Jean Grey has been around since 1963 and has never previously had a solo series. \u00a0Given Marvel’s enthusiasm for X-Men spin-offs, this can be a bad sign about the character’s suitability to carry a solo title. \u00a0And we’ll get to that. \u00a0But I like this book. \u00a0Issue to issue, it’s been good fun; it works in the format of largely self-contained stories all helping to advance a bigger picture. \u00a0And despite a barrage of different artists, it’s good to look at.<\/p>\n
But at the same time there are some niggles and some odd choices – this is practically\u00a0Jean Grey Team-Up<\/em>, and sometimes that feels forced.<\/p>\n Dennis Hopeless is coming off a run on All-New X-Men\u00a0<\/em>where he was writing all the time-traveller X-Men except for Jean. \u00a0It seems a curious reassignment, since inevitably he finds himself picking up some of the same themes with Jean – the time-travel gimmick pretty much overshadows all of these characters at the moment. \u00a0Still, the emphasis is different.<\/p>\n The series starts off with Victor Ibanez on art. \u00a0I like him,\u00a0he’s a humaniser – he sells Jean as a teenager, he can do the locations. \u00a0And with the age gap such a big thing here, you\u00a0need<\/em> to do a convincing teenager. \u00a0Anyhow, an opening monologue makes a big thing about the idea that Jean’s nightmare is to become the original adult Jean. \u00a0She mostly talks about Dark Phoenix, but also refers interchangeably to other stuff about Jean’s adult life. \u00a0With hindsight, there’s a point to this; though Jean seems to focus on the obvious practical problem of the big mad firebird that’s potentially coming for her, she’s really\u00a0<\/em>rejecting what she’s heard about her older self in a broader sense. \u00a0Dark Phoenix is very much Jean’s signature story, and the “trying to avoid repeating a catastrophic fate” plot seems like one that makes sense for her – but it’s territory that’s already been done with Cyclops, so it makes sense to broaden Jean’s issue into a wider rejection of her adult self.<\/p>\n The actual\u00a0plot<\/em> of issue #1 is pretty much secondary. \u00a0It’s her fighting the Wrecking Crew, and the main point of the exercise is to introduce a subplot – which doesn’t actually come back for a while – about a voice in her head. \u00a0At the same time, she’s having visions of the Phoenix coming for her, which sets up the major plot for the series.<\/p>\n Issue #2 starts my niggles, as Jean goes to ask the older X-Men for advice about Phoenix, and kind of gets the brush-off. \u00a0This doesn’t really work. \u00a0It’s pretty obvious what Hopeless is going for – it’s the classic set-up of the teenager who’s right but isn’t taken seriously by the grown-ups. \u00a0But of all the things for the X-Men to brush off, the return of Phoenix? \u00a0It’s one of those scenes where everyone has to act dumb in order to advance the plot, and it isn’t needed because she could have just avoided the main team altogether. \u00a0What makes more sense is her decision to track down other ex-Phoenix hosts who are still around, in order to get advice from them. \u00a0So, much of issue #2 (against the background of a tacked on fight with the Reavers) is about that.<\/p>\n This is confronting head-on a problem with Phoenix, which is that there are so many former Phoenix hosts around that it’s rather diluted the concept, especially since none of them seem to have been much changed by the experience. \u00a0Hopeless tries to square that circle by claiming that they’re all horribly scarred under the surface, which is perfectly reasonable for this series, though you can argue how much it really reflects the way those characters are being written in their own titles.<\/p>\n At this point we get a detour into team-up land, as Jean spends issue #3 visiting Namor, on the logic that he might be a dick, but that’s precisely why he’ll know how to handle Phoenix. \u00a0In the end it’s largely a repeat of the same point as the previous issue, since Namor turns out to be in precisely the same condition as everyone else. \u00a0But Ibanez gets to draw some gorgeous underwater environments, and Jean and Namor get to fight a metaphorical relentlessly-pursuing sea monster. \u00a0Somewhere along the line this convinces Jean that she needs to become a warrior in order to prepare herself for the Phoenix, and to that end she… goes up a mountain to speak to the original Thor?<\/p>\n This is where we go meandering off into forced team-up territory, because there’s no particularly clear reason why Jean would go to all this trouble to learn a few homilies from Thor – who, in turn, has to stray far from his current “unworthy” character in order to engage with her at all. \u00a0Yes, it allows for some cute comedy; yes, Harvey Tolibao’s art is very nice; but there’s no actual point to it that isn’t open to the objection “wouldn’t it have be a lot easier just to go for a drink with Logan?”