{"id":9459,"date":"2023-09-27T22:36:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T21:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9459"},"modified":"2023-09-27T22:36:01","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T21:36:01","slug":"jean-grey-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9459","title":{"rendered":"Jean Grey #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>JEAN GREY vol 2 #2<\/strong>
\n“Dead Reckoning”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Louise Simonson<\/strong>
\nArtist: Bernard Chang<\/strong>
\nColourist: Marcelo Maiolo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nDesign: Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Jean with a Phoenix-possessed Cyclops.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.\u00a0<\/strong>Jean recaps the original Phoenix story.<\/em><\/p>\n

For those just joining us, Jean was killed in\u00a0X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em>, and this miniseries appears to follow her disembodied mind as it replays various events from her life and imagines how things might have played out if she had made different choices. In other words, it’s a series of “What If?” stories, but presumably in one way or another, this is setting up her resurrection at the end of “Fall of X”.<\/p>\n

“Back when I was practically a child, I chose wisely…”<\/strong> Jean is referring here to the events covered in issue #1, where she returned from her foray to the future (i.e., the Brian Bendis run), and chose to erase her memory of it and let her life follow its existing course. Issue #1 played out what would have happened if she had done otherwise, and naturally it didn’t go well.<\/p>\n

The Phoenix storyline.<\/strong> For the most part, these two pages are a faithful recap of events from X-Men<\/em> #100-101 (1976), since the rest of the story only makes sense if you know how it played out the first time around. And even though this is a\u00a0very<\/em> well known storyline in X-Men continuity, it’s still nearly 50 years old by this point.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The irritating new guy.”<\/strong> At this point in continuity, Wolverine’s been around for less than ten issues (and Jean hasn’t even been with the X-Men during that time), so she barely knows him.<\/p>\n

Obviously, much of this issue is based around the long running romantic triangle with Jean, Scott and Logan. Although some retcons have brought it earlier, the original story is the point where Wolverine starts showing an interest in Jean. Cyclops and Wolverine are the only two X-Men in the original story who try to talk Jean out of piloting the shuttle (Storm gives her a farewell hug). However, Jean shows no interest whatsoever in Wolverine at this point.<\/p>\n

“With my last breath, I cried out for help.”<\/strong> This comes from the expanded re-telling of\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #100 in\u00a0Classic X-Men<\/em> #8, which shows Jean actually meeting the Phoenix Force, instead of just emerging from the bay transformed into Phoenix.<\/p>\n

“None of knew I was possessed by a symbiotic power that was drawn to passion…”<\/strong> This is a somewhat simplified version of the retcon that was used to bring Jean back after Phoenix died. More accurately, Jean’s body is left in suspended animation at the bottom of the bay, and Phoenix creates a copy of her body along with a portion of her mind and soul as a template for it. For most practical purposes, though, saying that she’s “possessed” by Phoenix gets the key point across.<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits. The recap actually focusses more on explaining how Jean died. Oddly, it says that “[m]ost recently, she was a member of the Quiet Council”, which she quit years ago in publication terms.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5. <\/strong>Jean agrees to let Wolverine pilot the shuttle instead.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the original scene, Wolverine has the same line asking Jean whether she’s “buckin’ for martyr o’ the year or something’?” She tells him to “make it quick”, and he asks her what she’s trying to prove by committing suicide. Jean then yells at him, tells him that he’s an “obnoxious little upstart”, and sends him away. In this version, Jean asks Wolverine for an alternative suggestion, and gets a reasonably sensible one: he pilots the shuttle under her direction, and he relies on his healing factor to keep him alive.<\/p>\n

Jean’s rationale in the original story is that “My telekinetic powers will screen out the harmful radiation”, which seems wildly optimistic, and indeed doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-7.\u00a0<\/strong>Jean sees Wolverine’s memories as he pilots the shuttle.<\/em><\/p>\n

This scene serves mainly to give Jean the insight into Wolverine’s history that lets her understand him and love him, which wouldn’t happen in the actual comics until she got to know him a bit better in due course.<\/p>\n

“He calls himself Logan.”<\/strong> Wolverine doesn’t reveal his real name to the X-Men until\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #139 (1980), when he takes Nightcrawler with him to visit Alpha Flight.<\/p>\n

“Logan … with claws.”<\/strong> This is Logan using his claws for the first time at the end of\u00a0Origin<\/em> #2.<\/p>\n

