Jean Grey / Phoenix Appreciation 2024

[Celestialbodies]

And she's been like this since Nov with no progres in her story. What sucks is that even though her body is pretty much dead/dying, we know that Jean on the atral plane was coherent, active and ready to accept the Phoenix per the last issue of her series. What has that version of her been doing since then? Is she just watching Mother Righteous abuse/take advantage of her physical form, unable to do anything? Was she in fact reaching out to Scott, given him hints/hope about the future? So many unanswered questions and it feels like they killed the momentum with the way they are dragging this along

It's all just so stupid, how do you have Destiny, Hope, and Exodus alongside 250K mutants in the WHR, and the story is Jean being killed smh it almost makes me want to laugh.

Through the flames with which Jean imbued Hope she will rise… #XSpoilers
🤌🏻🔥

https://www.marvel.com/articles/comi...t-look-preview

Even including the first panel in IMX might have made a slight difference for me. But ignoring the Jean solo, Gillen has done a horrible job telling Jean's story through everyone BUT her and I do not care about some flash of Phoenix which she'll share at the very end of the story.

Im trying not to have any expectations and am no longer checking for Jean except for the last issue

Same! I'm over her being used like a Macguffin!

One aspect of the Phoenix retcon that is stupid that I never really thought about is why the heck did the Phoenix need to place Jean in a cocoon to heal? We know it has the power to resurrct so this prolonged healing of her physical body makes no sense. It cloned her body on the spot. Why not just transfer her consciousness fully into that?

Also its Jean's fault that X-Factor was kept separate from the X-men. She refused to go back to th X-men bc they were allied with Magneto. It was stupid to keep her resurrection a secret from Storm and Wolverine when she could have easily just had a conversation with them. That felt so uncharacteristic of her and she wouldnt run rom Magneto. She show up and see what he was doing in her home.

Another stupid plot point is that she is parading around NY with the rest of her team. They explained it as peopl would just assume that she was Maddie. That the case when they were X-Factor but not as mutant renegades, the X-terminators. Maddie had no powers so a redhead that looks like Jean with TK obviously was gonna raise questions but that was never addressed. Im actually surrpised they never ran into each other save one moment where they saw Magneto entering the HFC

Oh and if you cant tell, Im currently watching a video about early X-Factor

Honestly, that retcon one of the stupidest things that's ever happened to Jean and the logic behind ripping years of the best development she's ever received WITHOUT a plan on doing anything of substance with her afterwards is imo the epitome of how women characters are treated so carelessly.

The retcon was fine and made sense at the time...it's subsequent writers and petty Claremont himself who really made a nasty mess of it afterwards.

IDK, it's been over 40 years and Jean still hasn't fully recovered from that retcon it divorced her from one of the few era's where she received consistent development. Absolutely, nothing was done to replace that development but worse it forced her into a box because after the retcon she could never BE Phoenix, but it also handicapped her as a character because the most pivotal story of her existence was stripped away, and again I do not think anything has ever been done to repair the damage or mitigate it by giving her something else to fill that void.

[SturdyMike89]

Well, the real reason is that different writers at Marvel were split over bringing back Jean and what to do with Maddie (who in the original scheme of things was supposed to be Jean). But you raise valid points about X-Factor and the handling of Jean's resurrection. Scott should have talked to Magneto at the HFC. You're right about how Storm and Wolverine's reactions to Jean. IMHO it wasn't handled properly. Even though Maddie went bad, there was no real mourning for her, and I'm surprised that were no confrontation with Scott about how he treated Maddie. I always thought at the very least Kitty, Dazzler, and Storm would have given Mr. Summers the what for, or leaving his wife and child alone.

Anyway that's what I wondered about it.

--jthree

Part of that was Louise Simonson not wanting the image of Cyclops to be besmirched. So, she came up with the idea that Cyclops had been mentally coerced by Mr. Sinister into leaving Maddie for Jean. In an interview I read back in the mid-00s, Chris Claremont said that the Inferno conclusion (her issue of X-Factor #39) changed some of the story from his issue of X-Men (#243 I believe). Some were superficial (Longshot was set up to have his X-Men alone moment against Sinister only for that to be subverted immediately in X-Factor) and some had more noticeable (X-Factor having the bigger role in stopping things). Simonson invented the Sinister influence at least according to him. Not that Claremont didn't have his own issues. According to Marvel: The Untold Story, a large reason the teams were being kept from each other for so long was that Chris did not approve of their being an X-Book that he didn't write and was not a fan of bringing Jean Grey back at all.

