Jean Elaine Grey was born the second daughter of John and Elaine Grey. She had an older sister, Sara Grey-Bailey. John Grey was a professor at Bard College in upstate New York. Depictions of Jean's childhood and her relations with her family have shown a stable, loving family life growing up.
Emergence of powers and joining the X-Men
Jean's mutant powers of telepathy and telekinesis first manifest when her best friend is hit by a car and killed. Jean mentally links with her friend and nearly dies as well. The event leaves her comatose, and she is brought back to consciousness when her parents seek the help of powerful mutant telepath, Charles Xavier. Xavier blocks her telepathy until she is old enough to be able to control it, leaving her with access only to her telekinetic powers.
Xavier later recruits her as a teenager to be part of his X-Men team as "Marvel Girl", the team's sole female member. After several missions with the X-Men, Xavier removes Jean's mental blocks and she is able to use and control her telepathic powers. She begins a relationship with teammate Cyclops, which persists as her main romantic relationship, though she also develops a mutual secret attraction to a later addition to the team, Wolverine.
Phoenix Force and first death
During an emergency mission in space, the X-Men find their shuttle damaged. Jean pilots the shuttle back to Earth, but is exposed to fatal levels of radiation. Dying, but determined to save Cyclops and her friends, Jean calls out for help and is answered by the cosmic entity, the Phoenix Force.
The Phoenix Force, one of the most powerful life forces in the universe, is moved by Jean's wish to save herself and her friends. It takes the form of a duplicate body to house Jean's psyche. The duplication is so exact that the Phoenix Force believes itself to be Jean Grey, and places Jean's dying body in a healing cocoon. This cocoon is later described as a Phoenix Egg.
The ship crashes in Jamaica Bay, with the other X-Men unharmed. The Phoenix Force, as Jean Grey, emerges in a new costume and adopts the new codename "Phoenix", with immense cosmic powers. Meanwhile, the cocoon containing the real Jean Grey sinks to the bottom of the bay, unnoticed.
Phoenix continues her life as Jean Grey with the other X-Men, joining them on missions and saving the universe. During "The Dark Phoenix Saga", Phoenix becomes overwhelmed and corrupted by her first taste of evil and transforms into a force of total destruction, called "Dark Phoenix", inadvertently killing the inhabitants of a planetary system, after consuming its star, and jeopardizing the entire universe. However, Jean's personality manages to take control and Phoenix commits suicide to ensure the universe's safety.
Revival
Upon its suicide by way of a disintegration ray, the Phoenix Force disperses into its original form and a fragment locates the still-healing Jean at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. In trying to bond with her, Jean senses its memories of death and destruction as Dark Phoenix and rejects it, causing it to bond with and animate a lifeless clone of Jean Grey created by the villain Mister Sinister.
Sinister created the clone to couple with Cyclops to create genetically superior mutants. Named "Madelyne Pryor", the unaware clone meets Cyclops in a situation engineered by Sinister and the two fall in love, marry, and have a child, Nathan Christopher Summers. Meanwhile, the cocoon is discovered and retrieved by the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Jean emerges with no memory of the actions of the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix.
The Avengers and Fantastic Four tell her of what happened and that she was believed dead until now. She is reunited with the original X-Men and convinces them to form the new superhero team X-Factor, reusing her "Marvel Girl" codename.
Madelyne is angered over Cyclops's decision to lead X-Factor and neglect his family. Though Jean encourages Cyclops to return to Madelyne, he finds their house abandoned and assumes that Madelyne has left him and taken their infant son.
Cyclops returns to X-Factor and he and Jean continue their relationship, but the Phoenix Force's impersonation, and his marrying Madelyne, damaged their mutual trust. The team's adventures continue throughout the series, culminating in the line-wide "Inferno" crossover. Madelyne reappears, now nearly insane and with powers awakened by a demonic pact, calling herself the Goblyn Queen.
