Jean Grey

Phoenix
File:Jeangre.png Jean Grey-Summers returns as Phoenix. Art by Greg Land
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	X-Men #1 (Sep 1963)
Created by	Stan Lee Jack Kirby
In-story information
Alter ego	Jean Grey-Summers
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	X-Men Phoenix Corps The Twelve X-Factor X-Terminators Hellfire Club
Notable aliases	Redd Dayspring, Marvel Girl, Phoenix, Dark Phoenix, White Phoenix of the Crown
Abilities	Telepathy Telekinesis Phoenix Force grants: Ability to create, control, and manipulate cosmic fire, known as cosmic pyrokinesis Ability to feel the texture of things she holds, known as telekinetic sensitivity Ability to resurrect herself and anybody from death Ability to travel unaided through space and time Ability to psionically manipulate matter by molecules and any form of energy at sub-atomic level

Jean Grey-Summers (née Jean Grey) is a fictional character, a superheroine in the Marvel Comics Universe. Using the codename Phoenix, Jean Grey-Summers is best known as a member of the X-Men. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, she first appeared in X-Men #1 (September 1963).

Jean Grey-Summers is a mutant born with telepathic and telekinetic powers. Her powers first manifested when she saw her childhood friend being hit by a car. She is a caring, nurturing figure, but she also must deal with being an Omega-level mutant and the physical manifestation of the cosmic Phoenix Force. She faces death several times in the history of the series, first in the classic "Dark Phoenix Saga," but due to her connection with the Phoenix Force, she, as her namesake implies, rises from death.

Phoenix is an important figure in the lives of Professor X, who is like a father and mentor to her; Wolverine who is a very good friend and, at several points, a potential love interest; Storm, who is her best friend and a sister like figure; her husband Cyclops; her daughter Rachel Summers; her son X-Man; and stepson Cable.

The character is present for much of the X-Men's history, and she is featured in both X-Men animated series and several video games. Famke Janssen portrays Jean in the X-Men films.

In 2006, IGN.com rated Jean Grey #6 on their list of Top 25 X-Men from the past forty years.

Fictional character biography

Background

Jean Grey-Summers was born the daughter of Dr. John Grey and Elaine Grey. Before joining the X-Men, she lived with her family in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where Dr. Grey worked as a history professor at Bard College.

Jean is the only member of her immediate family with mutant abilities (her niece and nephew, Joey and Gailyn, are also revealed as mutants). Her powers first manifest at the age of ten, prematurely triggered when her best friend, Annie Richards, is hit by a car. As her friend lies dying, Jean instinctively links to her mind and senses what Annie feels when she dies; the trauma of experiencing her friend's death nearly kills Jean as well, but instead leaves her in a coma.

Jean's parents seek the expertise of specialists to rouse her out of her catatonic state, of which only Professor Charles Xavier is able to help. Xavier uses Jean to help locate mutants with his Cerebro Machine. During one fateful session on the astral plane Jean senses young Scott Summers in the orphanage and an aspect of her mind, manifesting in the form of a golden Phoenix raptor, reaches out to him. Xavier realizes that Jean's young mind cannot yet cope with her abilities, so he telepathically blocks her access to them, allowing her powers to evolve at a more natural pace. Jean develops her telekinetic powers at the age of 13. As a teenager, Jean leaves her parents to attend Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and, using the codename "Marvel Girl", becomes the first female X-Man, joining the team on its first mission against Magneto. With the X-Men, she battles the team's earliest and most enduring threats, including Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Juggernaut, and the Sentinels. She briefly leaves Xavier's school to attend Metro College. Back with the X-Men, she helps end the Factor Three conspiracy. It is also revealed that she secretly aided Professor Xavier in his preparation to thwart the Z'Nox invasion. While on a mission that took them into space Jean is observed by the Phoenix Force which is drawn to Jean's unlimited potential. Jean envisions her transformation into Phoenix but within an instant she cannot remember what she foresaw.

Romance

File:ScottJeanWedding.jpg

The wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. X-Men #30, art by Andy Kubert.

At the beginning of the series, Jean and Scott harbor a mutual crush, for a long time but neither is aware of the other's feelings (though the readers are made aware early on) and both are too shy to make a move. Jean once has a date with Angel, but insists on taking Scott along, which confuses and frustrates both men. For a while, Angel had feelings for Jean which led to some bad moments between him and Scott. When Jean leaves to pursue tertiary education at Metro College, it further widens the gap between Scott and Jean; however, Jean and Scott later date openly. At one point, Professor X seems to have some romantic feelings for her. However, he believes that she could not reciprocate because he is a paraplegic; therefore he says nothing of it, instead channeling his energies into an increasingly intimate mentor/student relationship with Jean. This forced her to keep his secrets and, at one point, transferred his own power into her.

