#phoenix host

From Snowy Ashes (Marvel AU) Bucky Barnes x AFAB mutant!reader Johnny Storm X mutant!reader (established relationship, ambiguous) Rating: Mature for violence, medical experimentation on children, PTSD, and heavy themes. Rating may change as there will be smut. Just when you thought you’d laid your past to rest, you awaken in the Avengers Tower face to face with the man of your nightmares. Strange that he is also the hero of your bedtime stories. Bucky Barnes is a complication you could never have anticipated. 

My biggest issue with Maya becoming the Phoenix is, simply put, that it felt unnecessary and didn’t add anything to her story (I felt something similar with Quentin Quire).

Maya is a character who feels very out of place in that kind of storyline—there’s a reason we almost never see her in comics with cosmic plots. It’s hard to make her presence feel necessary, and not all writers can pull that off (even some of the best struggle when doing similar things).

I read her entire run as the Phoenix, and it was strange because her characterization felt out of place. Maya was created as a character meant for “street-level” adventures, so it always works to see her show up in stories like Daredevil, Kingpin, the Defenders, or Spider-Man (even just cameos, but good ones).

But my biggest struggle in accepting that this happened is that there’s always a reason why the Phoenix chooses a host (especially if it’s not Jean or Rachel). That’s something well established in the comics, but in Maya’s case, it was just “now she’s the Phoenix’s host, there’s no reason, it just happened.”

And again, that feels out of place because the Phoenix is supposed to take hosts when it has a mission (For example: Hope Summers after M-Day. The only ones who break that rule are Jean and Rachel—but Jean is the Phoenix, and Rachel is considered the Phoenix’s daughter, someone the Phoenix deeply cares for, so *shrugs*). Beyond that, I don’t have any issues with the character.

JASON AARON (W) • JAVIER GARRÓN (A) • COVER BY LEINIL YU

CONNECTING VARIANT COVER BY DUSTIN WEAVER

VARIANT COVER BY JOSHUA SWABY VARIANT COVER BY TAURIN CLARKE

HIDDEN GEM VARIANT COVER BY ARTHUR ADAMS

DESIGN VARIANT COVER BY Javier Garrón

ENTER THE PHOENIX!