Phoenix arrives as a startling answer to a rescue that should have killed Jean Grey. She brings the shuttle down, rises from the water and announces a transformation before anyo…

Phoenix arrives as a startling answer to a rescue that should have killed Jean Grey. She brings the shuttle down, rises from the water and announces a transformation before anyone else has time to understand what has happened. The early stories let that transformation be magnificent. Jean can meet threats on a scale far beyond the team's usual reach. At the M'Kraan Crystal, her power becomes the means of saving existence itself, with help from people willing to anchor her to the lives around her. The story needs that achievement. Phoenix is a source of wonder before the name becomes inseparable from catastrophe. Jean also still has parents, friends and a relationship with Scott to navigate. Those connections keep appearing between the larger displays. Power hasn't removed the need to explain herself to people who love her, or made it simple to understand what she wants from an ordinary life. Mastermind exploits that private uncertainty through fabricated experiences and a carefully constructed identity. The Hellfire Club's Black Queen is the result of an invasion that has been developing over time. The betrayal is intimate, and the Club's confidence that it can manage the outcome is appallingly misplaced. Dark Phoenix then makes the danger real on a scale no personal affection can erase. The destruction of the D'Bari world gives the Shi'ar a reason to act that the X-Men cannot answer merely by insisting that Jean is their friend. Yet she is their friend, and that is why the final confrontation hurts. Through #137, the story holds the woman the team loves beside the devastation associated with her power. The ending on the moon comes after those relationships have been given years of detail. The cosmic tragedy has a human face the book has never allowed to become anonymous.