Is Teen-Jean the True Jean Grey?

[ZNOP]

The problem with a character like Jean, a strong telepath and telekinetic is that there is very little she cannot do, realistically she can take all the x-men on her own very easily even without the phoenix, she can switch off their brain or make them sleep, she can stop their heart or just stop them breathing she can levitate them and let them fall...she can keep them at bay, protect herself and attack all in the same time...a telekinetic can do so much, the Phoenix have a cool imagery but I never thought Jean needed the extra power, I never understood why she was always refered as the weakest of the x-men before the phoenix when potentially she was the most dangerous one...Writers always had to find some weak explanations to take her out.
So maybe this young Jean grey is not the one we grow up with but it will be interesting to see her explore her powers and become very dangerous without the cosmic bird(AVX MADE THE ALL PHOENIX CONCEPT SO UNCOOL ANYWAY...)

[ChristianJCote]

The real problem with all that is that it ruins comic books, same as any extraordinarily powerful super power. They can be super cool powers but they create a lot of narrative issues, which is why Jean spent most of her career getting knocked out or fainting or wheeling Professor Xavier around when she should've been sweeping teams, not unlike how Legion is always locked away in some lab being cared for or in a coma, and Molecule Man was a shy and basically harmless guy. Chart-cracking powers tend to work best in the hands of villains, because writers are much more at ease letting a villain cut loose because the heroes need to be presented with a nigh-insurmountable threat every once in a while.

Take Exodus, for example. Exodus is psionic ridiculousness distilled down into a single character. If he were a hero he'd probably be a hermit or somesuch benevolent thing. Instead, he's designated as a villain, which is why he once got to simultaneously: fight both the Avengers and X-Men, engage Xavier is psychic combat, crush the entirety of Genosha in a massive force field, and keep a bunch of heroes suspended helplessly in stasis (including Wanda and Jean).

Psionic powers are funny business. I love a lot of characters that have them but I kind of teeter back and forth between wanting to see them really cut loose and wishing that they had completely different abilities entirely.

[Phoenetik]

The real problem with all that is that it ruins comic books, same as any extraordinarily powerful super power. They can be super cool powers but they create a lot of narrative issues, which is why Jean spent most of her career getting knocked out or fainting or wheeling Professor Xavier around when she should've been sweeping teams, not unlike how Legion is always locked away in some lab being cared for or in a coma, and Molecule Man was a shy and basically harmless guy. Chart-cracking powers tend to work best in the hands of villains, because writers are much more at ease letting a villain cut loose because the heroes need to be presented with a nigh-insurmountable threat every once in a while.

Take Exodus, for example. Exodus is psionic ridiculousness distilled down into a single character. If he were a hero he'd probably be a hermit or somesuch benevolent thing. Instead, he's designated as a villain, which is why he once got to simultaneously: fight both the Avengers and X-Men, engage Xavier is psychic combat, crush the entirety of Genosha in a massive force field, and keep a bunch of heroes suspended helplessly in stasis (including Wanda and Jean).

Psionic powers are funny business. I love a lot of characters that have them but I kind of teeter back and forth between wanting to see them really cut loose and wishing that they had completely different abilities entirely.

I think it is quite interesting that this discussion always comes up regarding psys. Do we have to discuss this when we are talking about HULK or THOR??? They are the most powerful heroes on earth and nevertheless they are part of a team and can be used perfectly every months. They are even gods by definition. Jean is a goddess herself but needs to stay dead because writers are too lazy to come up with great ideas to integrate her back into the Marvel universe. I am not talking about making Jean the most powerful creature on earth but use her like Morrison or Claremont does (and ironically they also used her as the most powerful mutant on earth!). Jean Grey as Phoenix was part of the X-Men for a long time in Claremont's classic run and it worked out pretty well. It is of course always a matter of good writing and a lot of authors today are not capable of that....But it is possible to show someone as powerful and still tell great stories. Exodus or Legion are of course bad examples because they were stylzed as the ultimate threats. But X-Men Legacy or Morrison's New X-Men are a good example that it is still possible!

A second alternative would be to let her fly into deep space and let her fight and interact with people like The Silver Surfer etc. Maybe Jean should go cosmic and leave earth entirely.......

[ChristianJCote]

I think it is quite interesting that this discussion always comes up regarding psys. Do we have to discuss this when we are talking about HULK or THOR??? They are the most powerful heroes on earth and nevertheless they are part of a team and can be used perfectly every months. They are even gods by definition. Jean is a goddess herself but needs to stay dead because writers are too lazy to come up with great ideas to integrate her back into the Marvel universe. I am not talking about making Jean the most powerful creature on earth but use her like Morrison or Claremont does (and ironically they also used her as the most powerful mutant on earth!). Jean Grey as Phoenix was part of the X-Men for a long time in Claremont's classic run and it worked out pretty well. It is of course always a matter of good writing and a lot of authors today are not capable of that....But it is possible to show someone as powerful and still tell great stories. Exodus or Legion are of course bad examples because they were stylzed as the ultimate threats. But X-Men Legacy or Morrison's New X-Men are a good example that it is still possible!

A second alternative would be to let her fly into deep space and let her fight and interact with people like The Silver Surfer etc. Maybe Jean should go cosmic and leave earth entirely.......

Well, I consider psionic characters on a completely other level, but that's my bias. If a telekinetic character were allowed to cut loose they'd just deconstruct Thor or Hulk on a molecular level and be done with it. I mean, let's be clear, Thor and Hulk are veeeeeeery impressive, but they have measurable powers where telekinesis is limited solely to imagination/concentration/fine control, and that's ignoring telepathy of course, which no telekinetic seems to go without. That said, look at all the times Hulk has been mind controlled, or in hiding, or trapped in space, or simply made into the villain of a given storyline. It's not like Marvel hasn't done the same thing to him over the years as they have other powerful characters. Thor does seem like the exception, though.

Going cosmic, however, is an awesome idea. It's one of the reasons I'm pretty excited at the prospect of Marvel developing the cosmic universe. The 'regular' and 'street-level' planes that characters have been stuck on just don't cut it and definitely lead to good characters and concepts being under-utilised.

[Xander]

I kind of hate Jean Grey...

[Phoenetik]

I kind of hate Jean Grey...

yeah right, characters can be soooooo annoying if they haven't be around for 10 years...

[Prodigy55]

Yes, it's the real Jean Grey. I made a thread about the legal/moral implications of Cyclops marriage to a 16 year old. It's very controversial ground to cover for Marvel, but X-Men are always pushing the envelope. I'd like to see more about this fucked up relationship.

[bat39]

The problem with Jean Grey, to my mind, is that to a large extent she's been defined by the Dark Phoenix Saga and subsequent stories. She's known as the X-man who became all powerful, became evil, 'died' and came back. And that seems to have become the core facet which defines this character. Its kinda like how Jason Todd has become defined as the Robin who died and came back 'bad'.

Virtually every X-men adaptation featuring Jean seems to have been building up to some version of the Phoenix Saga and her death, as though that's all the character can contribute to the mythos. The one refreshing exception is X-men Evolution, which features a teenage Jean as a character who exists outside the ambit her eventual fate as Dark Pheonix. In a sense, that's why I regard any version of a younger, teenage Jean Grey as the 'real' Jean because she isn't defined by the whole saga of her death and rebirth.