Jean Grey

It is time! We finally get to talk about one of the most well known comic heroes possibly of all time, the powerful and lovely Jean Grey, and as always if you’d like to hear the content instead of reading it please check out the Lady Comic Book History Podcast wherever it is that you do your podcast listening.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Jean Grey’s first appearance was in The X-Men issue #1 in September of 1963. She was born with telepathic and telekinetic powers. In her original story her powers are awakened when she watches her childhood friend get hit by a car. After the first time she died, she was reborn as the Phoenix, in the Dark Phoenix Saga which led to her second death which was a suicide but don’t worry she will come back to life and die again several more times. She actually originally appeared as Marvel Girl and was the X-Men’s only female member and it's weakest. Under new direction she went from the team's weakest member to it's most powerful. The writer's goal for Jean’s transformation was to create “the first female cosmic hero” however while writing the series the all male creators room decided that she had become too powerful...how are you gonna create a powerful woman with the intent of her being cosmically powerful and then get mad when shes powerful? That's some male thought shit right there, this is the start of her only being powerful when she's considered unstable, and lets add to the sexism that when she’s overpowered that power is also considered dark or evil. Directly implying that strong, powerful female characters are bad, or villainess. To add to that point when Jean was brought back again, Cyclops had moved on with Madlyne Pryor and in order to reunite Scott and Jean they took Pryor’s character and made her a prolicidal demonic villain and killed her off. Jean becomes a force of mass destruction and the writers too often use men to manipulate her mind, like Charles Xavier, in her normal state known as just Jean Grey she is powerful but not anywhere near the power the Phoenix has. In every single one of her iterations Jean’s lack of self confidence is directly tied to her powers. Let's pull an example from the film adaptations, the original X-Men movies were admittedly not wonderful adaptations of the characters but they were close enough to be relevant to this conversation so here we go. In X2 Jean is giving a presentation and she doesn’t do well, later apologizing to Professor X about her performance, her telepathic powers would make it very easy for her to be a very convincing public speaker but she lacks confidence...gross. In both comic books and film adaptations she is portrayed as dependent on the men around her, she is also in the shadow of Professor X, when she is still herself when she is still Jean she is not very powerful, she is constantly making excuses for her being unable to do certain things because she simply isn’t powerful enough, she is mousy and people pleasing and a stereotypically feminine sidekick. I would like to mention how the phoenix in literally any of its forms; dark, force, white is considered a separate entity that can take hosts that are someone other than Jean Grey implying that an overpowered woman’s power comes not from herself but from an outside force, for without that outside entity she is not a very powerful mutant, without the phoenix she is very very average.