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Today, we look at how Phoenix was initially going to have a major connection to the Shadow King in the comics before the Dark Phoenix Saga.
In Left Unresolved, I spotlight storylines that have been, well, left unresolved.
One of the fascinating things about the Chris Claremont run on X-Men is how the first two artists that he was paired with, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne, just happened to not only be excellent artists but also brilliant storytellers in their own right outside of strictly being able to tell a story with their artwork, but just coming up with great ideas for comics on their own. I’ve written before about how Cockrum was so creative that Claremont even started telling him, “Are you sure you want to give this idea to Marvel?” as Cockrum was filling issues with, like, multiple brilliant character ideas and designs (and heck, remember, half the All-New, All-Different X-Men were ALSO Cockrum designs that had worked their way into becoming new members of the X-Men while Cockrum worked with Len Wein). It was Cockrum who famously redesigned Jean Grey’s costume when he and Claremont introduced the idea of Jean Grey “dying” and being reborn as the much more powerful cosmic-level being, the Phoenix…
Remember, as I just noted, Cockrum actually PRECEDED Claremont on the X-Men, as Cockrum had done the revival in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and then Claremont had joined him on the book when the original writer, Len Wein, had to drop the book due to his workload as both a writer AND Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief at the time of their color comic book line. So it was obviously a lot easier for Claremont to have a cooperative relationship when the artist was already set up in that situation with the previous writer. This isn’t to take anything away from Claremont, of course, as he truly is a wonderful collaborator with the artists he works with, just noting that if you enter into a book where the artist has already been directly involved in the plot of the comic, you’re obviously more likely to keep the artist directly involved with the plot of the comic.
That takes me to my main point, which is when John Byrne succeeded Cockrum as the artist on X-Men, initially, Byrne and Claremont DIDN’T have that relationship and Byrne was more of what he sometimes terms “art robot” on the book, just drawing what Claremont told him to draw. Quickly, that relationship developed and Byrne was added to the credits as the co-plotter of the series and by the end of their run together, Byrne was doing the majority of the plotting (which led to their breakup, as Byrne was doing the majority of the plotting, but since Claremont’s scripts would always be the last part of the creative process, Claremont could take the story in whatever direction he felt like, even if it was the opposite of Byrne’s original intent when he plotted and drew the story, with the “last straw” being when Byrne drew Colossus easily pulling a tree from its roots in an issue and Claremont added dialogue saying Colossus pushed his body to the limit to pull the tree from its roots. Byrne realized that they were just never going to see eye-to-eye on stuff, so he should just go write a book himself without a co-plotter/scripter, which became Fantastic Four).
This is important because it likely has led to stories where one of them might be thinking one way and the other another, like the introduction of the Shadow King in X-Men #117 (by Byrne, Claremont and inker Terry Austin), which saw the Shadow King’s Astral Plane armor include a helmet that sure looks like it had a Phoenix design element on it…
As my pal Nathan Adler noted when he suggested this, Arthur Adams later made the Phoenix design even more obvious on the cover for Classic X-Men #23, reprinting this issue…
The Shadow King, though, was never seen again in the pages of X-Men, even as the Dark Phoenix Saga finished with the death of Jean Grey, sacrificing herself so that she could prevent herself from turning into the Dark Phoenix again and possibly hurting more people…
So that would suggest that the helmet thing was just meaningless, right? Or maybe something that Byrne or Claremont had a thought about but never followed up on. However, it is important to note that Byrne and Claremont initially did not plan for Jean Grey to die in X-Men #137. Instead, their plan was for her to “simply” have a sort of telepathic lobotomy done on her and that later, she would be tempted by Magneto to return to her Phoenix self.
Well, in What If…? #32 in 1991, writer George Caragonne and artists Rodney Ramos and Sam De La Rosa took that initial plan and implemented it, with Jean having her psychic lobotomy…
Then Magneto entered the scene, just as he would have done in the original plan…
And once again, he would offer Jean a chance to become the Phoenix again…
She ultimately turned it down, but then Mastermind, the villain who had twisted Jean into the Dark Phoenix in the first place, shows up again and reveals that he was actually an unwilling agent of the Shadow King…
After this point, the story takes off on its own level using the later retcon that the Phoenix force only THOUGHT it was Jean, and so it was actually a cosmic force taking Jean’s form and not actually Jean (and that the real Jean was in a stasis chamber at the bottom of Jamaica Bay), but before that point, it sure seems as though that was a very real possibility for what was originally planned for Jean’s connection to the Shadow KIng.
However, it never actually occurred in the comics, which is too bad, as it sounds like a cool idea (Claremont would later have the Shadow King fight Rachel Summers, the next Phoenix, in the pages of a long-delayed X-Men miniseries called True Friends).
Thanks to Nathan Adler for the suggestion! If anyone has a suggestion for a future edition of Left Unresolved, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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