood and Shooter and Busiek failed to grasp, with the clone retcon, you lose the core dramatic arc of a brave woman who grapples with divinity and in the end chooses to die a human.
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x-istential-crisis · 7 months
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Dark Phoenix conclusion so good (the first time they told it 🙄🙄🙄)
Uncanny X-Men #136
Chris Claremont and John Byrne
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That is a pretty amazing cover...
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linkspooky · 1 year
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When it comes to Shigaraki I can't help but think of Carrie White because they both have very similar circumstances. The only differences is that Carrie was also bullied at school and Shigaraki was kidnapped by AFO when he was a child.
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You're not wrong for seeing those parallels Beako from Umineko. While I doubt Shigaraki was inspired by Carrie in any way, their character beats resemble each other. They both are examples of what I call a "Dark Phoenix Arc". Time for some more comparative media analysis, here's a brief history lesson in comic books.
What is a Dark Phoenix Arc?
The Dark Phoenix Saga commonly refers to the story in Uncanny X-Men #129 - 138 of Jean Grey's corruption by the power of the Phoenix and the Hellfire Club. It was considered incredibly shocking for its time. One thing to note is while Jean Grey is famous nowadays, in early X-Men she was the weakest character and her role was basically limited to "The Woman" of the team.
Elevating the helpless damsel woman to the most powerful member of the team, if not the entire universe and then having her turn evil had never been done before. It was a jaw-dropping shock at the time. The equivalent now would be if Horikoshi suddenly had Uraraka kill AFO, get a massive power-up, turn and start massacring the heroes.
The basic format of the Dark Phoenix arc, is a formerly seemingly harmless character is handed a massive power that corrupts them from the inside out. The moral of course being if someone like Jean Grey one of the most sensitive and caring of the X-Men can be corrupted and turned against her friend then who can't? Much like Carrie, and much like Tomura it's about the slow chipping away of their humanity.
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Jean receives a power upgrade in the form of the phoenix, and the sheer might of her power begins to scare her. At the same time outside forces in the form of the Hellfire Club begin to tamper with her mind, because they wish to claim that power for themselves. This is generally the start of any Dark Phoenix arc, a character suddenly being gifted a great power, but outside forces attempt to control them and how they use that power. For Jean Grey it's the Hellfire club tampering with her mind. Another important part of Carrie's life isnt' that she's bullied, she also has an incredibly religious mother at home who controls every aspect of her life including her body and sexuality. Shigaraki is immediately found by AFO who grooms him into using that power to harm others because that fits AFO's agenda of creating a symbol of chaos.
They are also, routinely dehumanized by these people. The HellFire club doesn't care about Jean Grey they only want the phoenix, she is reduced to her powers. Shigaraki too, continually has his agency sapped away by AFO over the course of his arc, until it's revealed AFO really only ever saw him as a vessel to put his massive amount of quirks and the consciousness that came with it into. Carrie is regularly dehumanized by her mother, and the people around her.
What chips away at these characters is really the slow sapping of their agency away from them, they are not treated as people who are capable of making their own choices.
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This concept of agency is a pretty big theme in these arcs, because really for all three characters they are not taught to handle the massive power they are given in any healthy way. For example, Shigaraki's decay ability does not have to be destructive, think how helpful it would be as a rescue hero if he could clear debris from a disaster in an instant. Carrie isn't really taught to suppress her power, but she does repress herself continually, by just enduring bullying and her home life without ever defending herself or lashing out.
They do not attempt to learn their power, or try to control it, they instead fear it. That's part of the inherent tragedy of the arcs, powers that they could have learned to use responsibly if they just embraced both them, and their own agency as people instead go haywire and take control of them.
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A part of the ambiguity of the Dark Phoenix arc is how much of Jean Grey's slow decline is really the influence of the Phoenix, or the Hellfire club, and how much is aspects of Jean Grey's personality that were usually repressed just coming to the surface. Carrie for example isn't an inhuman monster, she's a bullied kid. Bullying is a common experience a lot of people endure, so of course wanting to lash out against your bullies is an understandable emotoin. Jean Grey was a complex human being, a collection of good and bad traits, but the more power she attained the more her bad traits begin to surface.
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That's the most surprising aspect of this arc, and why most of the other X-Men did not see Jean Gray's downfall coming despite early warning signs like this, because lots of people, but especially superheroes tend to simplify people into good or bad people. Carrie remains largely sympathetic for most of the story because she is seen as a victim, and victims in most stories are Cinderella, they endure without lashing out until the bullies are cosmically punished.
Jean Grey was until that point a character who's only real personality trait was "the woman" and "the nice girl" and "Scott's girlfriend" and it was an age of superhero comics where superheroes are always the good guys. My point being that this slow fall into darkness is also something that challenges our notion of what good and bad is, because most people see good people as people who do good things all the time. A good person wouldn't do that, that's a bad person thing. Whereas, by starting with a person that is mostly good with a few negative traits and showing their slow downfall we understand how people can be pushed to act this way.
Jean Grey's primary reason for corruption is the Hellfire club, and the nature of the phoenix itself corrupting her but one thing people miss in the original conflict is the Phoenix isn't good or evil, it just is. It's a neutral force that gets corrupted, partly because for a long time Jean was pressured by people around her in her life to not use her powers but instead seal them away. This gives Jean a really unhealthy relationship to her own powers, and once she starts sliding she uses them more and more because she hasn't been taught how to use her powers only repress them.
