The Monkees

I want to read the Phoenix storyline however I'm confused. I'm not a comic book person, I'm trying to get started in comic books and I want to read this storyline, I bought the Dark Phoenix saga but is there a Phoenix saga? If so I can't find it.

Trevor

Here you go. wiki entry

The Monkees

So the Dark Phoenix Saga (that picture is the exact book I have) is the whole thing then?

Trevor

Spoilers in that obviously.

Basically, the Dark Phoenix Saga is one of the most famous comic stories ever, and has been reprinted in several different forms, some of the collections having more secondary stories included.

What could be termed The Phoenix Saga was just a few issues centered on Jean gaining powers, and has never been collected as a separate story iirc. But I'm sure those issues are reprinted in the basic trades collecting the full series.

Trevor

I don't see a picture (because I'm on iOS perhaps), but no. I doubt your book reprints issues 101-108, which are probably not really necessary to enjoy the later story of 129-138.

davidh777

This was the image in the wiki entry:



It should be basically what you need for Dark Phoenix (I have an earlier edition). You'll miss out on a little backstory, but you can always go back for that if you want to. As Trevor said, this is the classic run you've heard about.

Derail: There's a Kindle edition of Dark Phoenix for $9.99--that's the kind of thing that'd be great to have in digital form.

Supermallet

In order to understand the Dark Phoenix saga, all you need to know is that Jean Grey previously died, and then returned with increased powers, changing her superhero name to Phoenix, and that her powers can manifest in the form of a firebird made of energy. That's about it.

Josh-da-man

There really isn't any official "Phoenix Saga."

The Phoenix story more or less begins in (Uncanny) X-Men #100/#101 when Jean Grey gets new powers/a serious upgrade and a new name, changing it from "Marvel Girl" to "Phoenix."

The "Dark Phoenix Saga" encompasses (Uncanny) X-Men #129-#138. It was, for its time, a fairly ambitious superhero storyline that featured Chris Claremont and John Byrne at the top of the game, and was the origin of the super-badass Wolverine that spring-boarded the character to Marvel's A-List.

PhantomStranger

I think the Dark Phoenix saga is a more involving story if you go back to the beginning of the new X-Men and Claremont's run. You lose a lot of context if you don't know what motivates Scott Summers and some other relationships prior to the DP saga.

Tom Creo

I was introduced to TDPS by the original trade (129-138) and I felt it explained the story just fine. Alot of it is recap in what happened in the earlier x-men issues and, it really led me to seek out and purchase the floppies.

Supermallet

I don't disagree, but if someone wants to go straight into Dark Phoenix, that's all they really need to know.

fujishig

I agree that it works as a standalone story, and that reading the prior stories and knowing the relationships and backstories would help but is not essential. I remember reading and re-reading that tpb as a kid, as even though my mom had collected the monthly issues long before, those were in stacks and not easily accessible. IIRC, Claremont did a good job keeping you up to speed with what was going on, and the introduction of Kitty allowed for a fresh point of view anyway. It helps to know stuff like what happened to Jean to turn her into the Phoenix, who the Watcher is, who the Imperial Guard, the Shiar empire, and the Starjammers are, why the Skrulls hate the Kree and vice versa, etc., but they explain it pretty well.

Then they convolute it to the point of no return much, much later. I realize why Busiek wrote that draft to bring Jean back (which was adapted/championed by Byrne and Layton in FF and X-Factor), and honestly he's awesome at that kind of stuff, but later writers rehashed that Dark Phoenix saga to death. I still don't understand that Morrison arc.

I miss those little captions that would tell you "this story happened in issue 7!" That would always make me try to find that issue, if it was a plot point I was really curious about.