Alternative versions of Jean Grey

Alternate versions of Jean Grey
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	X-Men #1 (September 1963)
Created by	Stan Lee Jack Kirby
See also	Jean Grey in other media

This page consists of alternative versions of the Marvel Comics character Jean Grey.

1602

In the Marvel 1602 alternative universe miniseries, Jean Grey fakes her identity (and gender), posing as "John Grey", a member of the "Witchbreed". The group was led by Carlos Javier (the Charles Xavier of the 1602 universe). Like her Marvel Universe counterpart, Jean has telekinetic powers. Besides Javier and Sir Nicholas Fury, the only one who knows of Jean's deception is Scotius Summerisle (Scott Summers), who is attracted to her. "John" also has a close friendship with Werner (Angel) who only learns her true gender after she sacrifices her life for her comrades, during their battle against Otto Von Doom (Doctor Doom). Werner tells Scott that he was attracted to Jean, although he had thought that she was male. After her death, her friends gave her a burial at sea. When her corpse is cremated, the fire forms a giant Phoenix raptor before disappearing.^[1]

Age of Apocalypse

In the Age of Apocalypse storyline, Jean is a student of Magneto.^[2] She is forced to suppress her telepathic powers in order to escape from the Shadow King's attacks. She eventually falls in love with fellow student Weapon X. Jean is later kidnapped by Mr. Sinister, who offers her a place among his team. She refuses, and is sent to Sinister's breeding pens. Weapon X rescues her, but not before Sinister extracted her DNA and combined it with that of Cyclops to engineer the perfect mutant, X-Man. Weapon X and Jean leave the X-Men and join forces with the Human High Council. She learns of the plan to drop nuclear bombs on the United States to kill Apocalypse. She confronts Weapon X, then leaves him to try to stop the attack with the aid of Cyclops. She's apparently killed at the hands of Cyclops' brother, Prelate Havok, before she can hold back the nuclear bombs with her telekinesis.^[3]

In the tenth-anniversary limited series, it is revealed that Jean was the one that stopped the nuclear attack from the Human High Council with the last of her powers. She was also "resurrected" by Sinister and began displaying Phoenix Force powers, known in this reality as "Mutant Alpha" abilities. Jean doesn't remember her old life at first, so Sinister manipulated her to create a new team to fight the X-Men, the Sinister Six. During the fight between the two teams, Logan is able to connect emotionally with Jean. She turns on Sinister and incinerates him. Jean and Logan reunite, and she becomes leader of the X-Men at Magneto's behest.

Days of Future Past

In the timeline known as the Days of Future Past, Jean dies when Mastermind detonated a nuclear device in Pittsburgh, though not before she had given birth to her and Scott's daughter, Rachel, a few months before. There are conflicting reports whether this Jean had been replaced by the Phoenix Force.

Earth X

The past of Jean Grey of Earth-9997 mirrors that of her Earth-616 counterpart. In recent history, Jean had once again lost her telepathic abilities; the circumstances behind her loss of this ability are as yet unrevealed. However, this would eventually spare Jean's life when the psychic birth of the Skull resulted in the death of every telepath on the planet, killing Jean's mentor Professor Xavier. Shortly after, the X-Men disbanded. Either prior to or shortly after the disbanding of the X-Men, Jean would leave Cyclops after a long relationship to pursue a romance with Scott's rival for Jean's affections, Wolverine. However, Wolverine and Jean's life would devolve into a New York stereotype of the bickering couple. Both would put on significant amounts weight and would resort to bickering with each other. When Wolverine would refuse to help the heroes defend New York from the Skull and his army, Jean would leave Wolverine in disgust, telling him that she was really Madelyne Pryor to rankle Wolverine even more. Jean would resurface years later at the wedding of Medusa and King Britain, which served as a brief reunion of the surviving members of the X-Men. Jean would reconcile with Wolverine; however, the two would remain apart. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

Marvel Mangaverse Jean Grey

In the original Marvel Mangaverse X-Men and X-Men Ronin stories, Jean is a powerful telepath and telekinetic and calls herself Marvel Girl, but she also has access to the Phoenix Force. The three-issue X-Men: Phoenix - Legacy of Fire limited series, involves a separate character based on Jean Grey named "Jena Pyre". Jena and her sister Madelyne are the guardians of the "Phoenix Sword", whose power Jean absorbs. The miniseries depicts the lead characters in near-nudity. The series' rating was raised from PG to PG+ before issue #1 was released, and the series was moved to the MAX mature readers imprint for issues #2 and #3.

