Professor X Remembers Jean Grey
Jean Grey? Ah, she was one of my most prized students. She had so much potential but tragically we lost her to Magneto a few years ago…I loved her so much.
I met Jean when her telepathic powers first emerged. She had just lost her childhood friend and felt her slipping away in her own mind. Jean was so utterly depressed that she refused to go outside, instead finding shelter in her own room. I helped her to suppress her telepathic powers and we both decided to work on her telekinetic abilities.
Jean eventually went on to join my X-men and even got used to using her once more available telepathic powers. She spent a while with the X-men and soon became known as the Phoenix. Whilst on a mission to space she bonded with an entity known as the Phoenix Force but this power would soon consume her and turn her into Dark Phoenix, one of the X-men’s most fiercest foes. Jean eventually chose to commit suicide on the moon, choosing her humanity over godhood.
Years later she would return to the world and form X-factor with the rest of the original X-men members. However she soon returned to the X-men along with her lover Scott Summers. I remember clearly the day she got married to him. She was so happy…we were all happy.
Jean remained pure of the Phoenix Force for several years until it slowly manifested within her, effectively restoring her lost telekinetic powers which she had exchanged with the psychic mutant Psylocke many months previous to this. When Magneto resurfaced Jean was killed in combat and even the Phoenix Force couldn’t bring her back from death this time.
Jean did return once more but she now resides in the White Hot Room, as she described it, collecting the missing pieces of the Phoenix Force.
Jean was like a daughter to me and I miss her very dearly. Sometimes I look at pictures of her and think what could have happened if we – um… sorry, anyway I hope that she will one day return to us and grace our lives with happiness once more.
Charles Francis Xavier
Jean Grey’s Return
In February 2004 Jean Grey perished at the hands of Xorn, a man who looked like and had the same powers as Magneto, the Master of Magnetism.
In June 2005 Jean Grey was resurrected in a story called Phoenix Endsong which saw her being resurrected by the Phoenix Force once more. The Phoenix Force used Jean to take on a life of its own and buried Jean within the ice in the North Pole. The malevolent entity possessed Emma Frost and attacked the X-men. Suddenly Jean Grey rose from her icy grave and her and the Phoenix became one. She became the White Phoenix of the Crown and went to the White Hot Room to collect the missing pieces of the Phoenix Force.
Since then it looks like 2010 will be the year of the Phoenix. In 2009 Rachel Grey lost her connection to the Echo of the Phoenix Force (a less powerful form of the Phoenix Force) and muttered the words, “please…not now…mom”.
On the island of Utopia the Stepford Cuckoos lost the fragments of the Phoenix Force which they had imprisoned in their diamond hearts during the Phoenix Warsong event. They are currently in a coma.
These two events suggest that Jean Grey is calling back all the fragments of the Phoenix Force in preparation for her next resurrection.
Emma Frost recently encountered a woman who resembled Jean Grey in her mind when she was attacked by Regan Wyngarde a.k.a. Lady Mastermind of the Sisterhood of Mutants. The woman freed Emma from Wyngarde’s psychic trap and disappeared.
Since the events of the Messiah Complex a girl with red hair and green eyes was born and was named the Mutant Messiah. She was taken to the future by her adoptive father Cable and is now a teenager who bares an uncanny resemblance to Jean Grey. The so called Mutant Messiah has also displayed twin phoenix raptors in her eyes.
All this evidence points to Jean Grey’s resurrection and with Second Coming (the return of the Mutant Messiah to the present) arriving in March, you have to admit that this title may be more than meets the eyes.
Conor McKenna