Jean Grey #4: Now And Forever

Louise Simonson did some frankly incredible work in this issue, driving forward Jean’s story in a way that mirrors and (emphatically) undoes the work that Rosenberg put in divorcing her from the Phoenix during her Resurrection four years ago. Jean has always been a creature of more heart than mind (an interesting character trait, for a psychic) and so it makes perfect sense that she’d converse with herself via the language of dreams, mythological imagery, and metaphor. 

This is a portrait of a woman who is, if anything, too responsible — insisting that if something catastrophic happened it must have been her fault, despite the fact that she is emphatically not a god. The desire for extreme control is a manifestation of existential levels of terror. Carl Jung knew it. Robert Louis Stevenson (who wrote his own profound story about what happens to a person when they try to cut off their Shadows and live only in the light) knew it. And Louise Simonson knows it, too. And now she has made Jean realize it within the confines of this story. 

By admitting her fears, hopefully she can relinquish a little bit of the responsibility, and maybe even act in a way that will save everyone she holds dear. 

I’d like to speak for a moment about Bernard Chang’s art. He really brought out the big guns for this story. His panels rendered some heavy duty introspective scenes with dynamic flare. Comics are a medium based (like the art of religious iconography) in metaphor. Like icons, or the mural-scenes in medieval churches, they are produced to suit harsh deadlines and designed to carry the heavy weight of complex narrative in a way that is clear and easy for the viewer to understand, even if they are unfamiliar with the histories being adapted. Sometimes even great artists fall down (the last issue did not contain Chang’s best work) but sometimes the artists uses the pressure of tight deadlines and a good script as fuel. Chang did so, here, rendering the internal landscape of Jean’s psychology in a manner that was bright, vivid, and ultimately incredibly powerful. I especially loved the closeups of Jean’s face. It’s not often that a redhead is rendered, in comics, with realistic, freckled, flawed, skin. This final issue was, in every way, absolutely stellar.