Jean Grey #1 goes to the past to wreck the future!

After the events of the Hellfire Gala, Jean’s life is in shambles. Literally. But that’s nothing new for a woman who was into resurrection before it was cool. A life rife with retcons invites plentiful possibilities for different pasts and futures—which path(s) will Jean take? Jean Grey #1 written by Louise Simonson, drawn by Bernard Chang, colored by Marcelo Maiolo, and lettered by Ariana Maher.

Anna Peppard: Jean Grey is dead, long live Jean Grey! Or maybe Jean Greys, since we’ve got many versions of her in this comic. And because properly parsing the ongoing undead adventures of this many Jean Greys (why do I want to say “Jeans Grey?”) requires a level of expertise one can only acquire by pursuing a foolhardy quest to read and rank every X-Men comic that’s ever existed, I’ve recruited none other than Adam Reck to help me pontificate. Hey Adam!

Adam Reck: Hello, Anna! It’s still summer so I don’t feel like it’s quite jeans weather yet, but I’m ready to pull on my pair and sweat a little in the fiery heat (is that the sun? the Phoenix?). You are quite right about the many Jeans Grey on display in Louise Simonson and Bernard Chang’s Jean Grey #1, but I’ll be honest, when I saw All-New Teen Jean in the preview pages, I was already looking forward to this book. You a big Jean fan, Anna? 

Anna: I know we had a convo ages ago, where we were talking about identifying with X-Men characters, and I was like, “well obviously mine are Kurt and Jean.” And I think you were surprised by that? 

Adam: I think my surprise was more because I’m not a Jean Grey fan.

Anna: *gasp* *spit take* *faints dead away*

Adam: Let me explain. I think for large parts of her continuity, she’s fairly bland and constantly used as an incredibly powerful romantic interest instead of a developed character in her own right. Writers rarely take advantage of the fact that Jean contains so many multitudes, including (at least up until Dark Web) Jean, Phoenix Jean, Maddie, Redd, and All-New Teen Jean, and are constantly tempted to retread “Dark Phoenix Saga” and keep killing and resurrecting her. And here we are again with Jean being killed at the Hellfire Gala, but from the looks of things, the trip back to life is off to an interesting start. 

Anna: Your reasons for (ostensibly) not being a Jean fan explains some of why I sometimes hesitate to be a vocal one. There are just so many Jean stories, and so many different takes on Jean within those stories. Which makes me feel like I need to do a lot of explaining about which Jean — and which version of Jean’s always implicitly and sometimes explicitly feminist struggle with the meaning, scope, and consequences of power — I’m into, how, and why. 

I’d probably be happier if I learned to stop worrying and love Jean’s messy multiplicity. And maybe this comic invites me to do that, in the very capable hands of a legendary writer who’s also the only woman who’s ever penned an ongoing comic starring Jean, at a time when Marvel employed even fewer women in creative roles than it does today. There might be no one better equipped to tackle this tumult of Jeans Grey and make me care about them, emotionally, reflexively, and feministly. 

Clearly, I’m bringing a lot of baggage to this comic. Then again, so’s Jean. So we’d better start unpacking!

What If The O5 Didn’t Forget? 

Anna: We open with a splash page close-up on Jean’s face. She’s pictured upside-down and wearing her current costume, rather than the Hellfire Gala costume she died in (or seemed to). These choices are interesting, evoking the topsy-turvy timelessness of our current tale.

But I’m more excited by this interior monologue, which is heartbreaking in all the best ways. Jean thinking that whatever went wrong is her fault, while simultaneously convinced she can fix it, feels very on-point for my preferred version of Jean, as an ultra-high-achieving perfectionist who knows her own power and worth but suffers for it because… well, because she’s an ultra-high-achieving perfectionist, who’s also sometimes one of the strongest beings in the universe, who’s also spent a lifetime surrounded by controlling men, all of which has helped convince her she has to be perfect — or else. When Jean isn’t perfect, bad things happen. Or so she thinks, but this is Jean’s mind, so what she thinks becomes true. Which is a great set-up for where the story goes.

Adam: This book is delivering something I was hoping would happen for years during the Bendis run and the drawn out slog afterwards, even though I knew Marvel would never have the guts to do it: what would happen if the time-displaced All-New X-Men returned to their Silver Age timeline and re-wrote the Marvel Universe? It was a huge opportunity that could have made for enormous changes for the publisher, and for that reason (and because comics always need to return to their stale status quo in some fashion) was an impossibility.

We also start right off with an homage to Stuart Immonen’s double page spread of Jean learning her entire future after she’s brought forward from the past. 

Anna: I’m genuinely so happy for you, Adam. Hearing you and Zack talk about the All-New era on BotA has already made me reevaluate it (or perhaps more accurately, admit that I kinda like it, which I was too afraid to do at the time). 