Marvel Zombies 2

Jean Grey as Dark Phoenix appears in the sequel to Marvel Zombies, now a member of the Zombie Galactus, or rather Galacti, alongside other heroes. The zombie Hulk punches through her body and squishes her head while she attempted to subdue him, thus killing her.^[4]

Mutant X

Jean’s history in the Mutant X universe is quite muddled. Under the name of Ariel, she was a founding member of the X-Men and in love with their leader, Havok. Some time later during a mission, Jean was believed dead and later on Havok married her lookalike, Madelyne Pryor, obviously Jean’s clone. In reality, Jean was saved by Apocalypse and Magneto, and hidden from Professor X who was capturing all the telepaths in the world for his evil plans. When she re-surfaced, Jean was working together with Sinister and Apocalypse to recruit the aid of Havok’s new team, the Six, against an evil Xavier. That crisis having passed, Jean joined the Six, as Madelyne had been turned into the Goblin Queen and was no longer with them. Jean also mentioned having been in a relationship with Wolverine, and to having worked with SHIELD for a while, though it was unclear where exactly these events fit in with her history and also whether Jean had access to the Phoenix Force.

Amalgam Comics

In the Amalgam Comics community, Jean Grey was combined with DC's Fire to create Firebird. She was part of the JLX until the Dark Firebird Saga where she joined the Hellfire League of Injustice.

Exiles

On the Exiles's second mission lands them in the middle of an alternative reality Dark Phoenix Saga. The team learns that in this world Jean actually is the Dark Phoenix, and they participate in the Shiar trial by combat, disguised as representatives of the world she destroyed. Originally, their goal is to prevent the Shiar Imperial Guard from killing Jean before she can overcome the Dark Phoenix, however when Jean vaporizes Storm, Gladiator, and Cyclops, they realize that this version of Jean has lost herself to the Dark Phoenix and must die. They are able to overwhelm her momentarily, allowing Wolverine to get close enough to stab her through the heart, resulting in an explosion that kills her and vaporizes the moon and the Shiar ships orbiting it. The Exiles are removed from this reality, right before the blast.^[5]

New Exiles

After the New Exiles land on the world of warring empires, they encounter Dame Emma Frost, head of Britain's Department X and founder of Force-X. This team includes John Grey, a male version of Jean who is codenamed Sunspot and displays telekinetic abilities.^[6]

Red Queen

A counterpart of Jean Grey from Earth-9575, it is not clear whether this counterpart of Jean had access to the Phoenix Force^[7][8] since she had most of her powers taken away for crimes unknown. Banished from her own universe, she ended up on Earth-998, where she pretended to be a reincarnation of the recently deceased Queen Madelyne. The evil Jean set out to become not only queen of Britain but of the entire world. To reach that goal and find a way of restoring her powers, Jean looked for the ultimate weapon across the multiverse: the various incarnations of Nate Grey. She lured many of them to her kingdom, though most of them died after having been used by her for a while. Queen Jean also traveled to the main 616 universe where she replaced Nate Grey’s companion, Madelyne Pryor, wormed her way into Nate’s mind, and returned to her world with him as her weapon. However, Nate broke free and fought against her, culminating in her draining the life-force of all her "subjects" in an attempt to use the power to kill him. He eventually kills her by creating a sun around her, burning her to death.

Shadow-X

New Excalibur battles an evil counterpart of the Jean Grey, who is a member of the Shadow-X, the X-Men of an alternative reality in which Professor X was possessed by the Shadow King. They are brought to Earth-616 as a result of M-Day. This counterpart of Jean seemed to have access to the Phoenix Force too. In New Excalibur #24 she was stabbed in the shoulder with a broadsword by Petrie, one of Albion's Shadow Captains (de-powered mutants given ability-enhancing suits). After beating him, she used her power to gain the knowledge necessary to deactivate the device Albion had used to nullify London's supply of electricity. The energy required to perform this, as well as the blood loss caused by the stab wound, killed her.^[9]

Ultimate Marvel

In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Jean Grey is a responsible but extrovert young woman; scathingly sarcastic and a bit of a tease, and she secretly reads other people's minds, particularly the other members of the X-Men. Early in the series, she has very short, cropped hair and prefers to dress in a rocker type style. Eventually she becomes more mature and wears clothes that are more conservative, and grows her hair somewhat longer. She has a brief affair with Wolverine, but when Wolverine reveals how he was originally sent to kill Professor X, Jean is angry and ends the relationship. She later begins to date Cyclops although she is occasionally frustrated by his shyness. Xavier found Jean Grey while she was in a mental hospital, having problems controlling her telepathy and having troublesome visions of a Phoenix raptor. It is established at the start of the series that her age is 19. She was Xavier's second student after Cyclops.

