| Born of the void between states of being, the Phoenix Force is a child of the universe. In the dying moments of the previous universe, the Force saved all existence from eternal damnation, enabling Eternity to preserve the humanoid Galan, ensuring his re-creation as Galactus. The Force was subsequently reborn from the cosmic fires of the “Big Bang.” Later, it encountered the malevolent Le Bete Noir and trapped it in the centre of a still-cooling planet Earth. The Force was drawn back to Earth when it was awakened to reality by Feron, a sorcerer from an alternate Earth who had travelled with his master Necrom to a tower on Earth-616 to witness an alignment of dimensional interfaces. The Force joined with Feron, allowing itself to be shaped by his dreams into the form of a giant fiery bird and experiencing a spectrum of new sensations. At the moment of the alignment, Feron bade the Force to project the essence of the tower throughout the multiverse, so that it existed on every plane of reality simultaneously, creating an energy matrix. Necrom sought to access the matrix to allow him to compress all alternate Earths into a singularity, the energy released from which would endow him with godlike power, and to that end he tore out the portion of the Force that had bonded to Feron. In agonized confusion over the violation of its essence, the Force fled. Necrom bound the stolen Force with a portion of his own essence, and left it to incubate in a corpse he dubbed the Anti-Phoenix. |
| In time, the Force’s pain subsided and it discovered that it was unable to return to its natural state. Hundreds of years later, the Force learned that the universe would come under threat from manipulation of the M‘kraan Crystal - a hypercubical nexus of realities - by the mad Shi’ar Emperor D’Ken. To prevent this, the Force sought an avatar through which it could act and so returned to Earth, seeking out Feron. Instead, the Force encountered Jean Grey, a member of the heroic mutant X-Men team, whose mind the Force had touched earlier. Grey was dying from the effects of solar radiation while piloting a damaged space shuttle in order to save her fellow X-Men. The Force appeared to Grey and offered to save her. She accepted, and so the Force created an exact duplicate of her body for itself, into which it transferred a portion of her consciousness. The Force then sealed her comatose body inside a healing cocoon, and after the shuttle crashed into Jamaica Bay, near New York City, the Force emerged from the waters, calling itself Phoenix. The X-Men believed it to be the real Jean Grey, having died and returned to life with vast new powers. Phoenix and the X-Men opposed D’Ken, who exposed the universe to the tremendous gravitational forces contained within the Crystal’s core. Phoenix entered the Crystal and repaired the stasis field, thus saving the cosmos. Phoenix continued to serve as a member of the X-Men, but ultimately its human form was unable to cope with the Force’s immense power. At first, Grey’s strong moral sense kept the Force in check, but Phoenix succumbed to the psionic manipulation of Mastermind. Unable to fully free itself of the sinister side of its personality that Wyngarde exposed it to, and with its human consciousness ill-equipped to repress it, the Force’s primal urges overwhelmed Phoenix, causing it to become the malevolent Dark Phoenix. |