“Military service – in World War I and II.”<\/strong> Assorted stories have covered Wolverine’s activities in both world wars – see part 3<\/a> and part 4<\/a> of my Incomplete Wolverine posts.<\/p>\n

Weapon X.<\/strong> The other three figures in page 7 panel 1 are the Professor, Dr Cornelius and Miss Hynes, from the “Weapon X” arc in\u00a0Marvel Comics Presents<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“He came to us looking for a haven, though he didn’t know he needed one.”<\/strong> That’s broadly the classic version of why Wolverine joins the X-Men, but the 2008 “Original Sin” crossover has him being sent by Romulus to kill Professor X, and being reprogrammed by Professor X to free him of Romulus’ control. You can square this on the basis that Professor X did a better job of erasing the relevant parts of Wolverine’s memories, or conceivably on the view that Jean doesn’t know this information and thus can’t include it in her dream – except that she saw the whole of Wolverine’s life during the\u00a0Life of Wolverine Infinity Comic<\/em> in 2022. Of course, Romulus has an odd status in continuity these days, where he’s never officially been retconned out, but everyone just ignores him in stories where he logically ought to be relevant.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-9.\u00a0<\/strong>Wolverine becomes Phoenix.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the opening of\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #101, playing out with Wolverine instead of Jean. Since Jean has accidentally unlocked Wolverine’s memories of Weapon X, and Phoenix is all about passion, Wolverine is off to Canada to kill everyone involved.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.\u00a0<\/strong>Professor X sends the X-Men on holiday, but Jean insists on going after Wolverine.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the original story, Phoenix is hospitalised soon after emerging from the bay. Professor X then sends the X-Men on an “enforced vacation” to Ireland so that he and Scott can focus on Jean’s recovery. The X-Men then get to hang out with leprechauns in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #101-103. So in that version too, Scott and Jean are absent from the Irish group. (Wolverine is also missing in this version, but presumably that doesn’t make much difference to the outcome.)<\/p>\n

Jean suggests later that Professor X knows about Weapon X and about the fact that Wolverine is going to Canada to deal with them, which\u00a0would<\/em> be consistent with “Original Sin”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-12.\u00a0<\/strong>Cyclops and Jean tail Wolverine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fairly self-explanatory, except for Cyclops’s slightly odd comment that Jean “loves” Wolverine – which might be true now that she’s been closely exposed to his mind, but would be very recent if so. It’s possible that the idea here is that Jean has forged with Wolverine a version of the same psychic rapport that she and Scott had in the original Dark Phoenix Saga. It’s also possible that this is just intentionally odd – issue #1 featured a number of weird continuity oddities, apparently to make clear that these were not actual alternate timelines but scenarios playing out in Jean’s mind.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-16.\u00a0<\/strong>Wolverine destroys Weapon X.<\/em><\/p>\n

Phoenix Wolverine is basically suicidal – he sees himself and his tormentors as monsters, and wants to wipe them all out. He regains his senses somewhat on realising that Scott and Jean are there.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-21.<\/strong>\u00a0Wolverine asks to be killed.<\/em><\/p>\n

All this mirrors Phoenix asking Cyclops to kill her at the climax of the \u00a0Dark Phoenix saga in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #137. However, it’s Cyclops enthusiastically arguing that Phoenix (Wolverine) must die, and the references to his own passion attracting Phoenix presumably indicate that he’s at least partially motivated by jealousy. Cyclops is not a particularly suitable host for the Phoenix because he’s basically logical and it isn’t, but his strength of feeling for Jean makes the difference. Wolverine ultimately reclaims the Phoenix and kills himself.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.\u00a0<\/strong>Jean looks for another departure point.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, Phoenix didn’t work. So now Jean is going to try altering the ending of Inferno, which is the point where she first properly confronts her clone Madelyne Pryor. More of that next time.<\/p>\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads OBSESSION.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. JEAN GREY vol 2 #2 “Dead Reckoning” Writer: Louise Simonson Artist: Bernard Chang Colourist: Marcelo Maiolo Letterer: Ariana Maher Design: Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad COVER \/ PAGE 1: Jean with a Phoenix-possessed Cyclops. PAGES 2-3.\u00a0Jean recaps the original Phoenix story. […]<\/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-9459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459","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=9459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9461,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions\/9461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}