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Once again the connection to Tomura. Shimura Tenko had a power that was not necessarily dangerous if he was taught how to control it, but instead what happened was he lost control of it once and not a single person helped him. Afterwards he became convinced the reason no one came to save him was that his power was evil, and then groomed AFO to believe that his own decaying power was proof of an internal evil born inside of him and much like Jean instead of using that power responsibly because he was never taught to do that he instead abuses that power as a part of a cycle of lashing out.
At first Dark Phoenix seems like a simple, the hero is getting mind controlled by the bad guys, we need to defeat them and bring our friend back from Mind Control. A pretty standard comic book arc. The real twist is that the mind control is really just the domino that sets things in motion. Jean becomes the Black Queen and the Hellfire club's plan succeeds for awhile, the X-Men come to her rescue, it seems like it's going to be a simple case of freeing her from her control and then this happens...
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Jean forcibly reclaims herself from the member of the HellFire club trampling with her mind, she breaks the mind control, but by that point it's too late and everything is already in motion. Jean Grey completely snaps with no outside influence and becomes phoenix.
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It's important to note that Jean isn't really possessed by the power, the same way she was as the Black Queen of the Hellfire club. Rather it's clear even as she attacks the X-Men that some elements of her humanity are still there, but she's flipped she is now suppressing her humanity and becoming her power.
This is Jean Grey's Carrie burning down the school gym moment. This is when Shigaraki announces that all he wants is to destroy.
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They become their power, and throw away their own humanity and try to be something like natural forces of destruction, like tornados, like earthquakes, they don't think, they're just random destruction. Their humanity has been denied for so long they now apply that dehumanization to themselves.
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The crux of the Dark Phoenix arc is how preventable this all is, if someone had intervened earlier. Tomura's decay did not have to be destructive as it was, he dreamed of being a hero. Jean Grey was mostly a well-intentioned person suddenly given too much power and not only did no one teach her to control it, she was exploited and had her free will sapped away from her by outside forces. The bullying in Carrie could have been prevented by one person standing up for her.
Someone began to laugh, a solitary, affrighted hyena sound and she did open her eyes, opened them to see who it was and it was true, the final nightmare, she was red and dripping with it, they had drenched her in the very secretness of blood, in front of all of them and her thought (oh... i COVERED with it) " [...] She sat quite sitill, letting the noise wash over her like surf. They were still all beautiful and ther was still enchantment and wodner, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil. In this one she would bite a poison apple, be attacked y trolls, be eaten by tigers. ANd suddenly it broke. The horrible realization of how badly she had been cheated came over her, and a horrible soundless cry. (they're Looking at me). [...] She rolled over on her back, eyes staring wildly at the stars from her painted face. She was forgetting. (!!THE POWER) It was time to teach them a lesson. Time to show them a thing or two. She giggled hysterically. It was one of momma's pet phrases
Arguably either the inaction or dehumanization of everyone around them, contributes to he respective downfall of each person. They no longer regard themselves as people, they are their powers. They are not internally evil people, but rather the products of the environment around them, and the failure of the people in their lives to help them or intervene until it was too late. Professor X even accepts part of the blame for not teaching her anything about her power.
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The final key to this arc is that they're not totally corrupted by the power, they may be denying that they are still human, but their human identity is still there. It's a very jungian shadow thing, repress yours shadow and it will find some way to come out. However, the presence of a shadow to your actions, or repressed negative traits doesn't mean that the positive traits are all lies. What makes the Dark Phoenix arc truly special is that Jean Grey is still there deep down inside of her even when deciding to go full Dark Phoenix, and the conflict of the arc is that she's not being possessed which is why all the X-Men are trying so hard to reach her.
Dark Phoenix and Jean Grey exist simultaenously, they are two parts of the same person.
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Which is something the current arc is going to great pains to establish as well, as much as both AFO tries to suppress him and Shigaraki himself denies it, he's still Tenko. Of course the heroes in MHA all suck eggs so they are not really doing what the X-Men are doing and trying the whole time to get through to Jean and convince her she is still there, and they will continue loving her no matter what she does.
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Carrie herself despite being a famous horror movie monster, slaughtering a whole town, after her rampage she is once again revealed to be nothing more than the bullied and abused little girl. She spends her last few minutes alive, begging and crying out for her mother, because all she really wanted to do that night was to go home to her mother.
(qwhy didn't you just leave me alone) (carrie i) (momma would be alive i killed my momma i want her o it hurts my chest hurts my shoulder o o o i want my momma) (carrie i) ANd there was no way to finish the thought, nothing there to complete it with.
So that is the basic gist of the Dark Phoenix arc, a character gifted or cursed with tremendous power is never taught or guided properly to use it, and on top of that they are regularly dehumanized and have their agency taken away from them. They endure, endure, endure until they snap, and lash out and finally use that power for themselves taking all their agency back in the most destructive way possible.
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andrecomics · 5 months
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Jean Grey Phoenix brush marker doodle
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themutantages · 11 months
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Reminder: THIS is the Dark Phoenix.
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wwprice1 · 10 months
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Scott and Jean in all their glory by Dan Hipp!
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afro-hispwriter · 1 month
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ITS HEREEE
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theskeletoncrow198 · 1 year
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xmencovered · 1 month
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Classic X-Men Vol 1 #37 / Published: September 1989 / Artist: Steve Lightle
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vince-variable · 2 years
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someone help me where’s that one amazing world of gumball image with the face that looks exactly like this
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