{"id":9345,"date":"2023-08-24T22:25:42","date_gmt":"2023-08-24T21:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9345"},"modified":"2023-08-24T23:51:27","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T22:51:27","slug":"jean-grey-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9345","title":{"rendered":"Jean Grey #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/81dUUlp77PL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9346 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/81dUUlp77PL._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/81dUUlp77PL._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/81dUUlp77PL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><strong>JEAN GREY vol 2 #1<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>&#8220;Mind Maze&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer: Louise Simonson<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Artist: Bernard Chang<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Colour artist: Marcelo Maiolo<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Letterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Design: Jay Bowen<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Editor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JEAN GREY.<\/strong> I&#8217;d completely forgotten that there was a volume 1, to be honest. It was an ongoing series about the time-travelling Silver Age version of the character, which ran for 11 issues between 2017-2018. I dimly remember it being something to do with her touring the Marvel Universe to prepare herself to become Phoenix. Anyway, it&#8217;s nothing we need concern ourselves with.<\/p>\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0<\/strong>Symbolic image of the face of Jean Grey over the sea, I guess. Lovely image. Nice logo, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>John Romita tribute page.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 3.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Jean wonders where she is.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Jean was killed while fighting Orchis in\u00a0<em>X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.<\/em> She wasn&#8217;t wearing the costume shown here, which is her standard present-day costume from\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em>. The idea seems to be that Jean&#8217;s consciousness has somehow survived the death of her body, perhaps by decamping to the astral plane, and a disoriented Jean is experiencing visions as she tries to figure out how she got to this point. With the possible exception of this page, nothing in this issue takes place in the &#8220;real&#8221; world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I&#8217;m dying&#8230; Been there &#8230; so many times before.&#8221;<\/strong> The most obvious examples are <em>X-Men<\/em> #100-101 (1976), where she&#8217;s dying from cosmic radiation exposure until Phoenix comes along to save her; and\u00a0<em>New X-Men<\/em> #150 (2004) where she&#8217;s killed by Xorn\/Magneto. Jean also has the memories of the deaths of her duplicates Phoenix in <em>X-Men<\/em> #137 (1980) and Madelyne Pryor in <em>X-Factor<\/em> #38 (1989). And of course she&#8217;s been resurrected during the Krakoan era too.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;But what about the others?&#8221;<\/strong> Presumably a hazy recollection of everyone else who was killed at the Gala.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 4.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Jean&#8217;s patchwork of flashbacks.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is basically recap stuff, with an intentionally incoherent selection of images at the top of the page and something more coherent along the bottom. Jean appears in the background of all the bottom panels, although in the last one she&#8217;s obscured by a caption. Those five panels show:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jean&#8217;s telepathy emerging when her friend Annie Richardson is hit by a car, originally from a flashback in <em>Bizarre Adventures<\/em> #27 (1981) (her origin story).<\/li>\n<li>Professor X starting to train Jean, from the same story.<\/li>\n<li>The original five X-Men from the early Silver Age (though late enough that Iceman is made of ice rather than snow).<\/li>\n<li>A slightly odd panel which the narration suggests is Marvel Girl being visited by the Beast so that he can bring the Silver Age X-Men to the future. That happened in <em>All-New X-Men<\/em> #1 (2012), which in turn sees Beast interrupting the events of\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #8 (1964). However, Jean is shown here wearing the green outfit and pointy yellow mask which didn&#8217;t come along until\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #39 (1967). And Beast has shorter hair than he would at that point. Moreover, Beast is shown wearing the correct costume in one of the panels higher up the page, so artist Bernard Chang definitely has the correct references available. So either this is meant to be showing something else or there&#8217;s some reason why the art is off.<\/li>\n<li>Kid Cable arranges for the X-Men to finally go home to their own time, in the miniseries\u00a0<em>Extermination<\/em> (2018).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In terms of the panels at the top of the page, we&#8217;ll take these from left to right:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Starting top left, the Avengers haul Jean&#8217;s suspended animation capsule out of Jamaica Bay in\u00a0<em>Avengers<\/em> #263 (1985). Since Jean is supposed to be\u00a0<em>in<\/em> the capsule, the woman in the foreground in the diving gear is probably meant to be the Wasp.<\/li>\n<li>Below that, Cyclops, Storm, and Madelyne Pryor with baby Nathan Summers in\u00a0<em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #201 (1986) &#8211; Jean apparently can&#8217;t separate her memories from Phoenix&#8217;s and Madelyne&#8217;s.<\/li>\n<li>Below that, a generic shot of Dark Phoenix.<\/li>\n<li>Below that, a generic shot of Madelyne Pryor as the Goblin Queen.<\/li>\n<li>Another image of Jean and Annie Richardson.<\/li>\n<li>Below it and to the right, another image of Jean&#8217;s early training with Xavier.<\/li>\n<li>At the top of the page, Jean with the original X-Factor.<\/li>\n<li>To the right of that, and in the larger image below, just all purpose images of Jean.<\/li>\n<li>In the centre, Jean as one of the Silver Age X-Men.<\/li>\n<li>Below that, what seems to be Professor X using Cerebro in extreme close-up.<\/li>\n<li>The same odd panel of Beast with Jean in the wrong costume.<\/li>\n<li>Above that, Beast and the Silver Age X-Men arrive in the present day.<\/li>\n<li>Another little head shot of Jean.<\/li>\n<li>Above it, more of Cable from\u00a0<em>Extermination.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Below it, Beast visiting the Silver Age X-Men in\u00a0<em>All-New X-Men<\/em> #1.<\/li>\n<li>Top right, Emma Frost, who apparently made a real impact on Jean in order to merit inclusion here.<\/li>\n<li>Below her, Dark Phoenix.<\/li>\n<li>And below that, the space shuttle flight that leads to Jean becoming Phoenix (or being replaced by Phoenix, depending on how you want to read it).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PAGE 5-6. <\/strong><em>Jean enters the Silver Age timeline and alters history.