Jean Grey / Phoenix Appreciation 2021

[Harpsikord]

I think the most interesting takeaway from Weezie's comments about Madelyne are the fact that the stories that Claremont told with Maddie and Scott were identical to the stories that Claremont wanted to tell with Jean and Scott if Jean had been allowed to live depowered after the Dark Phoenix Saga. That means that all of the badass normal stuff that Madelyne became known for and that people love her for would've belonged to Jean and I think that would've been super cool; it kind of reminds me of what happened when Jean was depowered in the AoA series back during the early 2010s. I'm sure that it would have eventually ended, but still... What could've been.

And it's definitely better than what Byrne is doing with her in his fanfic.

[Portsian]

marvel Girl is innofensive, she is powerful but she will do what you ask without question.

Phoenix is a lot more powerful and her own woman. That is scary for some people.

Phoenix was a female emancipation story cut short by Byrne



This is beautiful, feels very greek Goddess



black Queen Jean was being raped, so don't use it as reference. I'm not sure what is going on but Jean love life is crap

Be careful how you use the term raped, how was she being raped there is no evidence of that at all, or are you just using emotive words to get your point across? Mind controlled, yes, manipulated, yes, raped - no.

[andreikes]

Maddie and Jean need a female writer. They are very objects of men. Strong feelings (redheaded thing).
Jean of Morisson (Even though she had that clash with Emma, part was for cyke) and Taylor's transcended that.

[Celestialbodies]

I just hope Duggan doesn't replicate those Hickman scenes where Jean is "lost" in battle.

Heh. Good luck!

I think she'll be fine, boring and inoffensive but fine I also think that some of us have a different idea on what a "good" Jean is.

I'm personally over her appearing fairly frequently but having no real barring on the story or her contributions to the stories she appears in, being able to be replicated by any other psychic on Krakoa. I've yet to see any kind of nuanced or character developing storytelling from Duggan on X-titles but I'm definitely open to being surprised!

Oof, Louise Simonson was absolutely brutal about Maddie on X-Men Monday.

"AIPT: All right, on with the question. So Connor asked if you ever feel any remorse about what was done to Maddie. He said it’s in the X-Factor issues of “Inferno” where Maddie is really painted as a malevolent person, whereas Chris in Uncanny X-Men always seemed to have a lot of sympathy for her even after she lost her soul. Was there any hesitation about so thoroughly–and literally–demonizing Scott’s abandoned wife?

Louise: No, no remorse at all. It was like, “Oh, thank God, we can demonize her and now get that out of the way.” [Laughs]

Walter: I mean, I don’t think this is revealing anything Chris hasn’t already said, but she’s really there because Jean Grey was torn away from Chris, as was Cyke to create X-Factor. Chris really created Maddie essentially as a doppelganger so he could do the Jean Grey stories he kind of wanted to do with a Jean Grey lookalike.

Louise: And give Scott a happy life.

Walter: Yes. So she was created kind of as a doppelganger in the beginning. She wouldn’t have existed, I don’t think, if Jean hadn’t been untimely ripped from Chris’s womb.

Louise: Right.

Walter: So for those who don’t know what that means, look it up. That’s a quote. I don’t know if they teach those plays anymore, but she was really a doppelganger in a sense.

Louise: I mean, the name says Pryor, you know? There was a prior existence. She suddenly appears out of nowhere essentially. Chris had had no intention at the time of turning her into a bad girl character. And you know, she’s a character that we had to do something with. And she was for me, kind of a stepping stone, which is probably why I had less sympathy for her.

I knew she was just a substitute. She was always a fake Jean. When Chris was writing her, she was a fake Jean. I never actually–I’m going to get in so much trouble–but I never…

Walter: be careful.

Louise: She never felt real to me. And I think that what we did with her was the way I always felt about her–that she was never actually a real person. She was kind of a symbol for a person."

Good lord lol!!!

I kinda wish Jean would "absorb" this new version of her too, and they went full-in with the idea of Jean and Madelyne really, officially being the same character. Kinda like how they did it back then but less "two double personalities" and more "these two lives make for the one personality I have now" (and permanently). Also bringing in a new redesign with some dark Madelyne-esque elements.