Jean and Scott's relationship takes a brief step forward when the X-Men temporarily disband. Jean works as a swimsuit model and Scott works as a radio announcer, and the two "pretend" to date. After the X-Men re-form, there are hints that they are more intimately involved, but the relationship is not "outed" for quite some time. It seems to be one of those "everybody knows about it but nobody talks about it" relationships that commonly happen in tight-knit communities.

When Jean "dies" and becomes Phoenix, her relationship with Scott changes because she has changed. After they are separated in the Savage Land and each thinks the other is dead, Scott is unable to mourn her - and he reasons it's because he no longer loves her. Yet upon their reunion, to fight Proteus at Muir Island, the passion and relationship is rekindled. Soon after, they psychically "marry" - joining parts of their minds together in a psychic bond.

When Logan is introduced as part of the "next generation", he is immediately drawn to her, and harbors a secret love for her. Through the series, Logan generally respects Jean's choice to be with Scott, and the two share a deep friendship which, despite a powerful emotional and physical attraction, never consummates. In Grant Morrison's New X-Men stories, Jean increasingly talks to Logan about her marital problems, and Logan tries to help the married couple reconcile, even convincing Jean to return to Scott when Scott has a psychic affair with Emma Frost. Immediately following Jean's death, Scott began to date Emma and now claims to no longer love Jean, although he does 'honor and respect her', though this may itself only be a psychic suggestion left by Jean to force Scott to move on and "live".

Phoenix

File:UncannyXMen101.jpg

Uncanny X-Men #101. Art by Dave Cockrum.

The original team of X-Men is held captive by Krakoa the Living Island, so Xavier recruits a new team of X-Men to help save the others from Krakoa. Most of the team's senior members then leave, including Jean. Scott feels that he belongs only with the X-Men, and this upsets Jean. However, she remains in contact with the X-Men and becomes best friends with Ororo Munroe (Storm).

While Jean and Scott are having a romantic evening in Manhattan, she, Wolverine, and Banshee, are abducted by Sentinels. They are taken to an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. orbital platform under the command of the anti-mutant activist Steven Lang, who is plotting to unleash a new generation of Sentinels. The other X-Men, with the aid of Dr. Peter Corbeau, rescue them. During the space station's destruction, the X-Men find that their shuttle has been damaged in an earlier fight with the Sentinels. The X-Men decide that someone must stay at the controls and pilot the ship, while everyone else remains in the shuttle's heavily-shielded life cell.

Knowing no one else could survive long enough to pilot the shuttle to safety, Jean uses her telepathy on Dr. Corbeau to learn how to pilot the shuttle and her telekinesis to block the radiation as she pilots the ship back to Earth. Her telekinetic shields give way under the onslaught of the intense radiation. The strain of holding the solar radiation at bay with her powers destroys the psychic shields Xavier placed in her mind as a child, and Jean assumes her ultimate potential as a psychic, becoming an entity of pure thought. The shuttle crashes into a bay, and Jean telekinetically reforms her body and emerges from the water. Taking the code-name of Phoenix, Jean's psi-powers are now vastly stronger, and she manifests a fiery bird-shaped energy aura whenever she uses her powers to their fullest extent. Phoenix healed the M'Kraan Crystal to keep the universe from being destroyed.

In the "Dark Phoenix Saga", Mastermind a.k.a. Jason Wyngarde tampers with Jean's mind, convincing her she's a Victorian aristocrat (and the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club) and that he is her husband. She turns on her friends, but then loses control of her powers and becomes the Dark Phoenix, attacking her friends and teammates and destroying a populated solar system's star. Jean regains her sanity long enough to commit suicide rather than risk becoming the Dark Phoenix again and killing anyone else. After killing herself on the moon, Jean's soul awakens in the afterlife and is dressed in a White Phoenix costume. Death greets Jean and tries to help her understand the Phoenix before fragments of her soul are sent back to Earth.

John Byrne, penciller on Uncanny X-Men, had strong feelings against how powerful Phoenix had become and worked with writer Chris Claremont to effectively remove Phoenix from the storyline, initially by removing her powers. However, Byrne's decision to have Dark Phoenix destroy an inhabited solar system in Uncanny X-Men #135, coupled with the planned ending to the story arc, worried then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who felt that allowing Jean to live at the conclusion of the story was both morally unacceptable (given that she had essentially committed an act of genocide) and also an unsatisfying ending from a storytelling point of view. As a result, Shooter requested that Claremont and Byrne rewrite the last chapter of issue #137, to explicitly place in the story both a consequence and an ending commensurate with the enormity of Phoenix's actions.