The exact nature of the Phoenix in the Ultimate Universe has not been revealed, but very often Jean is haunted by visions and hallucinations of the Phoenix early in the Ultimate timeline. The powers seem to reveal themselves when Jean gets angry. It appears, due to tests conducted in Ultimate X-Men #71 that the Phoenix is an actual entity and not an uncovered aspect of Jean's own mind. According to the Fire and Brimstone story arc, Jean's Phoenix powers come from the Phoenix God, although Xavier does not believe this. Jean kills many members of the Hellfire club in a fit of Phoenix powered rage before Xavier calms her down. Much later in the story Jean uses her Phoenix powers often. She starts with her powers out of her control due to her anger, accidentally killing two mercenaries who were attacking the X-Men. She feels guilty over the incident for weeks, but after a while, she manifests signs of the Phoenix, beginning to draw upon more and more of the residual Phoenix energies buried within her mind to help the X-Men on several occasions, combating Magneto and the deceptive and manipulative Magician. It has been revealed that Jean envisions imaginary tiny, green goblins carrying out her telekinetic activities.

When the man from the future, Cable, attacks the X-Men, he kidnaps Jean Grey but she is later rescued by the X-Men and Bishop. After Professor X's apparent death, Jean has become the headmistress of the school, along with Cyclops. She did not join Bishop's new team of X-Men but has assisted the team when needed, often butting heads with Cyclops over when to help and when not to help.

Further down the line, The X-Men hunt Sinister down, finding him in the Morlock tunnels slaughtering several Morlocks in order to reach his goal; to be reborn as Apocalypse. He has the power to control mutants and brings former X-Men Cyclops, Jean, Iceman, Rogue and Toad to NYC for a giant survival battle royal. The Fantastic Four intercept Cyclops' team, where Sue Storm traps Jean in a force field, rendering her a mere spectator. Jean is broken free of the bubble when Professor X, able to walk, uses his telepathy to free her and the other reserve X-Men, leaving her to subdue the other team of X-Men and the Morlocks. She hesitantly calls for help when Apocalypse puts Xavier on the brink of death and the Phoenix Force responds, physically manifesting herself and merging with Jean to fight Apocalypse.^[10] Using her unimaginable powers, she brings Apocalypse to his knees and melts his armour. Having fully merged with the Phoenix, Jean reverts recent history, allowing the X-Men to remember. She then travels across the universe, causing war and suicide amongst different races. When she reaches her destination, the Silver Surfer arrives to warn her but she pushes on to find Heaven.

Jean later inexplicably turns up at the Mansion and resettles with the X-Men. But when Alpha Flight kidnaps Northstar, Jean strives to push the X-Men to fight harder, especially when Cyclops leaves to protect Colossus, Rogue, Dazzler and Angel, who were using Banshee to rescue Northstar. Unfortunately, they believe they've failed and became Banshee addicts. Jean leads her X-Men to deal with Colossus but falls into a trance, having visions of her father, who tells her not to push her friends to failure. She recovers Northstar, crippled from the waist down, and less aggressive. Everyone but Scott returns home, so Jean tracks him into space, where he was staring down at Earth, feeling omnipotent. But Jean reminds him he's in need, provoking him into attacking her. During the ensuing fight Banshee were wears off and Scott almost succumbs to vacuum. Jean encompassed him in her fire.

During the events of the Ultimate Marvel crossover event Ultimatum, Magneto's Manhattan tidal wave kills Nightcrawler and Dazzler. Scott, Jean, and Logan go as the "original X-Men" to stop Magneto once and for all. The remaining X-Men along with the Fantastic Four, Ultimates and SHIELD assault Magneto's base, during which they lose several more members including Wolverine, who has his Adamantium ripped from his bones by Magneto. In the end Magneto is defeated when Jean downloads Nick Fury's memories into Magneto, which reveals that mutants are not the next stage of human evolution, but rather a super-soldier experiment gone wrong. Horrified by the truth, Magneto surrenders, and Cyclops executes him with his optic blast.