Learning of her true identity and purpose as a clone created by Mister Sinister drove her completely insane and she plans to sacrifice Nathan Christopher to achieve greater power and unleash literal Hell on Earth. While attempting to stop her, Jean is reunited with the other X-Men, who are happy to learn that she is alive, particularly Wolverine, reminding Jean of her unaddressed feelings for him.
Jean and Madelyne confront each other, and Madelyne attempts to kill them both. Jean manages to survive only by absorbing the remnant of the Phoenix Force housed within Madelyne, giving her both Madelyne's memories and the Phoenix's memories from "The Dark Phoenix Saga".
Return to the X-Men and marriage to Cyclops
Unsure of herself since returning to life, Jean finds possessing the Phoenix Force and Madelyne's memories to be difficult. Cyclops proposes to her and she meets her alternate future daughter Rachel Summers (who goes by the codename "Phoenix" as well and is also able to tap into the Phoenix Force), but Jean rejects them both out of the feeling that they indicate that her life is predetermined.
Jean had learned during the Inferno event that her rejecting the Phoenix Force caused Madelyne to wake; Cyclops admits to Susan Storm Richards that Jean sometimes wishes that the Fantastic Four had not found her, and that he does not know how to communicate with her.
When X-Factor unites with the X-Men, Jean joins the Gold Team, led by Storm. During this time, she no longer uses a codename, instead being referred to by her civilian name. After some time, she makes up with Rachel, welcoming her into her life, and proposes to Cyclops and the two marry.
On their honeymoon, the couple is immediately psychically transported 2000 years into the future to raise Cyclops's son Nathan, who had been transported to the future as an infant in hopes of curing him of a deadly virus. Jean adopts the identity of "Redd" along with Cyclops ("Slym") and they raise Nathan Christopher for twelve years before they are sent back into their bodies on their wedding honeymoon.
Jean learns that a time-displaced Rachel had used her powers to transport them to the future to protect Nathan, and per Rachel's request, Jean adopts the codename "Phoenix" once again to establish it as a symbol of good after all the bad it had caused.
Meanwhile, her psychic and telekinetic abilities begin to grow and she begins using the iconic green and gold Phoenix costume again. Jean also met another alternate future child of hers and Scott's: the immensely powerful Nathan Grey, who accidentally revived the psionic ghost of Madelyne Pryor, leading to another confrontation between the two women.
Onslaught
In Bishop's original timeline before he ends up in the present he finds the X-Men's war room and finds a garbled distress signal from Jean about a traitor destroying the X-Men from within. Meanwhile, in the present, the X-Men begin to hear increasing news about a malevolent entity called Onslaught.
Jean first sees Onslaught as a psionic image with the rest of the X-Men after Onslaught coerces Gateway to kidnap Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, and Iceman. He later appears to her again in a similar way after rescuing her and Gambit from Bastion and offers her a chance to join him.
Onslaught makes his first full appearance to Jean on the astral plane and shows her how humanity is closing in on mutants as well as revealing that Xavier was in love with her while she was a student to convince her to join him. He then telepathically brands his name to her mind when she refused and asks him his name.
When Juggernaut comes to the mansion with information about Onslaughts true identity but has a mental block preventing him from divulging it, Jean enters his mind and helps him to remember who Onslaught really is and to her horror she discovers that Onslaught is really Professor X, having gone insane ever since wiping Magneto's mind.
Professor Xavier calls the X-Men together for a meeting and Jean tries unsuccessfully to rally the X-Men against him before he manifests Onslaught. While Onslaught easily overtakes the rest of the X-Men, Jean escapes to the war room and sends out the distress signal that Bishop found in the future.
After a massive battle against Jean and the rest of the X-Men, Onslaught escapes to carry out his plans. After Onslaught nearly kills the X-Men they team up with the Avengers to make a plan to stop him, knowing full well that it may come down to them killing Xavier if the world is to survive.