The original ending, as well as an interview with Claremont, Byrne, Shooter, and then-Uncanny X-Men editor Louise Simonson which gives the full explanation for the changes, was published in the one-shot Phoenix: The Untold Story. In the original ending, instead of turning into Phoenix again during the X-Men's battle with the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, Jean is overpowered and captured. Lilandra has Jean subjected to what amounts to a psychic lobotomy, leaving Jean without any of her telepathic or telekinetic powers. The concept that Byrne and Claremont had in mind was that her powers ended up being more or less permanently suppressed, but with the threat always in the shadows of Phoenix returning. In the end, Jean is allowed to return to Earth with the rest of the X-Men, "cured" of the power and madness of Dark Phoenix. The one-shot also reveals the original splash page drawn for Uncanny X-Men #138, which shows Jean and Scott in a happier time, contrasted with the splash page actually published in issue #138 that shows Jean's funeral.

Marvel editor Jim Shooter, in response to a question about the return of Jean Grey, responded, "Jean Grey is dead". For a while, Marvel stuck to this, although the interview in The Untold Story shows that Byrne had already given thought to a possible way to revive Jean (although the idea as it existed then was not expanded upon in the interview).

Return

File:Ff286.png

Fantastic Four #286. Art by John Byrne.

A few years later, there was a desire to bring Jean Grey back to life, as part of the launch of the new X-Factor series. Editorially, it was decreed that this would only be allowed if Jean could be utterly absolved of the evil deeds of the Dark Phoenix Saga.

This absolution begins when the Avengers find a strange pod lying on the bottom of Jamaica bay, which they send to Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. The pod cracks open and Jean emerges, with no memories from the time she flew the shuttle until she hatched from the cocoon, but the truth of Phoenix is now revealed. While dying upon the shuttle, Jean was, in fact, approached by a cosmic psychic entity known as the Phoenix Force, which duplicated Jean's form and merged with a portion of her soul/consciousness, while Jean herself was sealed in a pod at the bottom of the bay to heal. It was the Phoenix Force which became the Dark Phoenix and committed those evil actions, hence Jean was absolved of them and went on to found X-Factor with her original X-Men teammates.

Jean is now without her telepathy, but her telekinesis is much more powerful. The former X-Men are contacted and she reunites with them.. Jean learns that the Phoenix Force merged with Rachel Summers, her daughter from an alternate timeline. Jean initially rejected Rachel because of this, as she felt Rachel's existence was a constant reminder of the dark future she came from and feared could still come to pass. During the time in which Jean is thought dead, Scott meets a pilot named Madelyne Pryor. They marry and gave birth to a son, Nathan Christopher Charles Summers. When Scott hears Jean is alive, he leaves Pryor. Shortly afterward, he joins Jean and the other founding X-Men to create X-Factor. Early in X-Factor's career, Jean first battles the mutants' nemesis, Apocalypse. Scott calls Madelyne to try to persuade her to come to New York. When he receives no answer, he assumes that his wife had left him. In truth, Mister Sinister kidnapped Madelyne and Nathan. Mr. Sinister had created Madelyne from Jean Grey's DNA, believing the offspring of Jean Grey and Scott Summers would be a genetically superior mutant who possessed incredible powers.

With her purpose fulfilled, Sinister turns Madelyne over to the Marauders. The X-Men rescue her and she joins them. Wanting to rescue her son from Mr. Sinister, Madelyne makes a pact with demons, and using her despair, the goblins make her their queen, driving her insane. Madelyne attempts to sacrifice Nathan in a ritual that will bring the demons of Limbo into the world. Madelyne dies in a climactic battle with Jean after she links their minds and wills herself to die -- hoping the link will kill Jean as well. Madelyne dies, and then the piece of Jean's consciousness that had merged with the Phoenix Force (which had migrated into Madelyne Pryor upon the death of the Phoenix) returned to Jean, granting her all the memories of both Madelyne and the Dark Phoenix. Jean now also contained a spark of the Phoenix Force but would later expel it while helping an alien world fend off a Celestial. Her telepathy had also been restored to her by the villain Psynapse.

File:-uncanny-x-men-the 334.jpg

Uncanny X-Men #334; displaying Jean Grey's costume in the 1990's.

