Marvel Comics Exec Editor Admits X-Men Writers “Struggle” To Use Jean Grey Because She’s “So Gosh Darn Powerful”
An unsurprising revelation to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the Phoenix Force’s cosmic capabilities, Marvel Comics executive editor Tom Brevoort has revealed that Jean Grey’s relative absence in recent X-Men stories has nothing to with any sort of personal vendetta against her character and everything to do with her being just too powerful for the team’s regular adventures.
Brevoort, who also serves as the current group editor for the X-Men line, provided this insight into the Phoenix power-scaling problem while speaking with AIPT Comics‘ Chris Hassan regarding the merry band of mutants’ recently launched Shadows of Tomorrow publishing initiative, which will center around the formation of a new “central hub for mutant interaction” known as the Graymatter Lane academy.
At one point asked as to whether or not Jean’s absence from the Shadows of Tomorrow promotional image was cause for concern in regards to future appearances, Brevoort assured fans, “I can say with certainty that you’ll see Jean in the course of the year. It may not be as soon as you’d like, especially since as soon as you’d like apparently means last week. But it’s not like we’re not going to feature the character.”
Making an ostensible reference to the low-sales cancellation of her recent solo series, which if still running would have likely given Jean a justifiable reason for being away from the team, the X-editor then explained, “The honest answer is a couple of plans shifted, and a couple of things didn’t end up where we thought they were going to be, and that means we have to reposition and rework some of what we were going to be doing.”
“That happens from time to time. There are larger things going on both internally at Marvel in the story planning that we’re doing and in the marketplace, in general. So we’ve been shifting a bunch of things around, not just in the X-world, but in various areas, and that’s impacted some stuff that would’ve been here sooner, that won’t necessarily be there quite as soon — or even in exactly the same form.”
“But it’s not like we’re necessarily going back to a Greyless world. There will be plenty of Grey to be had. It just may take a little longer to get there than we had intended, you know, six months ago.”
From there reaffirming his view of Jean as more suited for cosmic entanglements than Earth-based mutant mayhem, Brevoort admitted to his host, “I think one of the things that we struggle with, quite honestly, is figuring out how to introduce her as an element into ongoing X-Men team storylines when she so obviously tilts the entire table in whatever direction she happens to be standing in, because she’s just so gosh darn powerful.”
“And the solution to that in the past has always kind of just been, well, just knock her powers down. That feels reductive in a way. There may be some version of that we have to do to find a way to go, OK, she’s back with Cyclops and the guys in Alaska, and they still have a problem somehow. So that’s the most difficult challenge when it comes to Jean, where she is, and how she’s been set up.
“Having said that, it’s one that we’re actively grappling with and trying to find resolutions for. I don’t just want her to be off by herself. One of the reasons I gave Ryan Stegman the OK to use her in the X-Men Vol. 7 Annual was it felt like she kind of ended up inadvertently being a little bit stranded off by herself in space, dealing with some of the cosmic ends of things, but not a lot of X-characters.”
Closing out his thoughts on the original X-Men member’s current status, Brevoort ultimately noted to his host, “And again, there were one or two things there that might have hit it a certain way.”
“She might have been involved in Imperial at a certain point, but it didn’t end up going that way, where we might have taken better advantage of that. But this is how the cards fell out, and so now we have to deal with where we happen to be on the board.”
To be fair, while the narrative minefield presented by the Phoenix’s insane power levels is to some extent self-inflicted thanks to the ever-continuous nature of Western comic books, Brevoort is right in identifying that Jean’s presence in the X-Men’s day-to-day affairs would render all potential danger or problems null and void.
After all, as seen in her aforementioned Phoenix Vol. 1 series, she now possess the ability to casually turn an entity as strong as Gorr the God Butcher into a literal star, all while light years upon lights years away on the other side of the galaxy; Kind of hard to convince readers that Sentinels, or Orochis, or even Apocalypse pose a threat of she’s on the front lines.
Of course, it’s on Marvel Comics to right that ship, and hopefully they do so soon, particularly because Jean’s current costume is an absolute banger.
