Jean Grey / Phoenix Appreciation 2024

[Icefanatic]

Sharing this because some Jean/Phoenix fans here have expressed interest:

Finding yourself wandering in a metaphorical desert looking for answers? Maybe you only know half the story!

Recent events in the comics have brought renewed interest to the Dragon Mythos, companion to the Phoenix Mythos, and sent the chronicling of its story roaring back to life! Now with all preexisting material revised and a MASSIVE UPDATE that includes a TON of new material!

Learn:

• How the Dragon Mythos got its start as a fan theory in the 1970's!

• How Chris Claremont's plans to use the shadow-side of Kabbalah as an adversary for Jean/Phoenix and the X-Men came to cast a defining shadow across the nascent Dragon Mythos!

• How J. M. DeMatteis began to lay the foundation for the Dragon Mythos in the 1984 Iceman mini-series(and how it would lead to then-X-editor Louise Jones(Simonson) later adding her own significant contributions to the Mythos).

• What sits opposite the White Hot Room on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and Death, why Tiferet/Tiphereth is a 'White Hot' Room and what opposing 'Power' balances the Phoenix Force!

• How Kieron Gillen drew directly from the Zohar, the textual foundation of Kabbalah, to craft the scene with 'Apocalypse' in Immortal X-Men!

• Which Sefirot and Qliphoth are now revealed as established Marvel Comics Universe realms!

• Why Iceman had to actually be erased from existence to complete his journey into becoming the Dragon!

All that and much, much more!

2024 marks not only the fortieth anniversary of the historic 1984 Iceman mini-series that started Iceman's journey to becoming the Dragon on the printed page, but it is also literally the Chinese Year of the Dragon! All the pieces are in place for a story that is decades in the making!

In the recent final issues of Immortal X-Men, the White Hot Room saw fit to warn the mutants of a coming threat that is in some way akin to Satan! Are they ready!?

Are you?!

Prepare yourselves for the arrival of the ultimate supernatural threat, as two old friends with opposing destinies see their entwined fates... at last... collide!

The Dragon Mythos

[Havok83]

You know something about the post-Krakoa era? I saw that glimpse from tomorrow's Women of Marvel comic and I didn't see Jean in it.

I posted a preview of it a while back adn she was in that preview. I just read the actual issue and she is definitely there

[The Thunderbird]

I posted a preview of it a while back adn she was in that preview. I just read the actual issue and she is definitely there

I meant Madame Web's vision of the upcoming X-Books relaunch.

[Havok83]

I meant Madame Web's vision of the upcoming X-Books relaunch.

Oh gotcha
10char

[Mercury]

X-Men 33 (2024) variant by Jean by David Nakayama:

[Icefanatic]

X-Men 33 (2024) variant by Jean by David Nakayama:

Wow, Jean is so beautiful!

I love the details, from the reflective sheen to the bunching and creasing of the materials... even the hair done in the structure of flames without actually making it on fire is fantastic.

I've seen Nakayama do the original green dress, the 90's costume and the green gala outfit... all to great effect... but I think this is the first time I've see him do Jean as Phoenix. I love it!

[Phoenixx9]

X-Men 33 (2024) variant by Jean by David Nakayama:

Beautiful Jean!

"Make 'em tremble with fear, Jean, lol!"

Red Dragon Jean soaring in 2024!

[nightw1ng]

Every time I see an artist put the Dark Phoenix emblem in the black triangle, I'm curious if they incorrectly think that's how it's supposed to look or they do it on purpose so it can be easily color swapped to the green outfit. For official art, I don't understand why it keeps happening. It's such a relatively easy thing for an editor to ask them to fix, especially since so many artists draw digitally these days.

[Mercury]

Sharing this because some Jean/Phoenix fans here have expressed interest:

Finding yourself wandering in a metaphorical desert looking for answers? Maybe you only know half the story!

Recent events in the comics have brought renewed interest to the Dragon Mythos, companion to the Phoenix Mythos, and sent the chronicling of its story roaring back to life! Now with all preexisting material revised and a MASSIVE UPDATE that includes a TON of new material!

Learn:

• How the Dragon Mythos got its start as a fan theory in the 1970's!

• How Chris Claremont's plans to use the shadow-side of Kabbalah as an adversary for Jean/Phoenix and the X-Men came to cast a defining shadow across the nascent Dragon Mythos!

• How J. M. DeMatteis began to lay the foundation for the Dragon Mythos in the 1984 Iceman mini-series(and how it would lead to then-X-editor Louise Jones(Simonson) later adding her own significant contributions to the Mythos).