Jean becomes a member of the X-Men's "Gold Team" led by Storm when X-Factor joins with Xavier. When her physical body dies in a Sentinel attack, Jean survives by transferring her psyche into the body of the comatose Emma Frost. While in Emma's body, Jean uses telekinesis, an ability that Emma never used. Jean is later restored to her original body with the help of Xavier and Forge. Jean is instrumental in saving Wolverine's life when Magneto rips the adamantium from his skeleton. Using her telekinesis, Jean holds Logan's body together and supports his healing factor.

With Cyclops, Jean later encounters Stryfe for the first time.

Marriage

Scott proposed to Jean but she declined because the memories of him proposing to both Madelyne and The Phoenix kept haunting her. He told her he would wait for her. Later, Jean proposes to Scott and they marry., but not before she apologized to Rachel and welcomed her into her life permanently. During their honeymoon, they are taken into the future to raise Scott's son Nathan. After returning, Jean resumes using the name Phoenix as an attempt to redeem both the entity and herself and to honor Rachel, who was presumed dead at the time, but was later revealed to have been lost somewhere in the time-stream with the premature death of Apocalypse. She also adopted the classic green and gold Phoenix costume to signify this.

File:Jeanscottemma.png

Jean enters Emma's mind interrupting Scott and Emma's telepathic affair.
Art by Phil Jimenez.

During a battle with the aforementioned villain, Scott merged with the immortal mutant. Jean and Psylocke switch powers, and Jean adds Psylocke's telepathic powers to her own telepathy, as well as her shadow astral-form, while Psylocke gets Jean's telekinesis. Jean begins to manifest fiery Phoenix raptor effects as the physical manifestation of her powers. Jean also uses the Phoenix Force to witness humanity's possible evolution into Eternity and converses with Eternity itself when Prosh recruits her to help stop the Stranger from destroying the universe. Jean learns that Cyclops is alive, and searches for him with her stepson Cable (Nathan). Jean uses her increased telepathic powers to separate Cyclops' and Apocalypse's spirits.

A combination of Jean's duties as headmistress of the Xavier Institute, her re-emerging Phoenix powers, and Scott's temporary merger with Apocalypse drives a wedge between the couple. Jean attempts to rebuild the relationship, but Scott remains distant, refusing to sleep with her. Scott turns to Emma Frost, who takes advantage of Scott's emotional problems, which leads to a telepathic extramarital affair. When confronted by Jean, Scott claims that they shared "only thoughts" and that he had done nothing wrong; Jean, however, disagrees and demands that Emma explain herself, but Emma only jeers and insults her. Enraged, Jean unleashes the Phoenix power on Emma, rifling through her memories and forcing her to confront the truth about herself.

Later, Wolverine and Phoenix are propelled towards the sun while on Asteroid M. About to die, Wolverine reluctantly stabs Phoenix so she will not have to die an agonizing death in the intense solar heat. Seconds before they collide with the sun, the Phoenix Force manifests within Jean, and she saves them both. She tells him that by killing her, he helped her release the "Phoenix Consciousness." Arriving on Earth, they battled their teammate Xorn (who had revealed himself to be Magneto but would later be retconned into an imposter), who then mortally injures Phoenix by transferring a large amount of electro-magnetic energy to her brain, inducing a "planetary-scale stroke." As Jean dies in Scott's arms, she tells him to live. It was revealed later that before she died, Jean created a holempathic matrix crystal for Rachel and imprinted it with her essence so that, no matter what happened to her physically, her soul would always be with her.

Here Comes Tomorrow

Scott Summers refusal of Emma Frost's offer to re-open Xavier's Institute creates a future timeline in which Hank McCoy re-opens the school. Under the pressure, he takes the drug "Kick", which is revealed to be the aerosol form of the villain Sublime, who possesses Hank McCoy and drives him insane. 150 years later, the near-immortal Beast tries to resurrect Phoenix and use her to destroy every life-form on Earth, except for the creatures created by Sublime itself, only to be defeated by Jean. Phoenix then carries out her disinfection and absorbs the future universe into the "White Hot Room", a higher plane of reality with other Phoenix hosts and 'home' to the conscience of the Phoenix Force. Jean wears a white variation of her Phoenix/Dark Phoenix outfit and is revealed to be "a White Phoenix of the Crown". Jean reaches back in time and tells Scott to live. Instead of refusing Emma and leaving the institute, Scott chooses to be with Emma and keep the Xavier Institute alive.

Endsong

Main article: X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong

File:Endsong1.png

Jean Grey as Dark Phoenix on the cover for X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong #1. Art by Greg Land.

