Rumor: Marvel Prepping Jean Grey Solo Series

[StewShearerOld]

Rumor: Marvel Prepping Jean Grey Solo Series

Anonymous sources have indicated that Marvel might be in the process of creating a solo book for the oft-revived X-Heroine.

If there's one thing that <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136935-Marvels-All-New-X-Men-Will-Cross-Over-With-Ultimate-Spider-Man-in-September-Storyline>Marvel's good at, it's reviving X-Men. The cast of the X-verse is a practical smorgasbord of characters who have been killed just to come back to life later on. The queen bee of this crew of never-dies, of course, is Jean Grey, the subject of some of the franchise's most controversial revivals. Most recently, writer <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/brian%20michael%20bendis>Brian Michael Bendis circumvented the character's demise by bringing her teenage version through time to the present day. Now, if recent can be believed, Bendis and company may gearing up to give the time-displaced telepath her on solo series.

These rumors come by way of anonymous sources close to Marvel who have reportedly seen an in-preparation logo for a Jean Grey solo book. And while that on its own might not be enough to convince people that such a series is in the works, past comments from Bendis himself have also served as fuel for the fire. For instance, responding to a fan query in June, Bendis named Jean Grey as the character he most wanted to see with her own solo series. Responding to another fan's question, in turn, he indicated that the character future sounded "like a great idea for a Jean Grey solo series." Granted, that's still pretty far from a confirmation, but it's still enough to hint at something going on behind the scenes at Marvel.

And just speaking personally, I'd be excited to see where a Jean Grey series could go. She often isn't some people's favorite character, but Bendis has done some genuinely interesting things with Jean Grey in <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136935-Marvels-All-New-X-Men-Will-Cross-Over-With-Ultimate-Spider-Man-in-September-Storyline>All New X-Men, playing smartly with Jean's understandable turmoil over the fact that her life as an X-Men winds up being pretty horrible. A solo book exploring that a bit more deeply would be something I could definitely get behind.

Source: Bleeding Cool


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[SNCommand]

How long until she dies?

 

[synobal]

Dammit Marvel, give me an Ultimate Spider-woman, solo series. Please!

 

[Therumancer]

To be honest I'm not sure if a solo book for her will work, she's the kind of character that works best as part of an ensemble cast. This sort of reminds me of the attempt to give Emma Frost her own prequel series, which survived for a little while, but seemed to go the way of the dodo like most similar things do. She works and became popular both as a villain and a bad guy, by playing off of other, established, characters well.

As far as Jean being killed and brought back, that's kind of her thing at this point, it ceases to be surprising when they do it too many times. What's more as she's one of the very first X-men I imagine she'll always be around in some form even when she's not seeing much time in print.

To some extent I think one of her problems is also that her arch-nemesis, The Scarlet Witch, has become a long running hero and is arguably more popular than she is. You do see some attempts to keep the characters on a generally parallel power level (Jean gets the Pheonix Force, Wanda shows she's powerful enough to re-write reality) but they don't generally battle each other anymore, or even interact. When a heroine's arch enemy (arguably) stops being an enemy and becomes more popular you know there are issues.

That said, I suppose a solo series gives them some time to build stuff up around the character, if they are smart they will do it as a limited run, and perhaps give her a new open-ended enemy or rival to show up in various stories and see if they can recapture some of that old Jean Vs. Wanda vibe.... which is probably too old for a lot of people to remember. Basically while they became heroes both Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch were classic X-men enemies (for obvious reasons)

 

[Akiraking]

I misunderstood the title and thought Marvel was trying to do another Quick Silver and Scarlet Witch and make Jean Grey a part of the Marvel cinematic universe with her own movie but not mention she was a mutant or something. I should have realized series meant comics and not movie series. I never noticed but all those characters have colours in their names. Random coincidence.

 

[Gailim]

Jean "died" in the pheonix saga (turns out it wasn't actually her), and then "died" again a decade ago. Her current status is "dead, but in reality fused with the phoenix for so it's impossible for her to ever really die"

so that is really only two deaths. that's actually not too bad for a comic character. I mean X-23 is only 10 years old and she has "died" twice already. I think Jean gets the death rap because her first death was in an era where not many major characters were killed off. and there was a huge controversy when she was brought back.

she has been off in Phoenix land for over a decade now which is a pretty strong show of restraint from marvel in my opinion. Aside from Endsong and that one panel from AvX we haven't seen her since.

 

[eberhart]

How long until she dies?

They should consider adding male protagonist looking exactly like Sean Bean

 

[NotThePANTSU]

Now, if recent can be believed, Bendis and company may gearing up to give the time-displaced telepath her on solo series.

You might want to take another crack at this sentence

OT: My immediate reaction was: why her? Depending on the version I can go from liking Jean to outright loathing her and there are a number of other female X-men I would want given the chance before I'd even consider Jean.

Of course I'm not heavy into American comic books so my opinion of her is probably superficial at best...

 

[Robyrt]

If Dazzler can get her own long-running solo series, Jean definitely can. Storm basically had her own series in the late eighties, it was just named "Uncanny X-Men". However, this new version of Jean is not particularly compelling to me. She has too much time travel baggage, her death and resurrection is already a joke... I don't see this working out.

 

[Robyrt]

Jean "died" in the pheonix saga (turns out it wasn't actually her), and then "died" again a decade ago. Her current status is "dead, but in reality fused with the phoenix for so it's impossible for her to ever really die"

so that is really only two deaths. that's actually not too bad for a comic character. I mean X-23 is only 10 years old and she has "died" twice already. I think Jean gets the death rap because her first death was in an era where not many major characters were killed off. and there was a huge controversy when she was brought back.

she has been off in Phoenix land for over a decade now which is a pretty strong show of restraint from marvel in my opinion. Aside from Endsong and that one panel from AvX we haven't seen her since.

Yeah, I'm surprised that Jean still gets so many "resurrection" jokes when she has been dead longer than she was alive. I think it's because they tease her resurrection and bring up the Phoenix so often - alternate universes, time travel, etc. always includes a stop at the Jean Grey Show. Also, many fans have never forgiven Marvel for resurrecting her in the first place, like you mentioned - she had been written out of the book so hard that even Cyclops was retired at that point.

 

[Karavision]

I wonder how they are going to sabotage this one?

 

[ssgtnelson]

Why? She was probably, hands down, one of the most boring X-Men/Marvel characters out there.