Why I think Jean Grey is cool/underrated

[spirit2011]

I know Jason barely had a story beforehand but I look at it in terms of the effect upon Batman and upon the Bat franchise as a whole, which are ultimately more important than Jason as an indiv character. Inthat light I feel maybe he shouldn’t have returned.

I do not understand? Claremont wanted Jean back but also was all about Maddie? I’ve seen him lament bringing back Jean and how it wasn’t a decision made by him. I don’t agree Maddie got screwed though because tbh I look at her and Cyke’s relationship and see something always doomed to fail and unhealthy even before she was retconned into being a clone.

I don't think Jason should had come back too. His story was much better worked with him dead than being the "edgy" robin

Claremont wanted Jean back and maddie to be jean reincarnate. Buut Shooter said Jean would be perm dead, so Claremont just wrote maddie as her own character. Then editors changed idea and brought Jean back, then we know the story. Claremont really love his creation Maddie, that is why he says Jean shouldn't come back; He still didn't got over it.

In particular when there is a long established relationship ended for the sake of characters having revolving love interests its so pointless because you know for instance it will never get to that same level ever again. At that point just spend the time you’d waste on new lovers developing supporting cast members or villains or extended action scenes. Hell introduce new supporting characters and have plataonic male/female friendships.

Yeah, saw that happening with Emma and scott. Writers even tried to sell it, but it will be always below Jott. What it helped was divide the fandom even more

I think it was more they felt Cyclops being married made him boring so Jean needed to die because ew, the dude can’t die what are you on we need him to be alive for all the teen boys (really the middle aged writers) to live vicariously through him as he gets laid with whatever hot chick we hook him up with next. Maybe it’ll be that psychic ninja who lacks trousers or maybe we’ll stick to the blonde our artists love drawing with gravity defying bras.

Yeah, writers needed to self insert their middle age crisis on Scott and the mature approach a divorce can't happen because it let characters being get old. Quesada had Peter do a deal with a freaking demon than had him and MJ divorce.
It was pure childish story telling

I dunno. I’m a Mary jane and Mayday Parker fan and trust me I and many others felt during Slott’s run that if the choice was the characters are off the radar or they are on panel being distorted and broken better the former than the latter.

I think about this with Jean. But i don' think being dead really helped her that much

Joe Q has stated his first Spider-Man/possibly comic story ever was the Drug Trilogy with Harry Osborn. If you read that story the Madonna/Whore dynamic between MJ and Gwen is at it’s height. Ironically looking back now ithas strong MJ moments but they were not intended as flattering probably. That’s where she’s flirting with Peter in front of her BF Harry and his father shortly after Peter and Gwen have broken up. Her dumping Harry leads him to overdosing (not getting addicted as some people have claimed) and meanwhile Gwen is across the ocean pining for Peter and thinking about how unfair she was to him because no guy wants to be pressured into proposing. Of her own volition she realizes she was wrong and returns to NYC surprising Peter at the end of th story where they do the schmaltzy romance run towards one another. First page of next issue they are arm in arm loved up and basically engaged to be engaged, with a possible implication of sex at the end of the story. Next issue Peter tries removing his powers in order to be normal and marry Gwen and their relationship proceeded like that for another 20 odd issues until she died, during which MJ barely showed up and whenever she did it was similarly unflattering. But then Gwen abruptly died and the stories began heavily shipping Peter and MJ and established her as his GF.

It is funny that when guys like Quesada do changes that fans doesn't like, it's like "things are changing you have to accept". Brevoort really stopped one of the dumbest things that could happen, I think Gwen is better off as spider-gwen than being another love interest.

In a solo series wherien a female character's death affects more than the central male protagonist perhaps this would be true but in the context of a team book wherein the grief was hardly depicted as affecting Storm or most of the male characters who weren't Logan or Cyclops who were in love with Jean it would still be a fridging.