In the 2005 X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong limited series, the Shi'ar resurrect the Phoenix Force prematurely in hopes of destroying it while it is relatively weak, but the Phoenix escapes to Earth where it resurrects Jean and bonds with her once more, and reveals that the Phoenix force and Jean are one. The X-Men battle the Phoenix at the North Pole until, with the help of Cerebro, Emma and the Stepford Cuckoos contact all of the X-Men around the world to focus their love into Jean. This enables Jean and the Phoenix Force to achieve a perfect balance with one another and transcend in the White Phoenix of the Crown. Jean then returns to the White Hot Room to make herself and Phoenix whole again.

Warsong

Main article: X-Men: Phoenix - Warsong

Writer Greg Pak has said that Warsong "is not another Jean Grey resurrection story. It's an essential Phoenix story, and therefore ultimately an essential tale for understanding Jean Grey." [1] Pak also stated that Warsong will lay the groundwork for the future of both Jean and the Phoenix. However the story only featured her telepathic voice talking to the telepathic sisters known as the Stepford Cuckoos as they flew over her grave and a flashback in the first issue. The rest of the series involved the Cuckoos encountering the fragment of Phoenix's consciousness that visited them at the end of the Endsong mini series. They merge with the fragment and gain Phoenix level abilities, but later must imprison the Phoenix fragment in their diamond hearts.

Phoenix Rising

In February 2008, Marvel released an image with the following text: "Stay tuned..." The image prominently features Phoenix, Cassandra Nova, the Brood and Proteus.[2] It has since been confirmed that the image is the cover to X-Men: Legacy #211, drawn by David Finch, and will precede larger events to come. However the X-Men: Legacy covers forms a series, depicting first the original team of X-Men in original costumes, then the first Incarnation of the Brotherhood of Mutants (also in original costumes), then the first incarnation of the Hellfire Club to come into contact with the X-Men (again, in their original costumes) and Sentinels in the background, before the so-called 'Phoenix Rising' cover. This suggests that the cover is in fact continuing the trend of showing major enemies of the X-Men, specifically; Proteus, Dark Phoenix, the Brood and Cassandra Nova, rather than depicting the content.

Powers and abilities

Jean Grey-Summers is an Omega-level mutant, and has been one of the physical hosts of the vastly powerful Phoenix Force who possesses god-like powers and is one of the most feared beings that ever lived. Without the Phoenix Force, Jean has potentially limitless psionic powers of telepathy, telekinesis, cosmic pyrokinesis and energy manipulation - Henry McCoy has said that, based on her massive power levels, "on the Richter scale, she'd be a 12". When bonded to the Phoenix, she is said to outclass mutants, granting her complete control over matter, energy, thought, and unlimited psionic energies. She can tap into reserved energies for future generations, denying them of existence.

When her powers first manifest, Jean is unable to cope with her telepathy, forcing Professor X to suppress her access to it altogether. Instead, he chooses to train her in the use of her telekinesis while allowing her telepathy to grow at its natural rate before reintroducing it. This is why in Jean's debut appearance as Marvel Girl, she is only capable of using her telekinetic powers. When the Professor hides to prepare for the Z'Nox, he reopens Jean's telepathic powers, which was initially explained as Xavier 'sharing' some of his telepathy with her.

Jean is considered to be one of the Earth's most powerful telepathic minds. Jean Grey, as the Phoenix, has limitless telepathic powers, able to influence any individual. Jean's telepathy allows her to communicate with others telepathically, read the thoughts of others, influence and control the minds of others, project her mind into the astral plane, and generate telepathic force blasts that can stun or kill others. Jean is one of the few telepaths skilled enough to communicate with animals (animals with high intelligence, such as dolphins,dogs, and ravens). She can also telepathically take away people's natural bodily functions and senses, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or even mutant powers. A side effect of her telepathy is that she is gifted with total recall - she remembers everything.

Her telekinetic strength and skill are both of an extremely high level, capable of grasping objects in Earth orbit and manipulating hundreds of components in mid-air in complex patterns. She can telekinetically lift several tons of matter at once, and has learned to use her power both aggressively and defensively, as blasts of focused telekinetic force or defensive shields strong enough to withstand out of scale ballistic impacts. She has also been shown to manifest a fiery aura offensively as well as thermal heat blasts by using her telekinetic powers to excite the air molecules around her into focused combustion that produce heat and light in her immediate area. When Jean absorbs Psylocke's specialized telepathic powers, her own telepathy is increased to the point that she can physically manifest her telepathy as a psionic firebird whose claws can inflict both physical and mental damage. Jean can use her amplified telepathy to increase temporarily the speed of neural signals in the brain, which allows her to boost a mutant's powers to incredible levels. She briefly develops a psychic shadow form like Psylocke's, with a gold Phoenix emblem over her eye instead of the Crimson Dawn mark possessed by Psylocke.