[juan678]

Factor X Age of Apocalypse Jean Grey By Joshua Sway Swaby



https://twitter.com/JSwayArt/status/1772716231168082004

[Havok83]

Wow he actually made that costume look good

[seccruz]

Factor X Age of Apocalypse Jean Grey By Joshua Sway Swaby



https://twitter.com/JSwayArt/status/1772716231168082004

So damn good! I loved the original and this is a great update!

[Konja7]

The retcon was fine and made sense at the time...it's subsequent writers and petty Claremont himself who really made a nasty mess of it afterwards.

I don't know whether it was petty, but I think Claremont was mainly trying to make Jean part of the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix story (by putting a part of Jean's mind/soul into the clone's body).

In the first retcon, Jean was just sleeping in a cocoon, while the Phoenix/clone was living her life during these arcs.

[superjosh]

EDIT: Sorry wrong thread

[Veni]

[Havok83]

So Xmen 97 Episode 3 gave us some answers but left us with alot more questions

spoilers:

Going forward it does look like hair down will be Maddie nad ponytail will be Jean I dont like how ambiguous they left the switcheroo. We have no clue who is Jean and who is Maddie in the OG series Jean faints. I hate how this is still a staple of her. On the flipside, I do like her use of her TP and she didnt need Cerebro Inferno adaptation. Very scaled down but it worked

end of spoilers

[Tank]

So Xmen 97 Episode 3 gave us some answers but left us with alot more questions

spoilers:

Going forward it does look like hair down will be Maddie nad ponytail will be Jean I dont like how ambiguous they left the switcheroo. We have no clue who is Jean and who is Maddie in the OG series Jean faints. I hate how this is still a staple of her. On the flipside, I do like her use of her TP and she didnt need Cerebro Inferno adaptation. Very scaled down but it worked

end of spoilers

I hate that they had her faint yet again. Rather than putting an end to that trope, they’re reinforcing it. Put a huge damper on the episode for me which already felt like a Maddie episode and Jean was just a side thing.

[andreikes]

I hate that they had her faint yet again. Rather than putting an end to that trope, they’re reinforcing it. Put a huge damper on the episode for me which already felt like a Maddie episode and Jean was just a side thing.

But in this episode her ''faint'' has logic, beast explains her great power and even though she wasn't 100% she managed to fight Maddie

[PhoenixStudies]

My take (what I posted in the episode thread)

spoilers:

I thought it was a great episode. Loved how powerful and angelic Jean seemed when she descended and dispelled the hellish environment in the mansion. Maddie's transformation was so cool. And her fight with Magneto was really good. Jean's psychic confrontation with Maddie was also well done. I loved seeing Jean's origin story adapted here. The acknowledgment in the cartoon that her powers developed when she experienced Annie's death was a dream come true. Also loved Jean changing Maddie's blast into a flock of little phoenixes. Both Jean and Maddie seem to have the memories from the original series, including being Phoenix. It is interesting that they are leaving it ambiguous when the switch actually occurred. Was pleasantly surprised by the innuendos with Rogue/Magneto and Wolverine/Morph. Can't wait for the continuation of Storm's story now that she has met Forge.

end of spoilers

[Mercury]

Too exhausted from work to expound, but I loved the latest episode of X-Men 97. I'll write more later. Also:

[Hakka84]

I don't know whether it was petty, but I think Claremont was mainly trying to make Jean part of the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix story (by putting a part of Jean's mind/soul into the clone's body).

In the first retcon, Jean was just sleeping in a cocoon, while the Phoenix/clone was living her life during these arcs.

I casually just stumbled upon an article that explained that Claremont had the idea to replace the dead-Jean with her sister. I dread to even consider all the stories and the changes to all the characters that were touched by returned!Jean since the day she emerged from the cocoon, had Claremont got his way.
I can't even paint an X-Men with Jean Grey as a characters dead and forgotten since the 80s.

[nightw1ng]

Based on how they're going with using the ponytail to indicate who is Jean in X-Men '97, I'd say the switch occurred in the final season of the original X-Men TAS, when the animation studio changed due to budget cuts and Jean's new look had her hair down. I doubt they'll ever officially say, but that's my personal head canon and it also means original Jean had the Phoenix.