We basically only ever saw cyclops and Wolvs being the most affected by it. And only scott story was moved by what happened to Jean. And later these two fight on schism had a lot of angsty about Jean.
It is a very male POV

[Spidercide]

Superhero is a character classification. If people talk like it's an actual type of storytelling, they really mean the action genre because that's what a lot of the movies are. It's like saying police is a genre when they're really talking about dramas about cops. The X-Men are a sci-fi franchise revolving around a single broad concept that started incorporating much more characterization and drama to the point that it's become a sci-fi drama franchise. Yes, there are many stories that deviate that for boom whack snikt pow action, comedy, and fantasy, but those aren't what the audience is generally here for.

Superhero fiction is a genre of speculative fiction examining the adventures, personalities and ethics of costumed crime fighters known as superheroes, who often possess superhuman powers and battle similarly powered criminals known as supervillains. The genre primarily falls between hard fantasy and soft science fiction spectrum of scientific realism.

A superhero film, superhero movie, or superhero motion picture is a film that is focused on the actions of one or more superheroes: individuals who usually possess superhuman abilities relative to a normal person and are dedicated to protecting the public. These films typically feature action, adventure, fantasy or science fiction elements, with the first film of a particular character often including a focus on the origin of their special powers and their first confrontation with their most famous supervillain or archenemy.

Yeah so no superhero is a genre including in films, it just a genre that can contain action and sci-fi elements.

Costumes and/or superpowers acting altruistically= superhero.

And...yeah that is what most people come for.

[Spidercide]

I guess in a way X-Men fall under sci-fi dystopian fiction. There is always that "end of the world" element that is in the X-Men franchise where occasionally something gets better, but then more often than not, things get worse. It's a sci-fi allegory for the Holocaust, African-American Civil Rights, Women's Rights, LGBT Rights, etc... It's fiction about a superhuman race of people being persecuted for the way in which they were born and the enhanced abilities they possess. I think the reason the X-Men have continued to resonate over the years is because there is always persecution of a people based on relgion, heritage, culture, gender, genetics, sexual orientation, etc... This never goes away so the X-Men franchise always resonates with people who feel oppressed in some way.

The soap opera relationship elements just add some extra drama to the story to keep people invested in the characters. That's fine in it's way, but I really want characters like Jean to be written well and with a good story. The X-Men franchise suffers from repetitiveness just like a lot of other franchises do.

Soap opera doesn't mitigate good drama or well written characters

[Spidercide]

Not all plot points are equal. Of course I was being reductive.

even if we were to say not all plot points were equal so Storm's distress doesn't count as much as Cyclops' the stories still clearly place a focus upon Jean's distress primarily along with Kitty's

[Spidercide]

The whole oppression allegory was part of what drew me to the X-Men as a kid, but honestly the more you think about and scrutinize it, the more it kind of falls flat. The problem is that the writers never go much further than simply declaring that mutants are stand-ins for gays, or whoever, and then writing the story along those lines without really thinking about how suitable the analogy is or what kind of twists could be thrown in. A more authentically sci-fi approach to the subject would be to really go in deep and explore the ramifications of the existence of a group of superhumans and the impact that would have on societal development and progress, but of course that's much more difficult to write, especially when you're trying to portray the superpowered living gods as the good guys.

I mean yeah but there has to be a suspension of disbelief. In spite of the heavy themes we do mainly read these to enjoy ourselves. Mutants only work as a metaphor for say LGBTQ+ people up to a point that point being when they literally possess potentially destructive abilities.

Also we should remember that its first and foremost a superhero story so you want them to be fundamentally heroic and also relatable. As such like all superhero fiction from the Big two you never go all the way in the realistic ramifications of super powered people like in Watchmen. E.g. realistically global warming or cancer should never be a thing because Reed Richards obviously could fix them.

[Spidercide]

Jean's real cool in her own right, just less in the conventional, soundbite sense, many of today's fans like to cite.

Not so sure she's underrated either, TBH. Not by TPTB, anyway.

Superheroes are a blanket term, used to cover eXisting genres, wherein their particular trappings are then applied. With that said, the X-Men are more the former for all intents & purposes, than any one of the latter... as most others of that nature are. The Mutant mythos has special resonance tho, that many lack and/or have lower magnitudes of.

superheores incorporate aspects of other genres but are not merely a blanket term. the costumes and powers elements the rogues gallery, that's intrinsic to superheroes.

