Jean Grey / Phoenix Appreciation 2023: “A Red Dragon”

[Havok83]

Jean Grey has been treated with more respect post Claremont's second run than the entirety of her time in the 90s. Unfortunately the 90s were so definitive in shaping many's opinions of the X-men that she still gets criticized for Marvel's overall weak portrayal of her

[whitecrown]

Jean Grey has been treated with more respect post Claremont's second run than the entirety of her time in the 90s. Unfortunately the 90s were so definitive in shaping many's opinions of the X-men that she still gets criticized for Marvel's overall weak portrayal of her

Are you sure you're not mixing up the 90s with the 90s TV show? The latter is responsible for criticisms of Jean being weak or useless. She had some wonderful moments in the actual comics during that era. If there was any fault with her in the comics then, it's that she wasn't considered a "cool" character like Wolverine, Gambit, or Cable. Nor was she obvious eye candy like Psylocke.

[Havok83]

Are you sure you're not mixing up the 90s with the 90s TV show? The latter is responsible for criticisms of Jean being weak or useless. She had some wonderful moments in the actual comics during that era. If there was any fault with her in the comics then, it's that she wasn't considered a "cool" character like Wolverine, Gambit, or Cable. Nor was she obvious eye candy like Psylocke.

No I said what I said. Jean was not this beloved character that Marvel constantly pushed to the forefront as they have been since her return (heck Teen Jean's arrival). Initially she was on the Gold team, which was treated as second tier to the Blue which primarily got most of the X-men/Marvel marketing. She was kept out as a playable character in most of the videogames which limited her crossover appeal. In the books i dont feel like she was really a lead until maybe Onlslaught and I could have seen that rise during the Seagle/Kelly run, but she was written out, stunting any progress they were doing with her. There is a VAST difference in the way Marvel now views and treats her compared to the 90s. Thats not even up for debate. Jean Grey would have never been in the discussion to be the leader of the X-men nor have her own solo title (that didnt have the name X-men in the title or attached as second billing to Cyclops) until more recently. I do think she is valued and respected more and hopefully that influences newer younger fans

[Gnostic]

I have issues with Sophie's Jean but I didn't mean the characterization that she's considered an outcast or freak by others in Apocalypse because that was true to Jean when she first developed her powers. The movies were leaning on that I guess to make her and Scott both outcasts and being able to bond over an inability to control their powers, which does differ from their early dynamic in the comics. I can see why you disliked it, but that part didn't really bother me although ideally she'd be a lot closer to the version you described later on where she's more empathetic and compassionate and is known for her bond with others.

My main issue with Sophie is that she just came across as a very wooden actress. The writing wasn't great but Sophie did not have the ability to elevate it the way Famke did. The writing for Famke wasn't always super great either, especially in X3 where she's treated like an afterthought, yet Famke was a gifted enough actress that she could elevate the material and still make Jean come across like a human being who we are connected to and feel for. There's a reason Famke won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in X3.

Sophie's lack of career options since GoT also indicates to me that the public has realized she's not that great of an actress. Looking at her GoT peers, I thought Maisie Williams was a lot more natural in The New Mutants and Emilia Clarke has kept up a movie career in a way that Sophie has not.

I think it's pretty obvious that Sophie only got the role because she played a main character on GOT. Grace Caroline Currey (who plays Mary Marvel in the Shazam films) actually auditioned to play young Jean. She probably would have played the role better and she actually looks like a young version of Famke.

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

The young Jean actress shouldn't have looked like Famke either. Famke had no business being cast in the first place.

I *know* redheads are a thing in real life. They should cast someone who has that particular physical characteristic.

[Mercury]

I want to address Marvel teasing Jean's return in the years between Phoenix Endsong and the time-displacement era. It's been confirmed in interviews that, initially, Hope was supposed to be Jean resurrected. When I get a chance—at the moment, I'm swamped—I will hunt for the interviews and post them here unless someone does so first. Tip: The Wayback Machine archives are handy for this sort of research. Nevertheless, plans changed—I've heard this happened because of the idea that was generated to bring the O5 to the present—and Jean remained White Phoenix, later foretelling the return of Phoenix and Hope's emergence.