• What sits opposite the White Hot Room on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and Death, why Tiferet/Tiphereth is a 'White Hot' Room and what opposing 'Power' balances the Phoenix Force!

• How Kieron Gillen drew directly from the Zohar, the textual foundation of Kabbalah, to craft the scene with 'Apocalypse' in Immortal X-Men!

• Which Sefirot and Qliphoth are now revealed as established Marvel Comics Universe realms!

• Why Iceman had to actually be erased from existence to complete his journey into becoming the Dragon!

All that and much, much more!

2024 marks not only the fortieth anniversary of the historic 1984 Iceman mini-series that started Iceman's journey to becoming the Dragon on the printed page, but it is also literally the Chinese Year of the Dragon! All the pieces are in place for a story that is decades in the making!

In the recent final issues of Immortal X-Men, the White Hot Room saw fit to warn the mutants of a coming threat that is in some way akin to Satan! Are they ready!?

Are you?!

Prepare yourselves for the arrival of the ultimate supernatural threat, as two old friends with opposing destinies see their entwined fates... at last... collide!

The Dragon Mythos

I love your enthusiasm for this myth, Icefanatic. 🥹🧊

[Icefanatic]

I love your enthusiasm for this myth, Icefanatic. 🥹🧊

Thank you, Mercury!

Your comment reminds me of when I first started putting some things together around two decades ago and went looking for more information. I eventually managed to locate and gain entry to a group called 'The Iceman Dragon Enthusiasts'. They were mostly a bunch of older fans who had started reading Marvel back in the 60's when they were kids and teens. The youngest was at least twenty years older than me, everyone kept calling me kid, lol. They'd had an actual newsletter that they sent out through the mail at some point but by the time I found them it was just emails. Most of the group had gone inactive and the rest just used the emails to stay in touch with people who had become friends. They hadn't let a new member in in a long time but I was insistent, eager both for their knowledge and to be able to discuss things with people who not only knew what I did, but knew more about it than I did.

I quickly realized at some point they had just given up hope that things would ever come to a final fruition. They had expected it in the 80's, first in the New Defenders and then in X-Factor. They had expected it over a decade later after X-Men Icons: Iceman and the first X-Men Forever mini-series. But every time Marvel seemed to be building to it, they would ultimately back off. I managed to get some of the few remaining members fired up for a bit but it didn't last.

So I started trying to 'spread the word' in some of the Iceman groups I was in. I came up with the term 'Iceman Dragonian', both because I didn't want to wrongly appropriate anything from a group that had long-predated me, and because I felt it seemed more serious and was deserving of that.

There was interest, but ultimately organized Iceman fandom which had likely peeked in the 90's was in rapid decline. The character had been stuck in repeating cyclical stories for a long time. He would discover his potential, dedicate himself to doing more, only to be reset back to where he was by a new writer. He would get into a relationship only to be broken up and paired with someone else by the next writer. Nothing really built on anything. The Dragon Mythos was just something else to be disappointed over, aggrieved over, something else Iceman had been denied.

My own enthusiasm has waxed and waned along the way. It was through the roof after the 'Frozen' arc in Astonishing X-Men, then fell off a cliff after nothing came of it. I've too-often felt like Charlie Brown running at Lucy with the football when it comes to Marvel and Iceman, and never more so than with the Dragon Mythos.

It actually feels good to be getting it all down, as much as I know of it anyway. If things do finally happen as I hope then it will be a place where fans can get some answers, and if not then at least it will give fans a chance to see some old stories though new eyes, the eyes of an Iceman Dragonian!

May we at long last get the words...

No longer am I the man you knew. I am ice. And death incarnate. Now and forever I.. am... Dragon!

[jwatson]

Not that all sagas have to be equal in length, but that’s not really true. The seeds of Jean’s transformation into Dark Phoenix lasted longer than that. We’re in the middle of a story being told, and how we get there is just as important as the ending. Listen, I want the end game as well, but I’ll let it play out. As much as I like to binge a good tv show, I know that episodes given one at a time are savored more. Because when you rush through everything at once, you will miss a lot along the way. My advice would be to take a break from reading X-men comics if the storyline isn’t moving fast enough. Then come back when the full meal is prepared. Doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it, but at least you’ll be eating and not waiting.