[Spidercide]

I don't think Jason should had come back too. His story was much better worked with him dead than being the "edgy" robin

Claremont wanted Jean back and maddie to be jean reincarnate. Buut Shooter said Jean would be perm dead, so Claremont just wrote maddie as her own character. Then editors changed idea and brought Jean back, then we know the story. Claremont really love his creation Maddie, that is why he says Jean shouldn't come back; He still didn't got over it.


Yeah, saw that happening with Emma and scott. Writers even tried to sell it, but it will be always below Jott. What it helped was divide the fandom even more


Yeah, writers needed to self insert their middle age crisis on Scott and the mature approach a divorce can't happen because it let characters being get old. Quesada had Peter do a deal with a freaking demon than had him and MJ divorce.
It was pure childish story telling


I think about this with Jean. But i don' think being dead really helped her that much




It is funny that when guys like Quesada do changes that fans doesn't like, it's like "things are changing you have to accept". Brevoort really stopped one of the dumbest things that could happen, I think Gwen is better off as spider-gwen than being another love interest.





We basically only ever saw cyclops and Wolvs being the most affected by it. And only scott story was moved by what happened to Jean. And later these two fight on schism had a lot of angsty about Jean.
It is a very male POV

If you really wanted to bridge the gap with the Scott/Emma and Scott/Jean shippers why not make them in a ply relationship. After all they don’t receive much representation.

I think with Jean yeah being dead hurt more than it helped but i think for Mj in the 2010s until literally Nick spencer’s run she was better off out of the picture where no one could abuse her.

I really do not like Spider-Gwen but if the choice is that or 616 Gwen then sure okay. Frankly the best version of Gwen was in SMLMJ and the Spec cartoon.

What gets me is that did we ever see Xavier or Beast or Warren or Bobby or Storm THAT broken up about Jean being dead or explore how they must have been grieving her death since they were all close and old friends or in Xavier’s case a father figure.

[AdamFTF]

The thing I love about Jean is her empathy. You know, in this crazy comic book superhero business, we talk about characters being human because of their "flaws" or "problems" or that they have "feet of clay". Sometimes I think that we forget that some of the most human qualities people can have are the ones that make us more humane. What's funny with Jean is that this trait seems to have come to the forefront most during that much maligned period of X-Men comics: the 1990s. Her conversation with Jubilee about Illyana's death is a good example. Also how she was depicted in the Fox cartoon. In his book, Eric Lewald who ran that show said they originally didn't have Jean as part of the core cast until they realized that she was the one character that pretty much everyone else could talk to.

Maybe I'm just becoming a softie, but the older I get the more I see the value in qualities that are considered softer (and which are generally coded as female if we're being honest) like empathy, compassion, kindness, love, etc.

[spirit2011]

The thing I love about Jean is her empathy. You know, in this crazy comic book superhero business, we talk about characters being human because of their "flaws" or "problems" or that they have "feet of clay". Sometimes I think that we forget that some of the most human qualities people can have are the ones that make us more humane. What's funny with Jean is that this trait seems to have come to the forefront most during that much maligned period of X-Men comics: the 1990s. Her conversation with Jubilee about Illyana's death is a good example. Also how she was depicted in the Fox cartoon. In his book, Eric Lewald who ran that show said they originally didn't have Jean as part of the core cast until they realized that she was the one character that pretty much everyone else could talk to.

Maybe I'm just becoming a softie, but the older I get the more I see the value in qualities that are considered softer (and which are generally coded as female if we're being honest) like empathy, compassion, kindness, love, etc.

I think this is a good point, people often associate human to bad things like flaws and not about goodness;
That is so wrong, is almost like people don't belive that a human being can be a good person.
And it is even worse when writers associate goodness with boring characters as if being edgy makes a character cool

If you really wanted to bridge the gap with the Scott/Emma and Scott/Jean shippers why not make them in a ply relationship. After all they don’t receive much representation.

It made zero sense for these characters. Just hook up Scott and Emma, then Jean find someone else.