The Phoenix can revive, absorb, re-channel, and preserve the life-force of any kind of life-form, meaning that she can take life energy from one person and give it to others, heal herself with the same life energy, or even resurrect the dead, since the Phoenix is the sum of all life and death. As Phoenix, Jean's powers escalate to an incalculable level: allowing her to rearrange matter at a subatomic level, fly unaided through space, survive in any atmosphere, and generate massive destructive blasts and atmospheric disturbances. She has Cosmic pyrokinesis power, which allows her to create, control, and manipulate cosmic fire which is very strong. Note that her cosmic fire is not dependent on oxygen, which means that she can ignite it under seemingly impossible conditions such as vacuum space or underwater. Her cosmic pyrokinesis power derives from her ability to generate intense heat, combustion, and concussive blasts by stimulating heat molecules, or simply by her access to cosmic power, or by combining both abilities at once to create more powerful cosmic fire. Her cosmic fire usually takes form in the shape of a fiery bird. She can also create other shapes of her fire: fireballs, giant claws, or even an appearance of an ordinary fire. Her cosmic fire causes either mental pain, or physical pain, or both of them simultaneously. She has complete control of her cosmic pyrokinesis ability, that she only burns what she wants to burn, which she calls it "burn away what doesn't work." Thus, her cosmic fire will burn her enemies until they die or she extinguishes it by her own will, and it has no effect on her clothing or around her vicinity.

She manifests a "telekinetic sensitivity" (called "the Manifestation of the Phoenix") to objects in her immediate environment that lets her feel the texture of objects, their molecular patterns, feel when other objects come into contact with them, and probe them at a molecular level. She can also create stargates that can transport her to anywhere in the universe instantaneously. When she engages her Phoenix powers, Jean is surrounded in a flame-like energy corona that takes the form of a large bird of prey. As the Phoenix, Jean can resurrect herself after death and is unaffected by the passage of time. It should be noted that she isn't "borrowing" the powers of the Phoenix Force (as is perceived by some due to the fact that Jean was a host for the Force); Death itself has said that Jean is the rightful owner of those powers. Further evolution allowed her to actually become one with the Phoenix Force (as opposed to serving as its host) due to her status as an Omega-level mutant with unlimited potential, in which it was revealed that Jean was the White Phoenix of the Crown. As the White Phoenix, Jean can manipulate and control whole time-lines, as seen when she brought the alternate future of Here Comes Tomorrow into the White-Hot Room.

Ancestry

Main article: Lady Grey

Introduced in Uncanny X-Men #125 (September, 1979), Lady Grey is the look-alike ancestor of X-Men member Jean Grey and a member of the Hellfire Club during the 18th century. During this issue the villain Mastermind attempted to turn Grey (then under the guise of the Phoenix) into the Black Queen of the modern Hellfire Club by creating the illusion that she was living in the body of an ancestor named Lady Grey. However, whether this ancestor was a real person or a creation of Mastermind was left uncertain.

This question was finally answered in X-Men: Hellfire Club #2 (February, 2000), part of a mini-series on the history of the Club. This particular issue was scripted by Ben Raab and drawn by Charlie Adlard. Lady Grey was revealed to have been an influential member, possibly a Queen, of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania branch of the Club during the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783).

Other versions

1602

In the Marvel 1602 miniseries, Jean Grey poses as "John Grey" and is a member of the "witchbreed" led by Carlos Javier (the Charles Xavier of the 1602 universe). Like her Marvel Universe counterpart, she has telekinetic powers. She is a traditional Shakespearean girl posing as a boy. She sacrifices her life for her comrades during their battle against Otto Von Doom (Doctor Doom). She is given a burial at sea. When her corpse is cremated, the fire forms a giant Phoenix raptor before disappearing. Besides Javier and Sir Nicholas Fury, the only one who knows of Jean's deception is Scotius Summerisle (Scott Summers), who is attracted to her. "John" also has a close friendship with Werner (Angel) who learns of the deception after her death. He reveals to Scott that he was also attracted to Jean, although he had thought that "he" was male.

