On the breaking of many things, not least of which, Kings.

Spoilers for X-Men: Kingbreaker follow, also War of Kings, most recent X-Men comics, and some allusions to other Marvel titles.

One of the ideas my friends and I toss around is the concept of a “Phoenix Corps.” Sort of like the Green Lantern Corps from DC Comics, only with a small team of women imbued with the Phoenix Force. Under the command of Jean Grey, the Phoenix Corps would traverse the galaxy righting wrongs, protecting the weak, and generally keeping shit contained. This fantasy was born out of our frustration at the ways Marvel deals with their most cosmically powerful female characters. Jean Grey, Rachel Grey, Wanda Maximoff, Maddie Pryor, Lorna Dane — these women have planet-shattering power. They can destroy, change, and rebuild worlds. They can offer resurrection sometimes. At different points in the canon they have been nigh-unto gods. And they are all crazy or dead.

Marvel has a problem when it gives a character universe-destroying power. The conundrum is, of course, that you have to make a threat a real challenge for a hero — but then you can’t leave the threat lying around. (The problem is not unique to comics. Any GM who’s given her player characters a super-weapon then needs to get rid of the damn thing.) Molecular Man, back in the Secret Wars stories, was a problem. Magneto is a continual problem (and is the male character I see most often treated on par with the X-Women.) Doctor Doom gets world-breaking power every so often and needs to be taken down. But please note — those are all villains. When the threat is a villain you can strip their powers, kill them, have them die in an accident, place them in power dampeners, in prison, any number of other solutions. What do you do when the character with this power is, nominally, a hero?

This is relevant to X-Men: Kingbreaker, sadly. To recap: Havok, Polaris, and Rachel Grey went into space to stop Vulcan from . . . stuff. They are now running with the Starjammers and Lilandra, trying to overthrow Vulcan and Deathbird who rule the Sh’iar Empire. Rachel has met, slept with, and dumped Korvus, a Sh’iar who also has Phoenix-powers. Lorna has been mostly stable . . . mostly. She hasn’t coped with the torture at Vulcan’s hands very well, and her powers are . . . kinda more powerful than they have been. We know that when this happens to Magneto it makes him sociopathic and psychotic, as the magnetic fields alter his brain chemistry in negative ways. And at the end of Kingbreaker #4, Rachel and Korvus simultaneously lose their Phoenix-powers.

For no discernible reason.

But here’s the thing. I know the reason. The Doylist reason — wait, let me explain that, first. The terms Watsonian and Doylist come from the Lois McMaster Bujold website forums, and are explained in her FAQ.

“The terms Doylist and Watsonian derive from the Sherlock Holmes stories. Doylist is from Arthur Conan Doyle, the author, and Watsonian from Doctor Watson, the narrator in the stories. The terms are most often applied to explanations of inconsistencies between (or even within) books or stories in a series.

A Doylist explanation discusses inconsistences or plot in terms of why the author did things that way. Lois Bujold’s Doylist explanation for some inconsistencies is “the author had A Better Idea” in the later book.

A Watsonian explanation discusses the inconsistency or plot point from the perspective of the story. Inconsistencies might be explained by a character lying or being unaware of all the facts.”

So the Doylist reason for de-powering Rachel and making Lorna crazier is that these characters are about to be used in War of Kings, and Marvel cannot have the Starjammers solve the war by Phoenix-ing out on everyone and eating a couple stars, or by Lorna reversing the planetary polarity and telling them all to piss off. Marvel has to provide handicaps for its characters in order to tell stories.

But some characters are given handicaps that are a little more dignified. Black Bolt, for instance, is also a player in War of Kings. He can also destroy planets. His handicap? He has awesome willpower and is just bad-ass enough he can control himself. Why can’t Lorna have that? Why can’t she be tougher than Magneto, why can’t she have the strength of will to resist the crazy and still remain powerful? Powerful and ethical? Why does her handicap have to be that she is weak?

Honestly, I’m kind of glad that the Phoenix just . . . vanished. I’d rather that than have Rachel unable to go on due to her internal mental collapse (as happened in Uncanny X-Men #183, X-Men vs. Alpha Flight #1 & 2, Uncanny X-Men #200, Excalibur #3, need I say more?) But I want an explanation, and I want, I crave, an explanation that has something to do with the character. With Rachel, with Jean Grey, with the Phoenix. I think it’s a red herring that Rachel said “Mom?” when the Phoenix left — I don’t think that means Jean is back, for instance. I think it means Rachel associates the presence of the Phoenix with her mother’s personality. But I want an explanation that is satisfying in a Watsonian sense. And I want it, very much, to be more than Someone Is Crazy Or Dead.

I wish, I really wish, that Marvel would stop giving the X-Women cosmic powers. Because then Marvel has to take them away. Just leave them at a useful level of powerful, mmkay? Like Storm, or She-Hulk, or Mockingbird, or Rahne.

Anyway — does anyone have any ideas or theories or ficcable notions as to what happened to the Phoenix? My vote is it flew off to go rescue Kitty from her doom in Astonishing X-Men. But that’s just me.