I have taken a break, i jumped off right before fall though judgment was when i started to pull back. Still don't know who thought mutants being deviants was a good idea. This has not been the best era for Jean imho. Also i just don't see the phoenix thing ending too well. with marvel making the unlimited version of the final host, meaning they took time to adapt it to fit the digital format i just don't see where being phoenix will take jean or how she will move forward with that moniker but beyond that it shouldn't take this long for her to do something. she died months ago, they will prob say the mini is what she went through while in her drooling state but she is still there. No real lines, no real action, she is literally a puppet on a rope and has been for quite some time. Granted i haven't been reading recently, at least nothing she appears in but from what i've read on the boards and have seen in other books it's just not a good look.

Also one issue is not a fujll meal for me. I am convinced Jean will have a one issue moment, the new writers come, and then what? months for a new status quo to come in. Last time this happened or looked like it was suppose to she lost her powers. Well last time she died for years despite apparent rebirth but in i think kelly run maybe lobdell when she was in anchorage she lost her powers.

[Mercury]

Thin writing notwithstanding (more about that at the end of this post), one thing I can say with unequivocal certainty is that the general shifts and sweeps in Jean’s overall trajectory and development during the Krakoan era ring true, appear organic, and align with her core mythos as seeded by writers like Arnold Drake (X-Men #48 and #51) and Roy Thomas (X-Men #63) and germinated by Chris Claremont and those who adhered and continue to adhere to his progressive vision of her as a supremely powerful, mysterious, and transcendent woman and metaphysical being. First, from a purely psychological perspective, her regression (i.e., her return to the Marvel Girl garb and moniker) and uncharacteristic behavior (i.e., her affair with Logan) during the early days of this era are entirely understandable if one considers what preceded both: her time displacement and resurrection, all that she learned and experienced during and after both, and her unresolved feelings regarding her singular bond with and identity as Phoenix. To be clear, I will never stop highlighting and defending the notion that acute and chronic post-traumatic stress and the strain and immensity of Jean’s transcendent destiny were at the center of the Dark Phoenix Saga and are at the center of her contradictory story, sentiments, and behavior. (Admittedly, it is her perpetual struggle against and victory over trauma and the fear of her own limitless potential and inevitable evolution that have caused me to relate to and be so enamored of her. But I digress.) Ultimately, this era has seen her grapple with those strains and stressors and gradually overcome them.

More importantly, the ways in which writers like Gerry Duggan, Louise Simonson, and Kieron Gillen have regarded and spotlighted not only her stature and sheer power but also her Phoenix mythos are extremely important. Their efforts to reconnect her story to Claremont’s vision of her form a collective response to the conscious and unconscious misogyny that saw her abused and pushed to commit suicide consequent to an editorial mandate to diminish and dissolve her position as, to quote Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Marvel’s “first female cosmic hero.” To be even more clear, Phoenix’s myth, story, and position in Marvel’s cosmology and celestial hierarchy is Jean Grey’s, and the aforementioned writers have each made that explicit in their own ways. Moreover, as I have noted before, while some find themselves taking umbrage with what Gillen is currently doing with her in the build-up to his story—a story he has said sees “Jean grow[ing] and grow[ing], and then consuming the book” (Gillen, 2024)—I find myself both thrilled and enthralled. After all, rather than having Jean pull random tricks from up her sleeves for the sake of manufactured awe and victory, he is patiently referencing and paying homage to nearly sixty years’ worth of her stories and overall development by giving us a peek at what makes her immortal and transcendent without completely demystifying her mythos. Doing so should take time and be confounding. Furthermore, I say it is about damn time someone course-corrected and underscored why she is singularly in sync with “a primal force second only to that of the Creator.”

That said, I think the main issue plaguing comic books today and causing fans’ general discontent with stories and character development is the lack of writing in them. Generally, modern comic books simply contain fewer words and, consequently, are significantly less substantial than they once were. In a sense, they have become akin to picture storybooks. This is why the benchmark story and character reference points for many fans tend to be those hearkening back to the pre-millennium when writers flooded pages with context boxes, dialogue, and thought balloons. Moreover, while some consider that form of comic book storytelling dated and verbose and favor the less is more approach, comic books captured many fans’ imaginations precisely because of their former verbosity and more is more approach. You could get lost in a single comic book issue for 30, sometimes 40 minutes, which seemed like a small lifetime, and revel in characters’ feelings and thought processes. Now, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to zip through an issue, and you are left guessing what the characters think and feel—what their conscious and unconscious motivations are—if they do not make either explicitly clear in one or two lines. Ultimately, I think this is detrimental to the medium, and I long for a writer to come along who is willing to write as much as Claremont once did in a single issue while adjusting that style to modern sensibilities.