I think with Jean yeah being dead hurt more than it helped but i think for Mj in the 2010s until literally Nick spencer’s run she was better off out of the picture where no one could abuse her.

I really do not like Spider-Gwen but if the choice is that or 616 Gwen then sure okay. Frankly the best version of Gwen was in SMLMJ and the Spec cartoon.

I think that spider-gwen is one of the best things to happen for the character, it gave her some control on her narrative. Too bad Bendis shipped her with Miles.

What gets me is that did we ever see Xavier or Beast or Warren or Bobby or Storm THAT broken up about Jean being dead or explore how they must have been grieving her death since they were all close and old friends or in Xavier’s case a father figure.

yeah we never see that. Xavier was even out of earth after Jean's death if i'm not mistaken

[Hizashi]

The art of being a bad ass is many fold, overcoming tension is not the only way. Sometimes showing up and dominating can be effective. In issue #9 she frees Rachel and promises Nova to allow her to be enslaved, disses her, freaks her out and then reveals she did all that without even being there, comes up with the Magneto helmet stratagem, beats Nova again and literally ‘fixes her’ by forcing empathy into her. Her getting out of freeing Rachel wasn’t a given, it was a bait and switch on Jean’s part and she literally beat Nova through not superior force but intelligence and her empathy.

The quality (or lack thereof) of Morrison's run has it's own thread, but Nova was a palpable threat there - Red made her seem incompetent and ineffectual. Nova was so easily outsmarted and overpowered that I never felt that Jean earned any of her victories.

I think they can grow beyond Xavier in terms of not needing him to hold their hand, but his ideals and dream is something the X-Men should always embody.

Xavier's ideals, of peaceful coexistence and integration simply weren't plausible when Cyclops moved away from them - he wasn't some monster rejecting Xavier's dream out of some ideological dispute, but out of necessity.

We will see the Avengers. Likely what I think will happen is that the Avengers will be given the Iron Man in Homecoming/Hulk in Ragnarok treatment and appear as supporting characters (sans the guys who haven’t had their trilogies, e.g. BP and Carol Danvers) until the X-Men’s movie has happened and then we’ll inevitably get an AvX film...that will inevitably be superior to the comics...

I don't know what an MCU adaptation of AvX would even look like - and I'm not sure I even want to know. I think you're probably right about the handling of the Avengers if Marvel goes all in on the FF and X-Men.

See I don’t think Barry should have come back. He wasn’t the iconic Flash nor the most fleshed out or developed at all. There wasa reason he was so replaceable after all.

Yeah, I was making a point that even those who think they have good reasons for killing one character also have favorites that they don't want to be killed.

I don’t agree retirement need be laughable because if anything the insistence of never letting the characters age just slowly creatively kills them more than letting them age out in Marvel time. like if Scott is 30 and has to retire when he hits 40 that’s 30-40 more years of Cyclops story minimum within which you could build up a suitable replacement.

Ah, but there are very few people who say things like "retirement would be good, Cyclops should've retired" that would be fine with their faves retiring. Until mainstream superhero comics stop perpetually using the same characters, expecting retirement is foolhardy.

I agree marriage isn’t for every character. As much as I’d love Batman/Catwoman to happen cos I’m a shipper I dunno if a married Batman is right for that character. Same for Logan, I don’t think Logan in a stble long term relationship is right for him. Like perhaps a very casual thing with affection, sort of like those marines who have people they regularly date at different ports but aren’t serious or committed to any of them and that goes both ways.

Yeah, you get what I'm saying. They can even have long-term committed relationships, but marriage isn't for everyone.

What I mean is yeah the Messiah stuff plotwise would’ve been fine with Jean there, but I’m saying in the real world those stories existed specifically to tease Jean returning in the guise of Hope. Its like saying the Clone Saga could’ve happened similarly enough if Gwen hadn’t died. Maybe yeah but the reason that story was written was specifically bcos she was not alive.

Was it meant to tease Jean's return? I thought Hope was meant to be Jean's reincarnation or something, and not Jean herself or the means for Jean's return. The Messiah trilogy happened because of HoM and not because of Jean's death so while I understand your point about Gwen and the Clone Saga, I don't think it applies.

