Profile: Jean Grey

Jean Grey (aka Marvel Girl)
First appearance: 1963 in The X-Men

Current status: is she dead? Is she MIA? Or is she in limbo? I don’t know.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: it would seem as though she’d been turned into the Phoenix in 1979, but that was revealed to have been an imposter in 1985 in Fantastic Four, who’d put Jean in a state of suspended animation beneath the sea, where she was found by Reed Richards and company. Unfortunately, it did not end there. As the years went by, some writers, including Chris Claremont himself, either attempted to undo this, to baffle and bewilder the audience, or to mimic, rip off, imitate and regurgitate this story ad nauseam. Then, in 2003, writer Grant Morrison seemed to have killed her off, and without any genuine emotion or feeling for Jean either.

What’s wrong with how this was done? I think that the way Marvel’s writers kept boomeranging back on the whole mishmash ad nauseum when they didn’t have to is what really made me feel repulsed by the whole idea. But then, was it ever really anything good to begin with? There have been only so many stereotypes of pretty girls committing evil crimes, etc, in literature, that if you ask me, the Phoenix saga, as it’s since come to be known as, was a botch job from the very start.

I for one certainly didn’t ask for things like that, and will never understand why those who do, would. As for Jean’s current state and whereabouts, by now, to repair all that damage done to her could take an epoch.