From the beginning (i.e. Astonishing) Jean has been a grief-fetish object throughout my experience with the canon
Right, that's absolutely an element of the canon since -- God, I think she died the first time in 1977 or something. But Morrison was undoing that (I think you actually read the only volume of Morrison in which she's not a -- if not the -- central character). She basically ran the damn school before she died, while Emma and Scott were off playing footsie; she was Xavier's handpicked successor. She was the spokesman and leader for the X Not Scott. Not Emma. Jean.
And the original Phoenix story is very much about Jean's individuality and character, and the uneasy relationship between her self and the cosmic force. I actually think you would love issues 107 & 108 of Uncanny Xmen, which have Jean using her Phoenix power to knit up the fabric of reality (and, because it's Claremont, doing this by holding hands with her best-girlfriend and her boyfriend's dad).
So as a Jean Grey fan, it frustrates me to no end that someone could read Endsong and continue to get the impression that Jean was a pretty girl that everybody liked with no actually personality or individuality, but a mirror that reflects what's going on with everybody else. It's not the same as a series like Astonishing, which has her absence as a pre-condition for everything that happens. This is a story where she's supposed to be back but she basically isn't.
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Date: 2007-06-09 05:08 am (UTC)Right, that's absolutely an element of the canon since -- God, I think she died the first time in 1977 or something. But Morrison was undoing that (I think you actually read the only volume of Morrison in which she's not a -- if not the -- central character). She basically ran the damn school before she died, while Emma and Scott were off playing footsie; she was Xavier's handpicked successor. She was the spokesman and leader for the X Not Scott. Not Emma. Jean.
And the original Phoenix story is very much about Jean's individuality and character, and the uneasy relationship between her self and the cosmic force. I actually think you would love issues 107 & 108 of Uncanny Xmen, which have Jean using her Phoenix power to knit up the fabric of reality (and, because it's Claremont, doing this by holding hands with her best-girlfriend and her boyfriend's dad).
So as a Jean Grey fan, it frustrates me to no end that someone could read Endsong and continue to get the impression that Jean was a pretty girl that everybody liked with no actually personality or individuality, but a mirror that reflects what's going on with everybody else. It's not the same as a series like Astonishing, which has her absence as a pre-condition for everything that happens. This is a story where she's supposed to be back but she basically isn't.