He doesn’t have to be dependant upon her per se, but given how he literally has major mental issues and so does she in her own way, they could serve to balance one another out.

I guess that would be fine.

I should clarify that when I say Xavier’s princicples I mean the idea that humans and mutants can co-exist peacefully, that communication is the best form of engendering that peace. I’d want Xavier to admit his mentality of humans only hting mutants because they don’t understand them to be wrong. That no they hate them because they’re different not due to a lack of understanding. But for that to not change his dream or for him or any one else to go ‘Guess Magneto was right’.

Yeah, but Scott never stopped fighting for innocent people, mutant or otherwise - how does that make him the new Magneto? I think if there's going to be an alternative to Xavier's ideology, it'll be borne from Scott or Emma or maybe Sunspot - not from the X-Men who remain unquestioning about Xavier's ideology.

[Hizashi]

If you really wanted to bridge the gap with the Scott/Emma and Scott/Jean shippers why not make them in a ply relationship. After all they don’t receive much representation.

I think with Jean yeah being dead hurt more than it helped but i think for Mj in the 2010s until literally Nick spencer’s run she was better off out of the picture where no one could abuse her.

I really do not like Spider-Gwen but if the choice is that or 616 Gwen then sure okay. Frankly the best version of Gwen was in SMLMJ and the Spec cartoon.

What gets me is that did we ever see Xavier or Beast or Warren or Bobby or Storm THAT broken up about Jean being dead or explore how they must have been grieving her death since they were all close and old friends or in Xavier’s case a father figure.

I'm not sure a poly relationship would work regardless of which characters it consists of.

Everything about Spectacular Spider-Man was, well, spectacular - and that definitely includes Gwen. Curse Sony for their part in its cancellation - I'd love to see that show return.

I think part of it is that deaths are so meaningless now that we see only one or two peoples' reactions because they'll be reversed at some point. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that Nightwing's (faked) death elicited such a small response after Forever Evil - and now that he's been shot and is an amnesiac, there's still no response or reaction from the characters that should care the most, other than Babs really. Admittedly, I don't read every Bat-book, but still.

[Spidercide]

The thing I love about Jean is her empathy. You know, in this crazy comic book superhero business, we talk about characters being human because of their "flaws" or "problems" or that they have "feet of clay". Sometimes I think that we forget that some of the most human qualities people can have are the ones that make us more humane. What's funny with Jean is that this trait seems to have come to the forefront most during that much maligned period of X-Men comics: the 1990s. Her conversation with Jubilee about Illyana's death is a good example. Also how she was depicted in the Fox cartoon. In his book, Eric Lewald who ran that show said they originally didn't have Jean as part of the core cast until they realized that she was the one character that pretty much everyone else could talk to.

Maybe I'm just becoming a softie, but the older I get the more I see the value in qualities that are considered softer (and which are generally coded as female if we're being honest) like empathy, compassion, kindness, love, etc.

You nailed my feelings exactly (sans the Illyana thing never read that story).

Jean is cool and bad ass to me BECAUSE she can be empathetic and caring.

Maybe best examples of Jean int hat role in the 1990s show was her telling Scott that she knows what Rogue thinks when she sees her and Scott kiss, when in ep 2 she mutters to Wolverine that Morph's death isn't his fault either and my #1 pick when she tries to comfort Beast after his eye patient's Dad refuses to let him operate on her because he's a mutant.

[From The Shadows]

Is she really underrated, though? Her Phoenix saga was legendary and even after being dead for so long she was still very much talked about. Her book "Red" has been received very well critiquely. And wasn't her "Icons" mini the top-selling of those at the time?

TAS, though, I'll give you.

[Spidercide]

I think this is a good point, people often associate human to bad things like flaws and not about goodness;
That is so wrong, is almost like people don't belive that a human being can be a good person.
And it is even worse when writers associate goodness with boring characters as if being edgy makes a character cool


It made zero sense for these characters. Just hook up Scott and Emma, then Jean find someone else.