Honestly, the single stupidest decision made by Marvel or one of was making Jean and Madelyne separate character with all the time invested and a clear pathway. Why not a simple explanation, Jean died with the Phoenix on the Moon. As payment for all the destruction it caused, Jean was resurrected with no memory or powers, leading up to Inferno if Inferno was even needed, have her remember?

Even if you aren't a fan of Madelyne being Jean all along the decision they went with ruined all parties involved, Madelyne was unnecessarily demonized, Scott was Scott, and Jean came back with so much of her character and development removed 40 years later still haven't fully recovered.

[Havok83]

I think she'll be fine, boring and inoffensive but fine I also think that some of us have a different idea on what a "good" Jean is.

I'm personally over her appearing fairly frequently but having no real barring on the story or her contributions to the stories she appears in, being able to be replicated by any other psychic on Krakoa. I've yet to see any kind of nuanced or character developing storytelling from Duggan on X-titles but I'm definitely open to being surprised!



Good lord lol!!!



Honestly, the single stupidest decision made by Marvel or one of was making Jean and Madelyne separate character with all the time invested and a clear pathway. Why not a simple explanation, Jean died with the Phoenix on the Moon. As payment for all the destruction it caused, Jean was resurrected with no memory or powers, leading up to Inferno if Inferno was even needed, have her remember?

Even if you aren't a fan of Madelyne being Jean all along the decision they went with ruined all parties involved, Madelyne was unnecessarily demonized, Scott was Scott, and Jean came back with so much of her character and development removed 40 years later still haven't fully recovered.

Had Jean not returned for X-Factor, I think eventually Maddie would have been revealed to be Jean. What Marvel should have done was at the climax of the From the Ashes storyline when Mastermind's role was exposed, they should have revealed Maddie to be a woman that looked nothing like Jean. Her appearance was always a result of his powers to mess with Scott. With the truth revealed, Scott could have chosen to love and start a life with her for her and when Jean did eventually come back, they'd then have to find a way to deal with that. I dont think he should have ever married Maddie as that happened way too soon after Jean died anyway and it was clearly a rebound

[Harpsikord]

Had Jean not returned for X-Factor, I think eventually Maddie would have been revealed to be Jean. What Marvel should have done was at the climax of the From the Ashes storyline when Mastermind's role was exposed, they should have revealed Maddie to be a woman that looked nothing like Jean. Her appearance was always a result of his powers to mess with Scott. With the truth revealed, Scott could have chosen to love and start a life with her for her and when Jean did eventually come back, they'd then have to find a way to deal with that. I dont think he should have ever married Maddie as that happened way too soon after Jean died anyway and it was clearly a rebound

The problem is that as Weezie mentions here Claremont only wanted to make Maddie so that he could tell the stories he wanted to tell with a human Jean, so she basically became a stand-in. She was flawed from conception. If Claremont didn't want to continue to push that particular marriage narrative of Cyclops with a hot redhead, we probably would've gotten something entirely different; it's not like there weren't other characters that he could've rebounded with and fallen in love with - Lee Forrester was right there, for instance, or he could've gotten back with Colleen Wing or someone similar. Claremont had his options, but because he wanted to act like he was still telling the same story he created Madelyne.

The simplest explanations genuinely would have been to either not let Byrne tell his Dark Phoenix story (which I still feel was a mistake, even if it's the franchise's biggest story), to not kill her off as punishment, or to make Madelyne Jean without any of her memories.

[Devaishwarya]

As we are talking about the Jean/Maddie sitch...has it been stated that Jean still has that part of Maddie she absorbed during Inferno?
I would think that after two subsequent deaths and resurrections and Maddie herself being resurrected in Wood's X-Men by Enchantress...that wouldn't be the case.

[Havok83]

Jean's gonna be in the Women of Marvel oneshot!


ETA its a VERY quick shot at 1:10

[Conor]

Jean's gonna be in the Women of Marvel oneshot!

Looks cool! Looking forward to it.

[andreikes]

Jean's gonna be in the Women of Marvel oneshot!