Age of Apocalypse

In the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, Jean is a student of Magneto who falls in love with fellow student Weapon X. Weapon X rescues her after Mr. Sinister kidnaps her and combines her extracted DNA with that of Cyclops, with whom Jean felt some kind of empathy, to create the perfect mutant (X-Man). Weapon X and Jean leave the X-Men a live together until Jean learns of a plan to drop nuclear bombs on the United States to kill Apocalypse. Jean confronts Weapon X over this. Logan and Jean join forces with the Human High Council and agree to lead a nuclear strike against Apocalypse's empire. Jean later tries to stop the attack with the aid of Cyclops and holds back the nuclear bombs with her telekinesis. She dies at the hands of Cyclops' brother Prelate Havok.

In the tenth-anniversary limited series, its revealed that Jean was the one that stopped the nuclear attack from the Human High Council with the last of her powers. At the same time Sinister finds that Jean's DNA contains special properties and that she should have access to the powers of "Mutant Alpha", the legendary "first mutant". He resurrects her, and she displays the powers of "Mutant Alpha", which look like Phoenix Force powers. Jean doesn't remember her old life and through her Sinister managed to create a new team to fight the X-Men. During the fight Logan is able to reach Jean and she turns on Sinister and incinerates him. Jean and Logan reunite, and she becomes leader of the X-Men at Magneto's behest.

Days of Future Past

In the timeline known as the Days of Future Past, Jean died when Mastermind detonated a nuclear device in Pittsburgh, though not before she had given birth to her daughter Rachel a few months before. There are conflicting reports whether this Jean too had been replaced by the Phoenix Force or not. Likewise it was not quite clear who the father of Jean’s daughter was; whereas Rachel considers Scott Summers her father, some hints point to her either being Wolverine’s daughter or a creation of the Phoenix Force, with there being no biological father at all.

Marvel Mangaverse Jean Grey

In the original Marvel Mangaverse X-Men and X-Men Ronin stories, Jean is a powerful telepath and telekinetic and calls herself Marvel Girl, but she also has access to the Phoenix Force. The three-issue X-Men: Phoenix - Legacy of Fire limited series, involves a separate character based on Jean Grey named "Jena Pyre". Jena and her sister Madelyne are the guardians of the "Phoenix Sword", whose power Jean absorbs. The miniseries depicts the lead characters in near-nudity. The series' rating was raised from PG to PG+ before issue #1 was released, and the series was moved to the MAX mature readers imprint for issues #2 and #3.

Marvel Zombies 2

Jean Grey is set to appear in the sequel to Marvel Zombies, now a member of the Zombie Galactus alongside other heroes. She appears as a zombie wearing her Dark Phoenix costume. The Hulk punches through her body and squishes her head in her attempt to subdue him.

Mutant X

Jean’s history in the Mutant X universe is quite muddled. Under the name of Ariel, she was a founding member of the X-Men and in love with their leader, Havok. Later on, during a time that Jean was believed dead, Havok married her look-a-like, Madelyne Pryor, obviously Jean’s clone. When she re-surfaced, Jean was working together with Sinister and Apocalypse to recruit the aid of Havok’s new team, the Six, against an evil Xavier. That crisis having passed, Jean joined the Six, as Madelyne had been turned into the Goblin Queen and was no longer with them. Jean also mentioned having been in a relationship with Wolverine, and to having worked with SHIELD for a while, though it was unclear where exactly these events fit in with her history.

Queen Jean

Another counterpart of Jean Grey had most of her powers taken away for crimes unknown. Banished from her own universe, she ended up on Earth 998, where she pretended to be a reincarnation of the recently deceased Queen Madelyne. The evil Jean set out to become not only queen of Britain but of the entire world. To reach that goal and find a way of restoring her powers, Jean looked for the ultimate weapon across the multiverse: Nate Greys. She lured quite many of them to her kingdom, though most of them died after having been used by her for a while. Queen Jean also traveled to the main universe where she replaced Nate Grey’s companion, Madelyne Pryor, wormed her way into Nate’s mind, and returned to her world with him as her weapon. However, Nate broke free and fought against her, culminating in her draining the life-force of her all "subjects" in an attempt to use the power to kill him. He eventually kills her by creating a sun around her and saying "Burn." It is not clear whether this counterpart of Jean had access to the Phoenix Force.

Shadow-X

New Excalibur battles an evil counterpart of the Jean Grey, who is a member of the Shadow-X, the X-Men of an alternate reality in which Professor X was possessed by the Shadow King. They are brought to Earth-616 as a result of M-Day. In New Excalibur #24 she was stabbed in the shoulder with a broadsword by a Captain Britain from an alternate dimension - after beating him, she used her power to gain the knowledge necessary to deactivate the device Albion had used to nullify London's supply of electricity. The energy required to perform this as well as blood loss caused by her stab wound killed her.

