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.

Here you go. wiki entry

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

So, this is pretty cool for you X-men fans or Byrne fans or both!

X-Men: Elsewhen (Volume 1 of 3) (Hardcover) | ABRAMS

I’ve had my eye on that for ages. Byrne started sharing the pages on his website’s forum (in which he actively participates) many years ago in pencil-only form and the ‘issues’ are still accessible there. It was great to hear that they’d officially be released – and in color – as I’ve already got the majority of his collected work in various omnibuses. I do wish they’d just made one omnibus with all the issues, but obviously financial considerations come first.

Raw issues here:

https://m.byrnerobotics.com/forum/fo....asp?TID=58810

I read a few issues when they were first being uploaded to his website. It's fun, but I feel kind of the same way about it as I do about when Claremont did the same thing with X-Men Forever however many years ago. It's a nice little blast of nostalgia and cool look into an alternate world, but it's never going to be a true representation of what would have happened if Byrne had in fact continued on X-Men, either with or without Claremont. There's too many years in the interim. Byrne is not the same guy as he was in 1980 and those characters and our perceptions of them aren't the same.

That may sound like I'm raining on the parade (and I guess I am), but I'm still probably going to pick this up. I think it's cool that it finally got published and it does have a certain academic appeal even if I'm not head over heals about the story. Or the art for that matter. I don't love the inking and I've always thought Byrne's art looked better with the flat coloring of the 70's and 80's. Modern coloring on his art just doesn't look right to me.

John Lennon once said that he didn’t want a Beatles reunion because people would be “expecting God.” That’s kinda how I feel about this project, but I’m sure I’ll get it anyway.

X-Men fans who have read the whole thing don't think much of it beyond being Byrne's so-so personal fanfiction. I might pick it up but I think most always considered X-Men as Claremont's baby, with Byrne along for the ride at one point.

Yeah, from what I understand X-Men was co-plotted by Claremont and Byrne, but I always saw Claremont as the primary creative force behind the title.

I think that what Forever and Elsewhen show is that both creators needed a strong editorial hand behind the scenes to curb their impulses. I think Shooter made the right call about Phoenix, but for the wrong reasons. The Dark Phoenix saga worked so much better with Jean dying than having her live. That's what made that story an absolute classic and propelled the X-Men into the stratosphere.

Claremont and Byrne were the yin and the yang that made X-Men what it was. I'm a fan of Claremont's entire run, but it was at it's best with Byrne there to counterbalance a lot of Claremont's lesser tendencies. There's no point in trying to imagine what it could have been if they had stayed together because the tension between them that made their partnership work was the same tension that ultimately gave it a limited shelf life.

I was a fan back in the day, and have not kept up at all, so forgive me for asking: what were Jim shooters's reasons for decisions regarding Phoenix?

Shooter was a big black-and-white morals kind of guy. He wanted Jean/Phoenix as a villain and that she needed to be punished since she had killed a whole solar system. Someone somewhere (no idea where however) once posted a detailed breakdown of the four participants handling the Dark Phoenix Saga (Claremont, Byrne, X-Men Editor, and Shooter) and the push-pull between them on the big story elements.

Shooter's own website is still up with some of his comments on the Dark Phoenix Saga:

https://jimshooter.com/2011/06/origi...nix-saga.html/

Plus even if they were able to replicate what they would have done, comics have changed a LOT since then. Yes, Uncanny in the Claremont/Byrne era still hold up but a lot of it is the nostalgia and the fact that at the time it was introducing all these concepts that stayed on in the ecosystem.

Thanks!

I try to reread the saga every few years, but I think I got waylaid last time with Wolverine still in the Hellfire Club. I should get back to it.

Yes, it was a bug up Shooter's ass. One of many, from what I understand.

And it's also why, when they had the five OG X-Men reform as X-Factor, that they had to retcon Jean being Phoenix, and had that recovery of her from the cocoon in Avengers and Fantastic Four as a lead-in to the series. From what I recall, Kurt Busiek is the one who came up with Shooter workaround when he was a fan aspiring to be a writer. (I think he had done a handful of fill-in issues and miniseries at Marvel and DC at that time.)