Here are some of Jean's cameos as White Phoenix leading up to AvX. In this first batch of pages, Jean saves Emma and hints at the return of Phoenix, or perhaps a fragment of Phoenix.



Later, Emma sees Hope, and the memory of what Jean told her flashes before her eyes. She then dreams about Jean/Phoenix, which leads her to suspect that Hope is really Jean.

[whitecrown]

No I said what I said. Jean was not this beloved character that Marvel constantly pushed to the forefront as they have been since her return (heck Teen Jean's arrival). Initially she was on the Gold team, which was treated as second tier to the Blue which primarily got most of the X-men/Marvel marketing. She was kept out as a playable character in most of the videogames which limited her crossover appeal. In the books i dont feel like she was really a lead until maybe Onlslaught and I could have seen that rise during the Seagle/Kelly run, but she was written out, stunting any progress they were doing with her. There is a VAST difference in the way Marvel now views and treats her compared to the 90s. Thats not even up for debate. Jean Grey would have never been in the discussion to be the leader of the X-men nor have her own solo title (that didnt have the name X-men in the title or attached as second billing to Cyclops) until more recently. I do think she is valued and respected more and hopefully that influences newer younger fans

The team thing wasn't set in stone and was Claremont's decision. The original plan was for Jean and Beast to join UXM and Colossus to join X-Factor. This is why characters from both books guest-starred in the early 90s. Marvel said no to Jean joining UXM. I think they were okay with Beast and Colossus swapping because there's promo art with Beast with the UXM team and Colossus with the rest of X-Factor plus Gambit who would also join. Later when X-Factor was decided to merge with the X-Men, there were different permutations of the team presented. In one of them, I believe Jean was with the "core" characters like Wolverine and Storm. The Jim Lee unused art of a Phoenix costume for Jean was used in one of these potential teams. Then there's an interview with Claremont where he said that he wanted to shake things up because people would expect Scott and Jean to be together and Wolverine and Storm to be together and he wanted to subvert reader expectations and split these pairs up. If Cyclops and Storm are both leaders that means they can't be on the same team and so Jean and Wolverine have to switch if you're purposefully keeping them apart from Cyclops and Storm respectively. Jean and Psylocke are both psychics so they have to be on opposite books and same with Colossus and Rogue who are both strong. Once criteria like this are set, it's easy to see how the teams were split up and why they ended up the way they did.

I agree with you about video games. She suffered there especially when it came to the fighting Capcom crossover games. I think the main thing there was that Jean's powers were psychic in nature so they weren't considered as physical as Wolverine or Rogue or Psylocke. Jean's appearances in video games picked up in the late 90s/early 2000s with the Mutant Academy series.

I don't think either X-Men or UXM had any specific leads. Every character got their turn at their own story arcs. If Jean felt like she had been "downgraded," it was more because the 70s and 80s had so heavily centered on the Phoenix mythos. The Phoenix Saga, The Dark Phoenix Saga, From the Ashes, Phoenix Rising, and Inferno all heavily focused on her and her incarnations and there's only so much you can keep those stories going. By the end of Inferno, Marvel was already making jokes out of Jean and all the convoluted Phoenix stuff with the "Jean Bomb" in UXM 245. Even then, Jean had central roles in X-Cutioner's Song and Fatal Attraction. She had a major arc with her engagement and wedding and her wedding was treated like a premiere Marvel event, with lots of tie-ins and specials, and the biggest event since Peter and MJ's wedding. Then she had the two limited series with Cyclops and a major role in AoA with Wolverine/Weapon X. Besides all her X-Men appearances, she was a frequent guest-star in Larry Hama's Wolverine, probably second only to Jubilee who was more or less a co-lead. Onslaught gave Jean a major role and that continued with Kelly and Seagle restoring the Phoenix costume. Plans were only derailed when Jean and Scott were forced out of the books but then she had a major role in The Twelve storyline as well, by which time she was a full team member again and one of the core leads.