I think that spider-gwen is one of the best things to happen for the character, it gave her some control on her narrative. Too bad Bendis shipped her with Miles.


yeah we never see that. Xavier was even out of earth after Jean's death if i'm not mistaken

This is also btw why as I grow older I appreciate (at least certain takes of) Superman more and more. Two moments that really define the character to me are in the post Death/Return Saga when he saves a couple of kids trapped from Doomsday's attack and tells them he'd sooner die than not save them (cos he basically did die) and in the 1978 film when he saves the cat from the tree. Its at face value a corny or cutsey scene but is actually in context a strong statement of who Superman is. He's just saved Lois and a helicopter and a plane and delivered a boat directly to a police station. He's demonstrated he has immense Godly powers but he isn't a bully or a dick about it, he's just a nice person who would save thousands from a plane crash but equally use his abilities for a small piece of kindness.

Also why I've grown more and more to appreciate Goku in Dragon Ball over the more obvious bad ass characters. He's bad ass and powerful and can be cool in a traditional sense but he's also just...a nice family guy who wants to live peacefully.

What is so ironic to me about the good=boring concept is that the most popular superhero and equally one who is regarded as very traditonally cool and bad ass is Batman. But Batman is actually on balance a pretty nice guy (outside of mischaracterizations). He tries to give money to the poor so they don't need to turn to crime. He employs most of Gotham for that same reason, he has adopted multiple children, has shown he's sensitive to children (see Epilogue from JLU) and ultimately is what he is because he doesn't want anyone else to lose a loved one like he did.

Also its so ridiculous that a human being can't be a good person. Plenty of people are on balance good people even if no one is perfect. I remember once someone saying Superman sucks because his morality is so unrealistic but like...Malala?

I don't think Scott and Emma work as a couple whilst Jean and Scott do, for reasons I outlined in my OP.

My thing with Spider-Gwen is...its basically an OC. She's Gwen Stacy in name and look only. There are other problems with her character, but I can sum them up as great idea with a great debut and a failure in follow up execution. MilesxGwen was so dumb. Put aside the icky age gap, surely it's just reductive to the character most well known for being Spider-Man's dead girlfriend and another character who is already accused of being too similar to Peter Parker to date one another. In the movie it kind of works better, but I'd rather see Spider-Gwen with Em Jay if they developed it right and Miles with...well actually Kamala but I dunno if creatively that's a good idea. But I like the idea of Miles maybe being the Spider-Man who does solidly date a super person unlike Peter who is established as not liking that.

The quality (or lack thereof) of Morrison's run has it's own thread, but Nova was a palpable threat there - Red made her seem incompetent and ineffectual. Nova was so easily outsmarted and overpowered that I never felt that Jean earned any of her victories.



Xavier's ideals, of peaceful coexistence and integration simply weren't plausible when Cyclops moved away from them - he wasn't some monster rejecting Xavier's dream out of some ideological dispute, but out of necessity.



I don't know what an MCU adaptation of AvX would even look like - and I'm not sure I even want to know. I think you're probably right about the handling of the Avengers if Marvel goes all in on the FF and X-Men.



Yeah, I was making a point that even those who think they have good reasons for killing one character also have favorites that they don't want to be killed.



Ah, but there are very few people who say things like "retirement would be good, Cyclops should've retired" that would be fine with their faves retiring. Until mainstream superhero comics stop perpetually using the same characters, expecting retirement is foolhardy.



Yeah, you get what I'm saying. They can even have long-term committed relationships, but marriage isn't for everyone.



Was it meant to tease Jean's return? I thought Hope was meant to be Jean's reincarnation or something, and not Jean herself or the means for Jean's return. The Messiah trilogy happened because of HoM and not because of Jean's death so while I understand your point about Gwen and the Clone Saga, I don't think it applies.



I guess that would be fine.



Yeah, but Scott never stopped fighting for innocent people, mutant or otherwise - how does that make him the new Magneto? I think if there's going to be an alternative to Xavier's ideology, it'll be borne from Scott or Emma or maybe Sunspot - not from the X-Men who remain unquestioning about Xavier's ideology.