Jean accompanies Cyclops, Archangel, and Psylocke to Muir Island where they and Moira McTaggert discover the Xavier Protocols, secret plans that Xavier made to kill any of the individual X-Men should anyone become a threat against the world. Meanwhile,
Jean's earlier distress signal makes it to X-Factor, Excalibur, and X-Force. After returning to New York, Jean works closely with Reed Richards to help build up defenses against Onslaught as well as to help create the psionic armor that could block Xavier's telepathic powers as seen in the Xavier Protocols.
When Jean senses that Xavier has been freed from Onslaught and is going to confront him on his own, she and Cyclops bring together the rest of the X-Men to back him up. The rest of the Avengers and Fantastic Four join them in a final stand against Onslaught before he completely destroys the world.
In a final act of desperation Jean finds Hulk and locks away Bruce Banner's mind, leaving only the Hulk in control so he can fight Onslaught unencumbered. With the vast majority of earth's heroes missing and assumed dead after Onslaught is finally defeated, Jean and Cyclops open their home to Quicksilver and his daughter and try to help the X-Men to get their lives back together.
New X-Men
Following Cyclops's possession by the mutant villain Apocalypse and apparent death, Jean continues with the X-Men, but is distraught by the loss of her husband. She later learns that she is an "Omega-level" mutant with unlimited potential.
Jean begins to suspect that Cyclops may still be alive and with the help of Nathan Summers (now the aged superhero "Cable"), is able to locate and free Cyclops of his possession by Apocalypse. The couple return to the X-Men as part of the Xavier Institute's teaching staff to a new generation of mutants.
While Jean finds she is slowly able to tap into the powers of the Phoenix Force once again, her marriage to Scott begins to fail. Jean and Wolverine address their long-unspoken mutual attraction, deciding it is best not to act on their feelings; Cyclops grows further alienated from Jean due to her growing powers and institute responsibilities and seeks consolation from the telepathic Emma Frost to address his disillusionment and his experiences while possessed by Apocalypse.
These therapy sessions lead to a "psychic affair" between Scott and Emma. Jean's discovery of the psychic affair results in a confrontation between her and Emma, though ultimately Jean realizes that Emma truly loves Scott.
Second death
In a final confrontation with a traitor at the institute (the X-Men's teammate Xorn, posing as Magneto) Jean fully realizes and assumes complete control of the powers of the Phoenix Force, but is killed in a last-ditch lethal attack by Xorn.
Jean dies, telling Scott "to live". However, after her funeral, Scott rejects Emma and her offer to run the school together. This creates a dystopian future where all life and natural evolution is under assault by the infectious, villainous, sentient bacteria "Sublime".
Jean is resurrected in this future timeline and becomes the fully realized White Phoenix of the Crown, using the abilities of the Phoenix Force to defeat Sublime and eliminate the dystopic future by reaching back in time and telling Cyclops to move on.
This leads him to accept Emma's love and her offer to run the school together. Jean then reconciles with Cyclops and fully bonds with the Phoenix Force and ascends to a higher plane of existence called the "White Hot Room".
Endsong
A weakened Phoenix Force returns to reanimate Jean. Jean tries to convince the Phoenix Force to let her go so they can return to the White Hot Room together, but once again the Phoenix Force takes over. Jean lets Wolverine find her and tries to convince him to kill her again before the Phoenix does more damage.
The Shi'ar track the Phoenix Force and make an alliance with Storm to find her and defeat her. Jean takes Wolverine to the North Pole before the Shi'ar can kill her and convinces him to kill her. He stabs her numerous times but Phoenix keeps reanimating her, prompting Jean to dive deep into the ice and freeze herself.
The Phoenix Force leaves her body and once again assumes Jean's form to tempt Cyclops to attack her so she can absorb his optic blasts and become strong again. When the Phoenix Force merges with and overwhelms Emma Frost, Cyclops frees Jean from the ice. Once freed Jean ejects the Phoenix from Emma and accepts that she is one with the Phoenix Force.
After feeling the love from the X-Men, the Phoenix relents and returns with Jean back to the White Hot Room. Before she departs, Jean and Cyclops share a telepathic emotional farewell.