In the 90s, very few X-Men got solo books. Wolverine, Gambit, Cable, X-Man, Bishop, all of them were the epitome of the 90s and notice how besides Wolverine, they have not aged well at all. Gambit and Cable are still popular but not nearly to the level they were in the 90s and Bishop and X-Man have fallen into obscurity. The recent 90s nostalgia might revive Bishop a bit though. Storm, Rogue, and Beast got limited solo runs but how well regarded are they today? Cyclops and Phoenix got not one, but two shared books, both instrumental in the X-Men mythos with the origins of Cable and Sinister. Yes, Phoenix shared billing but it's not like Cyclops was getting his own solo book at the same time to indicate that he was getting better treatment than her. I wouldn't call it second billing either. They were both clearly a duo with their names together on the front. Marvel editorial considered them a set pair from the moment they got married, and that you can argue may be sexist or unfair, but considering how Cyclops tends to have his name at the forefront of the X-Men, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing for Jean and she's certainly earned it as much as him. Psylocke and Archangel got a series together with Psylocke and Archangel: Crimson Dawn but notice how small their names were on the cover. You could barely see their names whereas Crimson Dawn is highlighted.

If you're upset that Jean did not get to be a leader back then, keep in mind that outside of Cyclops and Storm, nobody was being treated as leaders of the X-Men. Claremont is the one who liked to give the position around to different people like Nightcrawler in his original run or in the Revolution era, Rogue and Gambit. Jean may not have been a field team leader (the same way Xavier never was) but she was always considered one of their heads alongside Xavier, Cyclops, and Storm. There was no doubt about her seniority in the pecking order of the team. And complaints that she wasn't granted her own solo ongoing book also ring false to me because how many female characters were getting those opportunities in the 90s? Spider-Girl got her shot towards the end and she was an exception because Spider-Man and X-Men were Marvel's two biggest properties, and even then Marvel tried to keep cancelling the book. Female characters were not pushed at the forefront back then the way they are now which is why She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Spider-Woman, Black Widow, Elektra, etc. are all A-Listers today in a way they weren't in the 90s. The X-Women were the main Marvel women back then so Jean would easily have been one of the most iconic female characters of the time just as she is today. In fact, she's got more competition now than she did back then. So if Jean is valued more today, I don't think it has much to do with perceptions of her changing so much as Marvel treating female characters as a whole better.

Overall, I'd rather have a Jean alive than one who was killed off arbitrarily by one writer and editorial for 14 years. That was hardly a golden period for the character.

[whitecrown]

I think it's pretty obvious that Sophie only got the role because she played a main character on GOT. Grace Caroline Currey (who plays Mary Marvel in the Shazam films) actually auditioned to play young Jean. She probably would have played the role better and she actually looks like a young version of Famke.

Yes, I agree. Ironically enough Sophie was only in the running because she was a redhead. If they wanted a GoT actress, they should have gone for Emilia Clarke. She's a much better actress and has a bigger fanbase with a Hollywood film career to match. Her portrayal of Dany has more parallels with Jean than Sophie's Sansa ever did.

I'm not familiar with the actress you posted but I looked at her pictures and she's quite pretty and does have a resemblance to Famke.

The young Jean actress shouldn't have looked like Famke either. Famke had no business being cast in the first place.

I *know* redheads are a thing in real life. They should cast someone who has that particular physical characteristic.

The thing about natural redheads is that their hair color is very different from Jean's in the comics. Giving her a more realistic "orange color" is like how they started to give Storm gray hair instead of pure white to be more realistic and it looked awful and OOC. Jean's hair was always a very bright red. Similarly, MJ and Black Widow had very dark red hair with black highlights in the comics which is why their actresses weren't natural redheads either because that natural orange look would not look like them at all. Dark Phoenix cast a natural redhead for the young Jean and while no one would dispute she was a redhead, she looked nothing like Jean to me. Not just the shade of hair but also the freckles which a natural redhead would be likely to have but Jean does not.