[Mercury]

Thank you, Mercury!

Your comment reminds me of when I first started putting some things together around two decades ago and went looking for more information. I eventually managed to locate and gain entry to a group called 'The Iceman Dragon Enthusiasts'. They were mostly a bunch of older fans who had started reading Marvel back in the 60's when they were kids and teens. The youngest was at least twenty years older than me, everyone kept calling me kid, lol. They'd had an actual newsletter that they sent out through the mail at some point but by the time I found them it was just emails. Most of the group had gone inactive and the rest just used the emails to stay in touch with people who had become friends. They hadn't let a new member in in a long time but I was insistent, eager both for their knowledge and to be able to discuss things with people who not only knew what I did, but knew more about it than I did.

It's so cool (pun intended) that your research journey led you to meet people who had been fans of Bobby since his debut. Reading that "the group had gone inactive" by the time you stumbled across them and their work gave me such a strong sense of saudade. I'm glad you got to meet and learn from them.

I quickly realized at some point they had just given up hope that things would ever come to a final fruition. They had expected it in the 80's, first in the New Defenders and then in X-Factor. They had expected it over a decade later after X-Men Icons: Iceman and the first X-Men Forever mini-series. But every time Marvel seemed to be building to it, they would ultimately back off. I managed to get some of the few remaining members fired up for a bit but it didn't last.

I can relate to this frustration, although, admittedly, I haven't been continuously reading comic books as long as some of you have. I took a long break after reaching my senior year in high school and jumped back into the fold in 2020. Also, it must have felt good to see Bobby's development ramp up this era. Speaking of the similarities between Jean and Bobby, currently, they're both in transcendent states, highlighting their immortality. I love that.

So I started trying to 'spread the word' in some of the Iceman groups I was in. I came up with the term 'Iceman Dragonian', both because I didn't want to wrongly appropriate anything from a group that had long-predated me, and because I felt it seemed more serious and was deserving of that.

Your dedication to and reverence for Bobby's mythos is admirable.

There was interest, but ultimately organized Iceman fandom which had likely peeked in the 90's was in rapid decline. The character had been stuck in repeating cyclical stories for a long time. He would discover his potential, dedicate himself to doing more, only to be reset back to where he was by a new writer. He would get into a relationship only to be broken up and paired with someone else by the next writer. Nothing really built on anything. The Dragon Mythos was just something else to be disappointed over, aggrieved over, something else Iceman had been denied.

My own enthusiasm has waxed and waned along the way. It was through the roof after the 'Frozen' arc in Astonishing X-Men, then fell off a cliff after nothing came of it. I've too-often felt like Charlie Brown running at Lucy with the football when it comes to Marvel and Iceman, and never more so than with the Dragon Mythos.

Aw. This has happened to the best characters and fans. It's the nature of the medium, methinks. Frankly, characters whose relevance has waxed and waned throughout the years are simply more interesting. Their stories are somehow more relatable. Also, I think such waxing and waning is befitting of characters like Jean and Bobby, whose mythos span the mortal and metaphysical. They've lived, died, and brought themselves back to life, and the inconsistencies in their relevance and displays of power sort of parallel that trajectory.

It actually feels good to be getting it all down, as much as I know of it anyway. If things do finally happen as I hope then it will be a place where fans can get some answers, and if not then at least it will give fans a chance to see some old stories though new eyes, the eyes of an Iceman Dragonian!

Well, I'm happy that you've gained satisfaction from sharing Bobby's mythos with us. That is, or should be, the point of these discussions.

May we at long last get the words...

No longer am I the man you knew. I am ice. And death incarnate. Now and forever I.. am... Dragon!

This is too endearing for words. 🥹 Ultimately, whatever happens next with Bobby, I think Luciano Vecchio and Steve Orlando have situated him in a propitious place.

[WhiteHotRoom]

I meant Madame Web's vision of the upcoming X-Books relaunch.

I hate to be a pessimist but I've had bad feeling since the Brevoort announcement. Best case her and Scott get benched for awhile. Worst case dead again.

[Havok83]

I hate to be a pessimist but I've had bad feeling since the Brevoort announcement. Best case her and Scott get benched for awhile. Worst case dead again.

I have a feeling she may take a vacation in the WHR to help repair it and the PF OR she and Scott may go into a semi-retirement