Postmortem manifestations
Though she had yet to fully return, the Phoenix Force and Jean continued to manifest themselves, particularly the Phoenix through the red-haired, green-eyed "mutant messiah" who slightly resembles Jean named Hope Summers, and Jean briefly appears in a vision to Emma Frost from the White Hot Room, warning the X-Men to "prepare".
She again appears in a vision to Cyclops when he is overwhelmed by the power of Dark Phoenix, helping him abandon the power so that it can pass on to its true host. After Nightcrawler is fatally wounded by the Crimson Pirates, Jean appears to him along with Amanda Sefton and the recently deceased Wolverine to help coax him back to life.
Jean's spirit begins to manifest in a more straightforward and aggressive manner to the time-displaced Jean from an alternate timeline, seemingly training her for the arrival of the Phoenix. However, after the younger Jean begins to ignore her, she possesses the time displaced Jean and uses her as a means to ambush Emma Frost.
Return
Strange psych occurrences around the world, which include a large bird flaring out from the sun and an explosion on the moon, raise red flags for the X-Men, who quickly launch an investigation of these events.
After a string of bizarre encounters with familiar enemies, many of them considered deceased, the X-Men come to one conclusion: the Phoenix Force is back on Earth. The X-Men also discover that psychics are going missing or falling ill, which prompts the team to investigate the grave of Jean Grey. As they find the coffin of their long-dead teammate empty, they race to locate the Phoenix before it can find a suitable host.
As it turns out, with the time-displaced teen Jean Grey out of the Phoenix Force's way, the cosmic entity has already resurrected the present adult Jean Grey. However, she doesn't recall her life as a mutant and an X-Man, and terrible visions from her previous life have left Jean unsure of the difference between reality and fiction.
As she lies inside of what appears to be a Phoenix Egg, the X-Men theorize that the strange psych occurrences are subconscious cries for help made by Jean Grey and that they must try to stop the Phoenix from merging with their old friend.
Old Man Logan is able to make Jean Grey remember her true life and she learns about the fate of her family and several of her friends, among them Cyclops. As Jean faces the Phoenix Force, she is finally able to convince the cosmic entity to stop bringing her back and let her go. Alive once again, Jean is reunited with her friends as the Phoenix Force journeys back to space.
Restored to life, Jean gathers some of the greatest minds on Earth together so that she can read their minds to plan her next move. Recognizing that there has been a sudden surge in anti-mutant sentiment, to the point where there are plans to abort pregnancies if the mutant gene is detected, Jean announces her plans to establish a more official mutant nation, making it clear that she will not establish a geographic location for said nation as past examples make it clear that doing so just makes mutants a target. To support her in this goal, she assembles a team including Nightcrawler, X-23 and Namor, but is unaware that her actions are being observed by Cassandra Nova.
House of X / Dawn of X
The adult Jean returns to using her original Marvel Girl codename and wears her second green-and-yellow Marvel Girl costume. She is sent as part of a strike team to outer space to stop a satellite near the sun from being used as a Sentinel factory.
Sentinels crush Jean's escape pod and she dies, but is resurrected into a cloned body. She is also a member of the Quiet Council, Krakoa's provisional government. Following the events of House of X, Jean briefly joins the Krakoan incarnation of X-Force, before resigning in protest of Beast's actions in Terra Verde.
Following through the tournament for the new host of the Phoenix Force, the Phoenix chose Maya Lopez, the hero known as Echo. As Maya, Jean Grey called out to her from Krakoa with a word of advice.
After Maya took on the Phoenix Force, Jean ordered Wolverine to leave her alone and return home, as he said he would kill anyone who took on the Phoenix Force. She then reached out to Maya as she flew off, and told the young woman not to go on this journey alone as the Phoenix prefers loners and isolated figures it can better influence to carry out its own agenda. Jean also told Maya if she wants to keep her soul as the new Phoenix, she has to make the Phoenix her own.
Powers and abilities
Jean Grey is an Omega-level mutant, and at her highest and strongest potential was fully merged with the Phoenix Force and with it was able to defeat even Galactus.