Her expression is the same as ours when the writer is hickman

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

Her expression is the same as ours when the writer is hickman

Lmao too funny

[Brian B]

They should have left Jean dead after #137. That’s it. The end.

Maddie sucks. I’m with the Simonsons on this. Claremont shouldn’t have been allowed to create the Pryor character, one of the stupidest ever.

Byrne, on FF, and Layton, on X-Factor, never should have been allowed to resurrect Jean using Busiek’s idea.

The Dark Phoenix Saga, as great as it is, really is problematic in how it treats Jean, but killing her off works as a big ending.

Resurrecting her endlessly, and everybody since, has really broken the X-Men and a lot of comics. I guess at the Marvel and DC IP factories, though, that’s just how it is.

[Brian B]

Oh it is absolutely to do with the Madonna/Whore dichotomy and that ties into her powers as well.

Marvel Girl is the mild and innocent Madonna, before things got too complicated for Cyclops (and the writers that want to be him lol).

The Phoenix represents the whore, the wild side, the more unchained/unbridled, the one who revels in power and leads.

Let this girl be her broccoli people-frying self.

I wish we could like and upvote posts — this is hilarious and right on.

...Phoenix was a female emancipation story cut short by Byrne...

Boom. Wow. My mind is blown. Seriously. I have never viewed Dark Phoenix Saga this way. I guess I never connected the dots. I always got the Madonna-whore angle, but to view it as patriarchal creators bringing down a masculine judgment on female empowerment? This is a revelation to me. Call me stupid or willfully blind and ignorant. I’ve just never looked at it like this until now. I will be contemplating this for years to come.

One note, though, doesn’t Claremont share in the blame?

...black Queen Jean was being raped, so don't use it as reference. I'm not sure what is going on but Jean love life is crap

I’ll have to think about this as well. What was Jean’s agency in this and what was Jean manipulated into doing? What did she want and who harmed her here? Was it really Mastermind? Or was it Cyclops and Xavier putting her back in a box?

So much of Dark Phoenix Saga is so undeniably smutty. It really doesn’t get analyzed often enough for it’s really dark messages about female sexuality, whether it’s Jean being the good girl or Jean being the “minx,” as I think Claremont referred to her in #132.

Maybe Hickman has done Jean a solid in giving her a throuple, or is that just a queer wish fulfillment thing?

The things X-Men creators have projected onto Jean are a lot deeper, though not necessarily healthy or right, than people would normally think of in comic books.

[Daedra]

They should have left Jean dead after #137. That’s it. The end.

Maddie sucks. I’m with the Simonsons on this. Claremont shouldn’t have been allowed to create the Pryor character, one of the stupidest ever.

Byrne, on FF, and Layton, on X-Factor, never should have been allowed to resurrect Jean using Busiek’s idea.

The Dark Phoenix Saga, as great as it is, really is problematic in how it treats Jean, but killing her off works as a big ending.

Resurrecting her endlessly, and everybody since, has really broken the X-Men and a lot of comics. I guess at the Marvel and DC IP factories, though, that’s just how it is.

I’m very glad Jean is alive and I could not care less about the DPS, after the way marvel treated the concept of the phoenix this argument that Jean being back ruins some kind of sacred pillar of the x-men mythology is null an void!
Imagine keeping Jean dead to preserve the sanctity of the dps saga while scott is banging the very woman responsible for his girlfriend suicide meanwhile the PF and Jean’s legacy gets passed around to prop the latest writer’s pet character....... no thanks (the latest15 years were not worth it)

[Brian B]

I’m very glad Jean is alive and I could not care less about the DPS, after the way marvel treated the concept of the phoenix this argument that Jean being back ruins some kind of sacred pillar of the x-men mythology is null an void!
Imagine keeping Jean dead to preserve the sanctity of the dps saga while scott is banging the very woman responsible for his girlfriend suicide meanwhile the PF and Jean’s legacy gets passed around to prop the latest writer’s pet character....... no thanks (the latest15 years were not worth it)

Isn’t what you’re describing exactly what has happened? Although, Jean is responsible for her own suicide, isn’t she?