'Dark Phoenix' Channels The Cosmic Power Of The Comics, Avoids Going Down In Flames
"HEAR ME, X-MEN! NO LONGER am I the woman you KNEW! I AM FIRE! I AM LIFE INCARNATE! Now and FOREVER ... I AM PHOENIX!"
That's how the character of Jean Grey, powerful telekinetic telepath and charter member of the X-Men, reintroduced herself to her teammates in 1976's Uncanny X-Men #101, shortly after she was seemingly killed by a solar flare while on a space mission.
Everything about that moment was swoony, operatic, larger-than-life: the energy that wreathed her body without consuming it (later revealed to be a cosmic entity of immeasurable power bonded to Jean's body and mind); the way her long red hair billowed around her face as if the artist had caught her midway through her DryBar appointment; her eyes, now as disquietingly white as a Harold Bloom syllabus; the newly jagged shape of her word balloons (comics shorthand for "somethin's hinky here"); her new superhero outfit, a green jumpsuit replete with shiny gold thigh boots, shiny gold evening gloves and, most Marvel-ously, a shiny gold sash tied at, and hanging with a kind of