And that thing you’re referring to, where the multilayered nonsensical jigsaw puzzle that is Marvel comics continuity is represented as a collage of overlapping, interlocking panels referencing a bunch of other comics from a bunch of other decades? I love that it’s specifically an homage here, though of course it’s also a trope, showing up in many comics. But tropes are tropes for a reason — because they work, though some examples work better than others. 

For me, this trope works best when it’s not completely proscriptive — when it’s creative in how it assembles the collage, and in the choice and arrangement and juxtaposition of moments. I thought artist Bernard Chang did a great job with this one. There’s a somewhat linear story weaving its way through other, more disruptive fragments, evoking Jean’s quest to order and understand her past alongside the impossibility of ever truly doing so, because, as is the case with most Marvel characters but especially one who’s died and been resurrected and retconned as often as Jean — the past can’t actually make sense. As readers, we’re responsible for making the pieces fit, or not, depending. A lot like Jean when she’s thinking about who she’s been–and who she might want to be.

Adam: It’s pretty funny to me that to tell the story of Jean’s time displacement, we have to see Teen Cable, who I honestly miss very, very much. For those who might have skipped over Extermination, the O5 were sent back to the past by the young Cable who went so far as to surgically replace Angel’s wings [Ed. Note: With Mimic’s wings. Which Mimic first copied from Angel, after he returned to the past…with Mimic’s wings. My head hurts]! And while the time displaced O5’s memories were kept by their adult counterparts, Teen Jean’s job was to mindwipe the team when they successfully returned home. Weezie provides a bold counter: What if she just . . . didn’t? And the answer is not great for our heroes. 

Girl Gone Bad

Anna: The not-mindwiped O5 try to go back to their pre-time travel life but of course, they can’t. They know too much, and got too good at fighting. And Jean doesn’t want to go back; she wants to move forward, using the skills and knowledge she gained in the future to change the past in mutankind’s favor. Bobby says it won’t work. She says she’ll make it work. And for a while, she does, though the moral consequences are swift and plentiful. A situation that arose through a failure to mindwipe leads to a whole lot of mindwiping. 

Adam: Anna, do you remember when Weezie wrote X-Factor Forever? Because I started having flashbacks to that. 

Anna: I remember that it exists, but haven’t actually read it. Though I have read the entirety of Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever. I can only assume X-Factor Forever is better than that? (I’m guessing that’s a given since it doesn’t involve Kurt becoming Some Boring Dude and also trying to hook up with yet another foster sister.)

Adam: Yeesh, you definitely made a poor choice there. I’ll take four issues of Louise Simonson’s take on X-Factor: Endgame any day over whatever the hell Claremont was doing in X-Men Forever for forty. 

Anna: I will say that I am extremely here for rejigging Silver Age X-Men from Jean’s perspective, and specifically, from the perspective of a version of Jean whose true capabilities have already been unlocked. As we all know (or should), those 60s comics were often unkind to Jean, making her pose and faint a lot and turning her into an objectified spectacle to be gawked at by her all-male teammates and the presumed male readers. That sucked — this doesn’t.

Adam: This is why Bendis’s (and later Hopeless’s) Teen Jean absolutely rules. She actually has agency. She’s not going to follow the playbook, she’s going to actively try to avoid her destiny. It makes perfect sense that she would want to go back and change things. It also makes sense that things would get out of hand. Weezie gets this character and why she’s so interesting! 

Anna: I deeply appreciate Jean’s imperfection here, just as I appreciated it with Teen Jean. Some people still do this thing with female characters, where they think that in order to be “strong” or “feminist” or “inspirational” or whatever, women need to be perfect. Which sucks because perfection isn’t agency. A strong female character — like any strong character — needs flaws that extend logically from their history and, in the case of superheroes, intersect with the nature of their powers. And that’s exactly what Simonson gives us here: a version of Jean who’s doing bad shit for reasons that make sense (to her). 

Adam: And it’s fascinating because what she does become is more akin to what Xavier evolves into later in life. We see her pull a “”Fatal Attractions” (X-Men (vol 2.) #25-style, not Glenn Close-style) on Magneto in one of their first encounters. She decides mutants need to be protected at all cost and starts abducting the childhood versions of Kitty Pryde, Dani Moonstar, and Sam Guthrie. If there’s a mind that can be rewritten — she’s rewriting it. Frankly, I was surprised this issue didn’t end with her dressed as her Xorn alter ego from the Future Brotherhood. That grown up version of Teen Jean turned out to be a “psychic construct” created by Xavier’s evil son, but it would have made perfect sense! 

Anna: I love how casually you just stated that wonderfully insane bit of continuity. Ain’t comics grand?

In the interests of emphasizing my own complex imperfection, I need to admit that I also found quite a bit of joy in Jean just doing shit and not giving a shit. I like Warren, Bobby, Scott, and Hank as characters, but they can also be various versions of useless and/or the worst, especially in their Silver Age incarnations. How utterly helpless they were here, to either understand Jean or stop her, was satisfying to me in ways I won’t claim are right, but you need to understand — there are so many comics in which Hank calls a woman “toots,” and he deserves to pay for that. And I deserve to watch him pay for that.