Ultimate Jean Grey/Marvel Girl

In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Jean Grey is a responsible but extroverted young woman. She has a very different personality from the original Jean: in Ultimate, Jean has a sarcastic streak, and secretly reads other people's minds, particularly the other X-Men's minds. Early in the series, she has short cropped hair and prefers to dress in a rocker type style, but later, she becomes more mature and wears clothes that are more conservative, and grows her hair slightly longer. She has a brief affair with Wolverine, but when Wolverine reveals how he was originally sent to kill Professor X, Jean is angry and ends the relationship. She later begins to date Cyclops although she is occasionally frustrated by his shyness. Xavier found Jean Grey while she was in a mental hospital, having problems controlling her telepathy and having troublesome visions of a Phoenix raptor. She was Xavier's second student after Cyclops.

The exact nature of the Phoenix in the Ultimate Universe has not been revealed, but very often Jean is haunted by visions and hallucinations of the Phoenix early in the Ultimate timeline. The powers seem to reveal themselves when Jean gets angry. It appears, due to tests conducted in Ultimate X-Men #71 that the Phoenix is an actual entity and not an uncovered aspect of Jean's own mind. According to the Fire and Brimstone story arc, Jean's Phoenix powers come from the Phoenix God, although Xavier does not believe this. Jean kills many members of the Hellfire club in a fit of Phoenix powered rage before Xavier calms her down. Much later in the story Jean uses her Phoenix powers often. She starts with her powers out of her control due to her anger, accidentally killing two mercenaries who were attacking the X-Men. She feels guilty over the incident for weeks, but after a while, she manifests signs of the Phoenix, beginning to draw upon more and more of the residual Phoenix energies buried within her mind to help the X-Men on several occasions, combating Magneto and the deceptive and manipulative Magician. It has been revealed that Jean envisions imaginary tiny, green goblins carrying out her telekinetic activities.

When the man from the future, Cable, attacks the X-Men, he kidnaps Jean Grey but she is later rescued by the X-men and Bishop. After Professor X's apparent death, Jean has become the headmistress of the school, along with Cyclops. She did not join Bishop's new team of X-Men but has assisted the team when needed, often butting heads with Cyclops over when to help and when not to help.

Further down the line, The X-Men hunt Sinister down, finding him in the Morlock tunnels slaughtering several Morlocks in order to reach his goal, and he does, reborn as Apocalypse. Apocalypse who has the power to control mutants brings former X-Men, Cyclops, Jean, Iceman, Rogue and Toad to NYC for the giant survival battle royal. The Fantastic Four intercept Cyclops' team, Sue Storm combating Jean, proceeding to trap her in a force field, rendering Jean a mere spectator. Later, Jean breaks free of the bubble when Professor X, able to walk, uses his telepathy to free her and the other reserve X-Men, leaving her to subdue the other team of X-Men and the Morlocks. She hesitantly calls for help when Apocalypse puts Xavier on the brink of death and the Phoenix Force responds, physically manifesting herself and merging with Jean to fight Apocalypse. Using her unimaginable powers, she brought Apocalypse to his knees and melted his armor. Having fully merged with the Phoenix, Jean sees that there is much to do and reverses everything to the point where it didn't happen but the X-Men remember.

What If?

In the What If X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire, Vulcan becomes the Phoenix and destroys seven galaxies, the entire Annihilation Wave, the Shi'ar and Kree. He travels to Earth and by using the Phoenix Force, he restores Krakoa before engaging in battle with Cyclops, Havok, Rachel and Cable. Vulcan appears to be winning until a strange force enters into action that causes Vulcan to lose control of the Phoenix Force. After a brief mental battle between Vulcan and his family, Vulcan accepts his defeat by letting go of the rage and hate inside him as he dies. The strange force reveals herself to be Jean Grey, White Phoenix of the Crown.

Jean had helped Rachel and Havok escape from the Shi'ar Empire by opening a teleportation portal to Earth before the Empire's fall at the hands of Vulcan. It was Jean that prevented Vulcan from fully accessing the Phoenix Force in Krakoa. Jean shows a young Gabriel that wielding the ultimate power would not give him what he truly wanted. Rather, she shows him that being loved was his real wish from the start as she comforts the child Vulcan in the White Hot Room.

In other media

Main article: Jean Grey in other media

See also

• End Of Greys
• Phoenix Force

External links

• X-Men Fan Site
• http://www.marvel.com/universe/Phoenix_%28Jean_Grey%29
• Jean Grey Fan Site