<\/p>\n By issue #5, Anthony Piper is on art – a bit less spectacular than previous issues, but still very nice – and Jean is trying to get guidance from Psylocke, portrayed here as a sort of hardcore meditator. \u00a0Psylocke takes Jean to different situations to try and figure out the mental state that will draw out inner weapons that might protect her against the Phoenix; somewhat unhelpfully, it turns out that mainly the fight-or-flight response will do the job. \u00a0More to the point, the subplot about the voice from issue #1 finally comes back into focus – having been largely ignored until now – and Psylocke sends Jean off to have it checked out.<\/p>\n This all brings us to issue #6 – oh, and by now Paul Davidson is on art, the fourth artist in six issues. \u00a0Honestly, he’s a bit too jagged and nineties for my tastes, and doesn’t have the subtlety of expression of some of his predecessors. \u00a0Anyway, Jean goes to visit Dr Strange, who diagnoses that the voice belongs to an unsettled spirit. \u00a0Where this is heading – and it’s the set-up for the series going forward – is that Jean is being haunted by the ghost of the\u00a0original<\/em> Jean Grey, who apparently also wants to get her ready for Phoenix. \u00a0So it’s an odd couple series in which Jean Grey is both members of the couple.<\/p>\n Except… neither of these characters is particularly recognisable as the original Jean. \u00a0Ghost Jean is written as very bitter and grumpy, both about not having lived up to her potential during her lifetime, and also about how young Jean so emphatically rejects her. \u00a0At the same time, the big idea of issue #6 seems to be that the two Jeans’ feuding is actually displaced self-loathing, and that Jean has to come to terms with the fact that the older Jean is in fact just the same person. \u00a0The idea, I guess, is that she needs to find her own identity in order to prepare herself for Phoenix.<\/p>\n I\u00a0think<\/em> where Hopeless is probably going with this is the idea that the original Jean, as a sixties female character, never really blossomed into a strong personality of her own, and that a 2017-era do-over will emerge very differently, and be ready for Phoenix in a way that the original Jean was not. \u00a0There’s something to that. \u00a0The obvious problem with a Jean Grey solo series is that the original Jean is a rather bland cipher who happens to have a classic story attached to her. \u00a0Her Silver Age creators didn’t leave much to work with: on a team with the angsty one, the brainy one, the juvenile one and the rich one, she was the girl. \u00a0Even her relationship with Scott isn’t that big a deal in the Silver Age issues; it’s Claremont who elevates her to soulmate status. \u00a0Leave the Phoenix story aside, and Jean winds up drifting over time into a role as team mom. \u00a0There are some pretty explicit references in issue #6 to the idea that Jean was allowing herself to fall into the role expected of her.<\/p>\n This isn’t to say that young Jean is exactly a better-defined character at this stage – she’s arguably more of a stock young adult hero at this point – but then her search for identity seems to be kind of the point of the series, so there’s no harm in using the time travel schtick to carry the load for now.<\/p>\n This could turn out to be an interesting series, though issue #6’s insistence that these are definitely both the same character (despite older Jean’s vastly different and more traumatic experiences) makes me wonder whether it might have a rather reductive view of identity. \u00a0Still, that’s not an issue if the real point is a metaphor about coming to terms with growing up. \u00a0More dubious calls are having older Jean seem so off-character (which seems to detract from the point), and the over-reliance on guest stars. \u00a0But despite that, and the artistic revolving door, it’s a stronger start than I was expecting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jean Grey has been around since 1963 and has never previously had a solo series. \u00a0Given Marvel’s enthusiasm for X-Men spin-offs, this can be a bad sign about the character’s suitability to carry a solo title. \u00a0And we’ll get to that. \u00a0But I like this book. \u00a0Issue to issue, it’s been good fun; it works […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3931,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions\/3931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}