[Mercury]

(Continued from my previous post.)

During AvX, Scott, hosting several Phoenix fragments, ascends to greater and greater physical and metaphysical heights, seemingly reaching the boundary between the mundane and sublime—the physical and the eternal light. He tries entering the light—the White Hot Room?—but Jean stops him and likely saves all creation by doing so.



Later, in the final chapter of AvX (AvX #12), Jean appears to him, convincing him to "let go," as Hope and Wanda struggle to stop him. One could ask, Why didn't Jean, as White Phoenix, simply reabsorb her fragments? In that unknowable way that the great and singular ineffable works, she had several potential reasons for allowing her power to flow through others, including her husband. Perhaps she wanted mutants to exhibit their free will with shards of her very being. Maybe she wanted mutants and humans to learn to work together and discover the greater power that stems from them when they are united. Then again, this could have all been a test or a rite of passage for her creation—Hope, the first mutant born after M-Day—to prove herself worthy of the mantle of messiah. And maybe, just maybe, her eternal love for Scott also compelled her to give him the chance to experience what she had experienced as a mortal and give him the opportunity to take a different path than she had at her darkest. Then again, perhaps Jean was compelled by all of those reasons and others we will never know about.



Immediately after Jean appears to Scott, Phoenix leaves him, and Wanda is convinced she and Hope are responsible for knocking that elusive primal force out of him. Hope then begins hearing Phoenix calling to her before briefly bonding with her.

[Gnostic]

Yes, I agree. Ironically enough Sophie was only in the running because she was a redhead. If they wanted a GoT actress, they should have gone for Emilia Clarke. She's a much better actress and has a bigger fanbase with a Hollywood film career to match. Her portrayal of Dany has more parallels with Jean than Sophie's Sansa ever did.

I'm not familiar with the actress you posted but I looked at her pictures and she's quite pretty and does have a resemblance to Famke.



The thing about natural redheads is that their hair color is very different from Jean's in the comics. Giving her a more realistic "orange color" is like how they started to give Storm gray hair instead of pure white to be more realistic and it looked awful and OOC. Jean's hair was always a very bright red. Similarly, MJ and Black Widow had very dark red hair with black highlights in the comics which is why their actresses weren't natural redheads either because that natural orange look would not look like them at all. Dark Phoenix cast a natural redhead for the young Jean and while no one would dispute she was a redhead, she looked nothing like Jean to me. Not just the shade of hair but also the freckles which a natural redhead would be likely to have but Jean does not.

Sophie isn't a natural redhead. She's a blonde in real life.

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

The thing about natural redheads is that their hair color is very different from Jean's in the comics. Giving her a more realistic "orange color" is like how they started to give Storm gray hair instead of pure white to be more realistic and it looked awful and OOC. Jean's hair was always a very bright red. Similarly, MJ and Black Widow had very dark red hair with black highlights in the comics which is why their actresses weren't natural redheads either because that natural orange look would not look like them at all. Dark Phoenix cast a natural redhead for the young Jean and while no one would dispute she was a redhead, she looked nothing like Jean to me. Not just the shade of hair but also the freckles which a natural redhead would be likely to have but Jean does not.

No one is going to look like a comic book fire-engine-red redhead, and dyeing hair that way looks goofy. Famke's wig/dye coloring looked dopey in X3. I am also pro-freckles, tbh. Jean's a redhead.

Not that Sophie's hair looked necessarily terrible, and I liked it more than Famke's by a lot, but I don't see the point of dyeing a random blonde woman, or worse, giving the character auburn/brown hair (like X-Men 1), when they can just cast someone who looks the part. I will absolutely support our soulless (south park reference) ginger goddess, should Disney find one lol


I just watched the stupid car scene from the DP movie again just for masochism. Why on Earth would you do a car crash story and not just do the story about Annie? Movie producers can be such goofballs.

[whitecrown]

No one is going to look like a comic book fire-engine-red redhead, and dyeing hair that way looks goofy. Famke's wig/dye coloring looked dopey in X3. I am also pro-freckles, tbh. Jean's a redhead.

