X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong #1-5 (2005)

Tribute cover!

Jean Grey is dead again.  Grant Morrison killed her.  And now we’re getting the series that confirms that the Phoenix Force is a living entity that can exist separate from a host and has thoughts and feelings—kind of like Venom. 

I mean, it kind of seemed like that when Rachel Summers started manifesting it, but now it’s definite.  So, I’m adding the Phoenix Force as a character tag.  Emphatically, I am NOT going back through history and tagging it everywhere else it appeared.

The Phoenix Force goes to Earth and brings Jean Grey back to life. 

Nice zombie picture.

Jean’s own personality attempts to overcome the Force, and begs Logan to kill her.  He and the X-Men try to do that, and fail.

Phoenix Force realizes that it can no longer manipulate Scott because he’s in love with Emma Frost now. 

There’s quite a bit of solid interplay with the love triangle (Emma/Scott/Jean).

At one point, Emma’s competitiveness with Jean makes her try to take Phoenix Force from her.

The love triangle actually becomes a foursome now, with Phoenix Force trying to seduce Jean away from her love of Scott, while Scott is actually in love with Emma.

When Jean’s true self proves too hostile to overcome, the Force leaves her frozen in the ice at the North Pole and jumps into Quentin Quire, who then tries to use the Phoenix’s resurrection powers to return Sophie—one of the Stepford Cuckoos—to life.

PIC OF QUIRE AND ZOMBIE

Meanwhile, the X-Men find Jean’s body, free her from the ice, and…She’s really alive now.  I guess once the Phoenix Force resurrects you, you’re really back.

Jean is able to control the Phoenix Force–with the “love” of Scott and others on the team.  This sounds corny, but it actually works really well.

Jean briefly becomes “White Phoenix” and then ventures off into space to “find” missing pieces of the Phoenix Force, which were blown apart by the Shi’ar.  Not sure I totally understood the ending, but nevertheless I enjoyed the series.  It did a nice job at moving some of Grant Morrison’s themes and characters forward—particularly Quentin Quire, who I thought was dead but it turns out he’s living in a clear tube as a form of psychic energy.  At the end of the book, he is returned to that form.

It also picks up on the death of the fourth Stepford Cuckoo and brings Jean back to life without returning her to the team, setting up future stories.  This easily could have been a miniseries that didn’t matter but instead it was a great story that furthered continuity without having to take place within the confines of one of the main X-books, where it would have been bogged down by the dozen-or-so other ongoing stories that always seem to plague the busy X-titles.

Well done.