John Byrne on Jean coming back

What's the story behind the return of Jean Grey?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Why Marvel let Bob Layton bring Phoenix back, I will never know.

JB: Bob Layton didn't bring her back -- I did. And it was not Phoenix who was brought back, but Jean Grey.

The sequence went something like this: After the Phoenix Saga -- and long before it developed this retroactive titling -- Chris would simply Not Let Go. Not an issue of X-Men passed without SOME reference to Phoenix. (I still remember being annoyed when he wrote the Wendigo-eye-view scene with Nightcrawler in the second Alpha Flight appearance as if it was a sunset (I'd asked Glynis for red tones in my margin notes) and had NC launch into a whole schpiel about how the colors reminded him of Jean, etc, etc. He, of course, should not have been Seeing those colors! Thus the effect of the scene was lost.) Sideways from this, an annoying little eager-beaver fanboy named Kurt Busiek had come up with the idea that Phoenix was not, in fact, Jean, but a precise duplicate created by the Phoenix Force as a "housing" for itself, and the REAL Jean was in suspended animation at the bottom of Jamaica Bay, where the shuttle crashed. When Layton came up with the idea for X-FACTOR, I was reminded of this notion and suggested it would be a way to put Jean back into the group. Shooter agreed, and Roger Stern and I concocted a two part crossover between THE AVENGERS and FANTASTIC FOUR to accomplish just this end.

(Secrets behind the comics: It was at this time that I announced to Marvel, through a letter to boss Mike Hobson, Shooter, and FF editor Mike Carlin -- ah, the days before E-mail!! -- that I had accepted the Superman assignment at DC. The two Mikes wished me luck, which is what you would expect from professionals. Shooter's response was to suddenly realize that the FF story he had approved at every step, from plot, to pencils, to script -- after all, he had to have all his fingers in this very important pie -- was horribly flawed, and that a good third of it had to be redrawn by Jackson Guice and rewritten by Chris Claremont. Ah, well!! C'est la guerre!) (2/22/98)



Top | Index



Does the return of Jean Grey lessen the impact of the Dark Phoenix Saga?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Yeah, but what can you possibly do on a company-owned book that can't be ruined? I mean, they brought back Jean Grey, but that doesn't make reading the story of her death any less poignant.

JB: Well, speaking as the "they" in question, I actually think the death of Phoenix (not Jean) was made even MORE poignant by the revelation that the thing that killed itself was a doppelganger. The story was, after all, about the triumph of the human spirit. By saying Phoenix was not Jean, we now say the human spirit is so powerful that even a COPY will make the ultimate sacrifice when the circumstance demands. Or, at least, that's what it WOULD say, if Chris hadn't kept beating that particular dead horse. (4/1/1998)