Phantazia Appreciation 2021

[Nyssane]

"You lampoon my leadership... but I knew to keep one of my most devastating members in reserve, just in case!"
- Toad

Who is Phantazia?
Phantazia is one of the X-Men's most unique and mysterious villains.

When Toad began assembling the third Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, he sought out long-time members Pyro and Blob and the mutate Sauron. But he needed some estrogen in the group. Enter: Phantazia. Clearly the most intelligent and powerful member of the group, Phantazia's reasons for working with the Brotherhood are, like herself, shrouded in mystery. Perhaps she was searching for companionship. Perhaps she found Toad's inept greed amusing. Who knows?

Her powers make her quite unique in the world of the X-Men. Phantazia has the following mutant abilities:

• Levitation
• Projection of "bio-blasts" that she fires from her body
• Electromagnetic disruption - this was her bread and butter; she could short out others' mutant powers or bodily functions (causing temporary paralysis), and render technology and machinery useless
• Cloaking herself and others from sensors (including human sight)
• Attuned to fluxes in the electromagnetic spectrum (aka able to sense disturbances in the earth's EM field)

Phantazia Phacts
Some little known facts about Phantazia include:

1. Phantazia was created by Rob Liefeld (ugh) and Fabian Nicieza.
2. Phantazia has a PhD, presumably in astrophysics. This makes her one of the X-Men's most educated super-villains.
3. Magneto thought so highly of Phantazia that he invited her to join him on his asteroid base, Avalon. She rejected his offer because really, she's too good for him.
4. Despite this, Phantazia was part of Magneto's elite guard in the House of M storyline, and was the first person to sense an attack on the royal house. When the timeline was restored, she was one of the only people who remembered the events of House of M, though everyone thought she was crazy as they did not remember.
5. Phantazia's natural hair color is blonde, though she's actually had THREE hair colors in her few appearances (blonde, white, and red). She presumably wears a wig when in supervillain guise, or she "powers up" which turns her hair white and allows her body to vanish inside her cloak.
6. In Phantazia's first appearance, she helped kill Cannonball by shorting out his powers which allowed Sauron to gut him (spoilers: he came back).
7. Phantazia is sometimes erroneously referred to as "Phantasia."
8. Phantazia was one of the first (if not the first) Marvel female villains made into plastic; in 1995, she was included with Storm in a promotion by fast food chain Hardee's, which included a figurine, trading cards, pogs, and a 4-part exclusive comic book picking up where the Empyrean/Legacy Virus story left off.

Will 2021 FINALLY be the year of Phantazia's return?

2020 Appreciation Thread

[danielsan52]

She needs to make a comeback. Even if just in one story. Would be awesome if she ended up on Scott and Jean’s new X-Men team.

[CellarDweller]

she is definitely a way under-used character. We need to see more of her.

[Phoenixx9]

Where is Phantazia these days? She needs to appear in the X-Men books because she is such a "good" bad character. They need foes who are unique and powerful, in this case, one mutant with lots of powers.

[GMikey]

OMG some members today were discussing ideas of how to incorporate Phantazia into the animated fan series. One plot twist that's in discussion, is to give her a secret relationship with Candra/The X-Ternal. Since the Mutant Brotherhood would be employed more as "antiheroes" than clear cut villains for the X-Men, it's being suggested to allow Phantazia build a relationship between multiple parties, for reasons that would eventually reveal her to being a secret rival for Magneto, as she sees him as "weak" and incapable of realizing a vision.

[kevlon]

Potential Hellion member?

And if she does show up again, I hope she is still wearing that strange floaty cloak