Not that Sophie's hair looked necessarily terrible, and I liked it more than Famke's by a lot, but I don't see the point of dyeing a random blonde woman, or worse, giving the character auburn/brown hair (like X-Men 1), when they can just cast someone who looks the part. I will absolutely support our soulless (south park reference) ginger goddess, should Disney find one lol


I just watched the stupid car scene from the DP movie again just for masochism. Why on Earth would you do a car crash story and not just do the story about Annie? Movie producers can be such goofballs.

Mera in the Aquaman movie did have that bright red hair and it worked there. I can see why the Fox movies wouldn't go that route since they were all about being grounded in reality, hence black leather over yellow spandex, and also why Psylocke had black hair with purple highlights. But for the MCU, I'd like to see more comic book accuracy: bright red hair for Jean, blue eyes for Storm, actual purple hair for Psylocke, etc.

I'm not a fan of freckles on Jean. She's never had them before and giving them to her now is like giving Storm brown eyes, just because it's more natural and what's expected.

I think they replaced Annie with Elaine because they wanted a reason for Jean's father to reject her and that narrative makes more sense if it was someone close to John who died, not a little girl who was his daughter's friend. It has to be someone John loved more than Jean to establish why he would give Jean up. That being said, I would have preferred Annie too. I didn't like this adaptational change or that Jean was responsible for killing her mom since that clearly wasn't the case in X-Men: The Last Stand.

[whitecrown]

Sophie isn't a natural redhead. She's a blonde in real life.

Oops you're right. I was conflating Sophie with Sansa. Jean's other potential actresses weren't redheads either: Saoirse Ronan, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Hailee Steinfeld.

[Soulsword323]

I also think it is strange when folks hate on Morrison's run or his take on Jean. Morrison's Jean was very much loved and very popular at the time. Her Phoenix Disinfection plot was a huge story for her at that time. I'd argue it is her second main Phoenix story after the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Sagas. Morrison's Jean was confident, fiery, and powerful-- but she was still her deeply compassionate and empathic self as well (we saw that in her comforting Xavier, Beast, Beak, rescuing Emma, etc). She was also becoming more of a mutant leader with her press conference, being acting headmistress, and helping Xavier create the international X-Corps.

Morrison brought back and elevated her White Phoenix status, re-imagined the cocoon concept as a Phoenix Egg, and wrote her connection to the Phoenix as part of her mutation.

Sure, she died in New 150, but only to be reborn in the future to complete her disinfection of Sublime.

He wrote that she dies to return, always coming back.

And gave her the means to return, the Phoenix Egg.

It was editorial that demanded, dead is dead, and wouldn't let her return for a long time. They also wanted to push Scott and Emma. I realize some fans blame Morrison for starting that though.

Morrison implied Scott chose Jean, but Jean had to push Scott to stay with Emma to continue the school and Xavier's dream. She had to water the changed universe with her heart's blood.

I've long considered Morrison's Jean to be a perfect blend of "Jean Grey" and "Phoenix".

But I can see how some fans didn't like the Scott/Emma affair or Jean's death.

And of course Endsong was always in canon. Claremont had Rachel refer to it in Uncanny Reload. She mentions that her mom Jean returned briefly but was back to being dead. For some reason he had her say she thought Jean was severed from the Phoenix now which didn't make any sense since Jean was White Phoenix at the end of Endsong, but I think he wanted to use it with Rachel.

Had to chime in to say that I agree with everything, particularly the bolded. I always thought Morrison's Jean felt like a natural progression of Claremont's Jean.

I've said it before, but I don't like when Jean's hair is orange. I know a redhead is more orange, but I think Jean's hair looks best when it's unnaturally red. Jean's a Mutant, just say it's part of her Mutation.

I thought Jean's hair in X3 was perfect IMO. #teamfamke

[Gnostic]

I didn't like this adaptational change or that Jean was responsible for killing her mom since that clearly wasn't the case in X-Men: The Last Stand.

It was a different timeline though.