COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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X-Men 137 Modern
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Grade:
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9.6
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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0003355101
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Owner:
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The Captain
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
September 1980
"The Fate of the Phoenix!"
Chris Claremont - Co-Plotter & Scripter
John Byrne - Penciler & Co-Plotter
Terry Austin - Inker
Tom Orzechowski - Letterer
Glynis Wein - Colorist
Jim Salicrup - Editor
Jim Shooter - Editor-in-Chief
Synopsis:
The X-Men find themselves on a Shi’ar dreadnought and are ordered by Lilandra to give up Jean, as the threat that Phoenix poses has to be destroyed. Xavier utters a ritual challenge, which Lilandra cannot decline. The X-Men have one night left before the duel begins, to recover and to decide whether they actually want to fight for Jean. Despite some doubts, they all decide to stand by her. The next morning, both the X-Men and the Imperial Guard are teleported to the moon’s Blue Area, where the battle begins. Despite doing their best, all the X-Men are slowly beaten, until only Cyclops and Jean remain. When Cyclops, too, is struck down, the shock causes Jean’s Phoenix power to destroy the limits Xavier placed in Jean’s mind. Phoenix is back. The X-Men decide they have to fight her, something Phoenix actually wants. After she’s weakened enough, she kills herself in front of Cyclops, unwilling to take the risk of ever harming another life again.
Notes:
- The story was not originally intended to end with the death of Jean. Originally, Phoenix was meant to simply be a power-up for Marvel Girl. As Byrne noted, however, she kept on making the rest of the team redundant. Eventually, the Dark Phoenix saga was developed. The end Claremont and Byrne had decided on was that the X-Men would lose their duel against the Imperial Guard and the Shi’ar would lobotomize Jean, destroying all areas of her brain that had to do with her mutant power, making he in essence a normal human being. The outline for the following stories, as mentioned by Claremont, was that Jean would have to come to terms both with her power-loss and with what she had done. This was to culminate in Uncanny X-Men #150, where Magneto would abduct her and offer to restore her Phoenix power. Jean would finally decline, proving herself to be a heroine and not a victim, eventually marry Cyclops and give birth to Rachel.
- The original ending to this issue (although it had already been approved before) was nixed because Marvel editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, felt Jean wasn’t sufficiently punished for the destruction of D’Bari. Claremont and Byrne decided they’d rather kill the character than do what Shooter suggested, which was to put her into prison, where she’d be tortured forever.
- The original version of this issue was published (along with interviews) as Phoenix – the Untold Story . While only the last five pages tell a different story, it is also interesting to note that parts of the dialogues on the other pages are different in both versions. For example, in the unpublished version, the X-Men are all thinking about their personal problems (e.g. Wolverine thinks about Mariko, Angel thinks about missing the life as an active superhero) before the duel, whereas in the published version thy are all contemplating Jean’s fate and whether they should fight for her.
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