Empathy
Jean is a powerful empath, as she can feel and manipulate emotions of other people, as shown when her power first emerged as she felt her friend Annie Richardson slowly dying. Jean can also connect people's minds to the feelings of others and make them feel the pain they inflicted.
Telepathy
When her powers first manifested, Jean was unable to cope with her telepathic abilities, forcing Professor Charles Xavier to suppress her access to it altogether. Instead, he chose to train her in the use of her psychokinetic abilities while allowing her telepathy to grow at its natural rate before reintroducing it. When the Professor hid to prepare for the Z'Nox, he reopened Jean's telepathic abilities, which was initially explained by writers as Xavier 'sharing' some of his telepathy with her.
As an alpha-level telepath, Jean Grey can detect and read the thoughts of others, project her own thoughts into other's minds, form psychic links with other beings, control others' minds so as to manipulate their physical functions, mentally stun opponents with bolts of pure psionic force, cast near-flawless mental illusions, and project her mind and the minds of others onto the astral plane.
At close range, she can manipulate almost any number of minds; however, she can only take full possession of another's mind one at a time and can only do so if she is within that being's physical presence.
Jean is also one of the few telepaths skilled enough to communicate with animals (animals with high intelligence, such as dolphins, dogs, and ravens). As a side effect of her telepathy, she has an eidetic memory. Jean was able, through telepathic therapy with the comatose Jessica Jones, to grant Jessica immunity to the Purple Man's mind control abilities, despite his powers being chemical in nature rather than psychic.
When Jean absorbed Psylocke's specialized telepathic powers, her own telepathy was increased to the point that she could physically manifest her telepathy as a psionic firebird whose claws could inflict both physical and mental damage. She briefly developed a psychic shadow form like Psylocke's, with a gold Phoenix emblem over her eye instead of the Crimson Dawn mark possessed by Psylocke.
Jean briefly lost her telekinesis to Psylocke during this exchange, but her telekinetic abilities later came back in full and at a far stronger level than before.[volume & issue needed] It was later stated that Jean has been an Omega Level telepath.
Telekinesis
Jean possesses a high-level of telekinetic ability that enables her to psionically levitate and rapidly move about all manner of animate and inanimate matter. She can use her telekinetic abilities on herself or others to simulate the power of flight or levitation, stimulate molecules to increase friction, create protective force fields out of psychokinetic energy, or project her telekinetic energy as purely concussive force.
The outer limits of her telekinetic power have never been clearly established, though she was capable of lifting approximately fifty tons of rubble with some strain. Jean was later stated to have become an Omega Level Telekinetic.
Psychic Energy Synthesis
Jean's younger self who had been brought from the past into the present by an older Hank McCoy eventually found an entirely new usage of her powers separate from the Phoenix Force. The teenage Marvel Girl learned she has the ability to harness ambient psychic energy and channel it into powerful blasts of force, which are a combination of both her telepathy and telekinesis.
Its potency is such that she can match and overpower the likes of Gladiator, magistrate of the Shi'ar, with relative ease. When using this ability Jean's whole body glows with pink psychic energy, obscuring her human form.
Telekinetic weapons
Under the tutelage of Psylocke, teenage Marvel Girl has learned the ability to create psionic weapons that damage a target either physically, mentally or both in some point. She showed skill in constructing multiple types of psionic weapons that differ in size, length and power which she uses in combat.
Phoenix Force
The relationship between Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force (and the nature of the powers she has) is portrayed in a variety of ways throughout the character's history. In the initial plotline of the Phoenix being a manifestation of Jean's true potential, these powers are considered her own, becoming Earth 616's first cosmic superheroine.
However, since the retcon of the Phoenix as a separate entity from Jean Grey, depictions of these powers vary; these include Jean being one of many hosts to the Phoenix and "borrowing" its "Phoenix powers" during this time, being a unique host to the Phoenix, and being one with the Phoenix.