I do not agree that it was necessary for Cyclops to reject Xavier’s principles. Regardless things changed after AvX so they need not continue to do that.

The MCU AvX would be basically CA: CW but bigger.

Without Thanos and the Avengers the cosmic guys like Galactus and the teams of the X-Men would be the natural replacement although we’re gonna get Dark Avengers apparently too...which I pray excludes Norman Osborn.

Well i wasn’t saying it from a fav pov. I think there are some characters who creatively should come back, not die or stay dead depeding upon the specifics of the situation.

I agree Cyclops going into retirement was not the right direction for his character. But only at THAT point in time. he was still quite a young character who’d proven he had more stories in him. timing is important. When you get to stuff like trying to pretend Peter Parker is still in his mid-20s even now which would mean everything between 1973-2019 happened in less than 10 years it becomes ridiculous and you should just let the characters gracefully age.

One solution would be to learn from the mistakes of the Ultimate Universe and launch it for distinctly different purposes. Like if you said 616 X-Men will continue forward until the characters age out at which point either we wrap things up or trade in new guys (and really Wolverine could stick around due to his abilities anyway) and concurrently we launch an AU X-Men book on the mass/digital market which starts at the very start telling new modern stories and make that the heir to the 616 stuff it could work.

It worked for a number of years with Ultimate until they screwed the pooch and even worked with X-Men Evolution and Ultimate Spider-Man, the failing of the latter mostly being that they decided to commit to Peter being 15 forever whereas if they’d let him progress new stories would’ve cropped up naturally anyway.

Plus...it’s not like the comics need to be around forever. The IPs don’t make most of their money from them.

I’m 90% sure Messiah Complex was meant to tease Jean’s return because I was a novice X-Fan who’d long since lapsed when Messiah Complex began and the buzz even to me on the peripheral was maybe Hope is Jean returned in some form.

Messiah trilogy occurring as a response to House of M doesn’t mean it wasn’t doubling up as a jean tease also. After all Maximum Carnage was intended as milking that Symbiote money, launching a new quarterly title and potentially generating spin-offs and promotion for other characters like Black Cat, Iron Fist, Deathlok, Venom and Spaw-er, Nightwatch.

I'm not sure a poly relationship would work regardless of which characters it consists of.

Everything about Spectacular Spider-Man was, well, spectacular - and that definitely includes Gwen. Curse Sony for their part in its cancellation - I'd love to see that show return.

I think part of it is that deaths are so meaningless now that we see only one or two peoples' reactions because they'll be reversed at some point. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that Nightwing's (faked) death elicited such a small response after Forever Evil - and now that he's been shot and is an amnesiac, there's still no response or reaction from the characters that should care the most, other than Babs really. Admittedly, I don't read every Bat-book, but still.

Well Spec got cancelled as a bi-product of the Disney purchase so it wasn’t really their fault. Sidenote: Between the comparatively more faithful Webb films, Spec and ITSV compared to the MCU, Ult Spidey cartoon and 2017 show Sony clearly gets Spider-Man better than Marvel.

I think the biggest example of a stupid death was Namor after Secret Wars. The writer literally said ‘why’re you so bent out of shape death in comics doesn’t matter anyway’ THEN WHY DID YOU DO IT!

[Heroine Addict]

superheores incorporate aspects of other genres but are not merely a blanket term. the costumes and powers elements the rogues gallery, that's intrinsic to superheroes.

Superheroes are not "merely" a singular genre, that classification is too limiting, and doesn't allow for the broader concepts they can encompass. Like Spielberg, I think you're doing them a disservice & shortchanging them, by trying to force them into the same category as say... westerns. Blanket term, or 'umbrella' designation if you will, is a more apt description IMO. Their potential is so far-reaching, it's practically all-absorbing, and therefore... HIGHLY adaptable, like no other before it. Jessica Jones didn't have a costume, there have been many non-superhero enhanced human(oid) stories told, and James Bond has pretty much had a rogues gallery. Those things are not necessary, unique, and/or exclusive to, the world of superheroes.