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Or at least, that&#8217;s what she imagines herself doing. <em>Extermination<\/em> was supposed to end with the timeline being preserved by the Silver Age X-Men being reset to their Silver Age status quos and having their memories of their time in the present suppressed until they reached the present day. In this &#8220;timeline&#8221;, Jean decides not to bother with all that, so that the Silver Age X-Men can set about changing the world now, with the benefit of their greater experience and their knowledge of what&#8217;s going to come.<\/p>\n<p>A running theme of\u00a0<em>All-New X-Men\u00a0<\/em>was teenage Jean being very cavalier about using her new telepathic powers to alter people&#8217;s minds and get them to do what she wanted; evidently in this version she&#8217;s reverting to that temptation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 7.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits. Jean Grey is the only character in the dramatis personae, with six seperate images all showing her.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 8-12.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The Silver Age X-Men fight Magneto.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t based on anything in particular from the Silver Age. If you want to be nitpicky, if the Silver Age X-Men are returning to the past circa\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #8, Magneto ought to be with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants at this point (they don&#8217;t disband until issue #11) &#8211; but again, if this is all a vision, none of that really matters.<\/p>\n<p>Jean dismisses this version of Magneto as a terrorist fanatic whose threats are counterproductive. However, he&#8217;s got a bit more nuance to him than the actual Silver Age Magneto, whose portrayal hovered between mutant supremacist and a world-conqueror paying lip service to the idea of mutantkind. This Magneto is making an argument that the mutants need to &#8220;prepare a safe haven&#8221; for the larger mutant population to come, which sounds a lot like Krakoa. The Silver Age Jean (even with the benefit of time travel) wouldn&#8217;t know about Krakoa, but it&#8217;s still interesting that Jean responds to this proto-Krakoan agenda by claiming that he&#8217;ll just make matters worse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 13-14.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The X-Men split from Xavier.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Trish Tilby<\/strong> was Beast&#8217;s journalist love interest for much of the late 80s and 1990s.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Trask\u00a0<\/strong>is Bolivar Trask, creator of the Sentinels. Scott appears to be watching Xavier&#8217;s televised debate with him from\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #14 (1965), or at least a version of it &#8211; Trask plainly doesn&#8217;t unveil the Sentinels in this version, because he does that separately in a few pages.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Juggernaut<\/strong> debuted in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #12-13 (1965), so if the timeline broadly matches the actual Silver Age, this version of the X-Men still showed up to help Professor X defeat him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 15-18. <\/strong><em>Jean covers up a mutant explosion.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Jean&#8217;s whole theory in this timeline is that the greater good is served by erasing or covering up everything bad about mutants. Inevitably this goes wrong in the end, creating a slightly different trigger for Trask to unleash the Sentinels.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 19-20.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The X-Men start rounding up new mutants in advance.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Essentially, Kitty Pryde and the co-leaders of the New Mutants, Cannonball and Mirage. Cannonball&#8217;s mineshaft collapse comes from his debut in\u00a0<em>Marvel Graphic Novel<\/em> #4 (1982) and is <em>way<\/em> out of the Silver Age time frame. Another sign of the world starting to become incoherent is that Kitty is much\u00a0<em>younger<\/em> here than the New Mutants.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 21-22.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The X-Men visit Professor X.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Obviously, this is now starting to get rather more symbolic. Magneto has become a second Professor X, complete with his own wheelchair, and is taking the moral high ground with her &#8211; which she interprets as an argument that killing people is better than removing their autonomy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 23-24.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Jean zaps Trish Tilby.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Beast claims here that Trask isn&#8217;t just rounding up other mutants, but turning them into an army &#8211; we haven&#8217;t actually seen any evidence for that, though Trask confirms it in a few pages. Of course, we&#8217;re now getting into the point where Jean keeps doubling down and making everything worse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 25-26.<\/strong> <em>Jean calls on Phoenix.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, that always goes well.<\/p>\n<p>The main panel on page 25 is a homage to the cover of\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #135 (1980), where she appears as Dark Phoenix. This version of Jean promptly uses Phoenix&#8217;s power to try and eradicate dissent on a global scale.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Project Chimera <\/strong>was a scheme to brainwash mutants into becoming living weapons, from <em>First X-Men\u00a0<\/em>(2012), in which Wolverine leads a bunch of random mutants prior to the X-Men being formed. Trask\u00a0<em>was<\/em> involved with Project Chimera, but again, it&#8217;s way out of the seeming timeline here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 27-32.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Jean fights the X-Men.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And ultimately concedes that this timeline idea didn&#8217;t work at all &#8211; so decides to try for another one, apparently based on the point where she became Phoenix.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 33.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads DEAD RECKONING.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. JEAN GREY vol 2 #1 &#8220;Mind Maze&#8221; Writer: Louise Simonson Artist: Bernard Chang Colour artist: Marcelo Maiolo Letterer: Ariana Maher Design: Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad JEAN GREY. I&#8217;d completely forgotten that there was a volume 1, to be honest. It [&hellip;]<\/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":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9345","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=9345"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9349,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9345\/revisions\/9349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}