She is later described as the only one currently able to hold the title of "White Phoenix of the Crown" among the many past, present, and future hosts of the Phoenix. Jean — both young and adult versions — is also the only character ever to force the Phoenix against its own cosmic will to do anything while not presently a host to its powers.
In one instance Jean forcibly ripped the Phoenix out of Emma Frost and imposed its status upon herself. Young Jean was able to keep her psyche anchored in the Phoenix's mind postmortem despite the Phoenix's own efforts to forcibly remove her after it murdered her. Jean then subsequently forced the Phoenix to resurrect her after manipulating the Phoenix's mental landscape against it.
Over the years, Jean's abilities while bonded to the Phoenix Force have fluctuated, but the Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades Handbook has detailed what Jean is capable of as Phoenix:
While empowered by the Phoenix Force, Grey has total telekinetic control of matter at the molecular level, allowing her to manipulate atomic structures on a universal scale. She can generate any form of energy in seemingly unlimited amounts, as well as absorb energy from sources as great as a supernova or even convert her physical form to pure energy and back again.
She can also exist in virtually any environment without harm and create space/time warps to travel through hyperspace or traverse the timestream, and her telepathic abilities are also vastly enhanced. When using her power, the Phoenix Force will manifest itself around Grey in the form of a bird of cosmic flames, the size of the bird varying with the amount of energy she is using.
These flames can even manifest in seemingly impossible situations, such as the vacuum of space or underwater. This fire apparently does not require oxygen to burn, and burns so intensely that matter is consumed without by-products such as ash. The cosmic fire is a literal punctuation to the Phoenix's purpose to "burn away what doesn't work", as well as being described as "burning through lies and deception". The Phoenix Force can also resurrect the dead under some conditions, and absorb the life force from other sentient beings to bolster its own.
The Phoenix Force also seems to render its host unaging and, at least in some adaptations, enhances the physical strength of its avatar to superhuman levels; in certain incarnations, Jean, namely while acting as Dark Phoenix, seemed to possess some level of superhuman strength.
Resurrection
For one reason or another, Jean Grey (both young and old) has, on more than one occasion, been repeatedly resurrected by either the Phoenix or apparently her sheer force of will. In some depictions, these resurrections are immediately after she or whoever she is reviving is killed, while other depictions indicate that a resurrection must occur at a "correct" time, sometimes taking a century.
During the height of the Psych Wars, Young Jean was able to forcibly make the Phoenix Force restore her to life, despite the Phoenix's adamant resolve not to do so, completely recreating her body after it had been vaporized.
After her body was taken over and completely devoured by a Poison, a small part of Jean's mind survived and, despite itself, was able to infect the whole Poison Hive and destroy it from the inside out, subsequently using nothing but her mind to reconstruct her body. This leaves Jean believing that she may not even be human anymore. This is not the first time Jean was resurrected without the Phoenix; in one instance, she was even able to fully resurrect herself after being clinically dead completely independent of the Phoenix Force.
In their most recent meeting, Jean tells the Phoenix Force that she should have died on the shuttle, and asks it to not resurrect her again.
Miscellaneous abilities
Jean Grey is a trained pilot and proficient unarmed combatant. She also has some degree of teaching ability, experience as a fashion model, and training in psychology.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Jean Elaine Grey
Publisher: Marvel Comics
First appearance: The X-Men #1 (Sept. 1963)
Created by Stan Lee (writer)
Jack Kirby (artist/co-plotter)
Urf! While we are most often pleased and, at times, even amazed at the quality of these very small HeroClix figurines, the Jean Grey is not good. The head and face are far too large and that, combined with her expression, makes Jean look like a gargoyle. The paint ops are sloppy as well. Okay, ending complaints now.
See Jean in action in the Paprihaven storyline such as in issue 1474:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/45624685874/]
And the inevitable event in 1484:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/46055356464/]
See Jean in previous Bijou Planks appearances including BP 2018 Day 179:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/41245771850/]
And BP 2019 Day 234:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/48599086862/]
And BP 2019 Day 359:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/49275025917/]