On a more serious note — seeing Jean aggressively mindwiping people is also a good showcase of how much she usually holds back, which in turn emphasizes the heroism of those versions of Jean that try to find a different/better way.

If I’ve got quibbles with the middle section of this comic, it’s with how quickly and rather unceremoniously Jean just — I guess chooses? — to become Phoenix. The circumstances of her original transformation mattered to what the Phoenix identity represents. But I understand we’re flashing through the highlights here. This is a reflection on continuity, rather than a proper retelling of it. Which, given how many times the Phoenix story has already been told and retold, might be for the best.

Adam: That’s what happens when you can’t win the PR war, you get back with your cosmic, world-eating power on a misguided quest to save all mutants. I have a feeling we might see this as a recurring bit throughout the series. That no matter how Jean tries to avoid her fate, it always catches up with her. And while it was a little rushed, I am glad this first issue told a complete arc instead of drawing out Jean Breaking Bad for four issues. It’s nice to see some compressed storytelling every once in a while.

We mentioned the Immonen homage earlier, but I want to make sure we give credit to the incredible art that Chang is doing here. He’s a great pick for this book, and his layouts have a propulsion to them that kept me flipping the page. Everything is moving at a breakneck pace and his art pushes the reader along even in quiet moments like the confrontation at the chess table. 

Choose Your Own Adventure

Adam: While Jean Grey #1 began with Jean selecting this specific moment as the starting point of an alternate timeline, the issue ends with her selecting another. Jean pauses for reflection amidst her murderous rampage that involves shredding each of her friends to confetti and realizes this is not what she wanted, that her pride got in her way and she needs to select another starting point. Our final panel suggests that it will be her death in Jamaica Bay. As someone fascinated by the tropes of time travel stories, I love this idea of Jean (dying or otherwise) looking back through her history that we know so well as readers and choosing her own adventure on a given page. It’s almost as if Jean Grey has been enjoying some choice What If…? issues. 

Anna: That struck me too, Adam, in a slightly different way. Earlier, I talked about taking joy in re-viewing sexist comics from a female character’s perspective. But I can’t help also thinking about how we’re re-viewing sometimes-sexist stories and the often similarly sexist history of superhero comics publishing through the perspective of one of its most prominent female creators. I don’t want to overburden that point, but it does matter, to me and in general, to see women making choices — and maybe choosing differently, or at least reframing the choices. I feel a lot of kinship for Simonson’s project, and look forward to its further transformations, fiery or otherwise. 

Adam: I think it’s also worth noting that as the Krakoan era has gone on, we’ve seen less and less of the women and non-binary folks involved in its creation. It’s mainly a boys club at this point. When this book was announced, I was a little nervous because the last thing the Simonsons (Louise and her equally legendary husband Walt) were asked to make for the line was a fun two issue visit to their X-Factor era in X-Men Legends.

We’ve seen this publishing approach again and again, that a veteran creator is brought back only so they can be serving up nostalgia for older fans. (For instance, while I am enjoying Annie Nocenti’s current Storm mini, it’s another example of a classic creator playing in the 80s sandbox instead of being able to try something contemporaneous.) The fact that Weezie is back and doing something that feels new despite it being wrapped in the stories of the past is extremely refreshing. The fact that she’s doing so at exactly this moment in X-Men publishing? It feels that much bolder. 

Anna: You nailed it. I think that’s a big part of why I found myself responding to this more passionately than I expected to. I wasn’t initially planning to review this book, but it called to me, like a seductive whisper of fire and life incarnate.  

Final verdict: this comic is good. And so was writing about it with you. Same time next month?

Adam: Absolutely! If we’ve already trekked through Bendis-land, and we’re headed to Claremont-town next issue, I have to assume we’re also gonna make a pit stop in Morrison-ville before this road trip ends? Wherever we’re headed, I’m glad to be riding shotgun with you.  

Anna: Is that what the kids are calling it now? *wink*

Adam: Until next time! 

X-Traneous Thoughts

• While Jean demonstrates her combined telepathy and telekinesis throughout this issue, Beast never uses his command over sorcery and magic, a skillset that I do wish someone would remember because it was one of the only interesting things to happen to the character in the All New X-Men (vol. 2)/X-Men Blue era. 
• Amy Reeder’s cover expertly composes the flame of the Phoenix to create Jean’s signature hair without ever drawing the contour of her face. Amazing work! 
• That cover is really so freakin’ good. An instant classic.
• Beast designs Jean a very familiar HOXPOX style Cerebro helmet. The boys all get them later in the issue, but they don’t help very much against fire and life incarnate. 
• The wonderful splash page of Jean rippling with fiery power while hemmed in by the shouting, judging faces of her male teammates will stick with me for a while. Her frustration and passion is viscerally identifiable, even if the consequences are dire. 
• Lots of What If…? stories end with everybody dying and/or the end of all that is. Will Jean’s What Ifs all end as tragically?