Just read Dark Phoenix Saga, my thoughts

Why not? For all its power, Phoenix is hardly anywhere close to immortal or even invulnerable. If Wolverine came so close to killing Rachel with his adamantium claws during the Claremont/Romita days in Uncanny, I really see no reason for a laser blast not to be lethal to Jean.

It is true that she had the power to defend herself from the blast, but it is obvious that she chose not to.

Best, Luis.

really have done the job either.

I always thought this was because Jean was repressing the Pheonix force.

Also one piece no one else has written is that Jean was originally slated to survive the battle. The Shiar win and basically strip her of the Pheonix force.

But Shooter felt that she had to die to balance the death of the asparagus people.

Not that _that_ should be sufficient either.

But actually, the scene makes sense if you assume (which was the correct view at that time) that Phoenix is basically Jean. She's still thinking of herself, by habit, as basically a human. So firing a laser cannon at herself would seem suicidal to her, whether it was or not.

The core of her whole problem, in fact, was near-Deific power levels combined with the mind of a slightly immature 24 year old girl. Bad combo. Bad.

Of course, even by the pre-Retcon version, all that blast should have done was disintegrate her body (which she had _already_ recreated once), casting her back into her pure-energy state (which is her natural state once her Phoenix power manifested on the shuttle). It's no big deal to kill the pre-Retcon Jean. It's just hard to make her stay dead.

Of course, she might _choose_ not to remanifest herself, but as long as Scott's in our world I think that choice isn't going to last long.

Shermanlee

But she's also demonstrated the power to come back from the dead. BTW, at this point, the correct pronoun would be 'her', not 'it'. This story was written before all the 'it wasn't Jean' nonsense got going.

Shermanlee

Which, next to Secret Wars, was his biggest crime against comics.

But the Jean-survives-but-is-reduced-in-power was used in a What If story a couple of years later, in which the Shi'ar try to strip her of the Phoenix force, but it returns, with a vengeance, when the X-Men take on Galactus (no, really). Unfortunately, Jean can no better control it than she could before, and ends up wiping out the X-Men, then the Earth, then the rest of the universe.

As my international law lecturer explained at university, 'Before we had international law, we settled everything with wars. Wars had one major advantage over international law - at least you usually knew who'd won.'

Hmm, everyone dies. So atypical of What if...

-Ralf Haring 'The mind must be the harder, the heart the keener, the spirit the greater, as our strength grows less.' -Byrhtwold, The Battle of Maldon

He was wrong about one thing though: we still settle everything with war, we just don't settle things as often as we used to.

Briliant conclusion!...maybe now you can explain how that one comic changed the direction of the entire comic book industry for 20+ years....

dont read Daredevil 181 either cause you'll probably hate that

And keep well away from 'Days of futures past', just stick to the multiple rehashes that ruined the power of the original. While you're at it, avoid most things by Alan Moore as well.

Don't forget, the ending to the Phoenix saga was mandated by Jim Shooter. 'There has to be repercussions for eating the Broccoli people...'