Soon after, Jean is in Washington with the remaining X-Men, where Cyclops makes a speech, attempting to bring a peace to the anti-mutant hostilities and to ask that all mutants surrender to the government. He is then assassinated by Quicksilver, who lodges a bullet into his skull. Scott dies in the arms of Storm and Colossus, while Rogue rushes a distraught Jean to safety. Jean is later seen in Ultimate X-Men Requiem alongside Rogue and Iceman tearing down the Xavier Institute and everything on the estate. They bury the bodies of the various deceased X-Men on the estate's remains.

Jean then moves to Baltimore, dying her hair black under the alias of Karen Grant. She begins working at a shopping mall called Cherry Square Shopping Center, and is now in a relationship with the mall cop, Dave. She has been living in Baltimore for 3 or 4 months but uses her telepathy to make people believe she had worked there for 3 years.

Jean discovers that Dave has put her photo on Facebook, making her angry and culminating in separation. Not much later Mystique and Sabretooth show up and a fight starts, leaving Dave dead. Meanwhile at home, packing up to disappear, Jean meets the son of Wolverine, Jimmy, for the first time.^[11] Jean is later seen travelling with Jimmy to Chicago to recruit a mutant known as Derek Morgan, then to south California to locate Liz Allan.

One night Jimmy is attacked by Sabretooth. Jean had sought Bruce Banner for help and a fight ensues. Quicksilver then arrives with his newly formed Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy, but is defeated by Jean and her recruits. Nicholas Fury reveals that the team Jean made was part of the Xavior Protocols, and that he is willing to help mutants on the run from the government. He later enlists them in S.H.I.E.L.D. forming a group known as the Ultimate X.

Jean and her team are seen en-route to the SEAR to aid Hawkeye. After witnessing the heaven created by the Xorn/Zorn brothers in Tian, Ultimate X group deserts, deciding to remain there. Nick Fury reveals that Jean is using her telekinetic powers to make the brothers believe she is in Tian in order to have an "inside man" when she is really in America. However a recent meeting between Karen and Zorn implies that she may being double crossing Fury as she is physically in Tian as well as revealing her real identity as Jean Grey.

She has now sent a spy to keep tabs on what Kitty is up to with Reservation X.

What If?

In What If #27, Jean Grey was not the last X-Man standing during the fight with the Imperial Guard and was successfully 'lobotomised', remaining with the X-Men as mansion staff, eventually re-manifesting her powers when a mission to aid the Shi'ar forced the X-Men to fight Galactus so that Jean could drive him away. Although she appeared redeemed from her past, her Phoenix persona secretly manifested itself at night to feed on dead worlds and uninhabited stars until Jean was confronted about her actions, her resulting anger when discovered causing her to lash out and accidentally kill the X-Men, her guilt and grief resulting in her consuming the entire universe as the entire Phoenix was unleashed.

Another version of Phoenix remained powerless and happily married to Cyclops until an attack by Mastermind caused her to remember her true origin, prompting her to kill the original Jean Grey to keep her new life. Although she tried to help the X-Men in secret, she was eventually convinced to leave Earth when Destiny told her that only death and destruction would result if she remained on Earth.^[12]

What If? X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire: Vulcan becomes the Phoenix

Vulcan ends up inside the M'kraan Crystal instead of Professor X, and from there he gained the power of the Phoenix Force after entering the White Hot Room and killed all the Phoenix's hosts. Using the Phoenix Force he destroys seven galaxies, the entire Annihilation Wave, the Shi'ar and Kree Empires before travelling to Earth. Using the Phoenix Force, he restores Krakoa before engaging in battle with Cyclops, Havok, Rachel and Cable. Vulcan appears to be winning until a strange outside force causes Vulcan to lose control of the Phoenix Force. After a brief mental battle between Vulcan and his family, Vulcan accepts his defeat by letting go of the rage and hate inside him as he dies.

As the host of the Phoenix Force, Vulcan travels to the White Hot Room, where he reverts to the form of a child, and is comforted by the strange force who reveals to Gabriel that wielding the ultimate power would not give him what he truly wanted, which was the wish of being loved. The force then reveals herself to be Jean Grey, White Phoenix of the Crown. As she reclaims the power from Vulcan it's revealed that it was Jean that had helped Rachel and Havok escape from the Shi'ar Empire by opening a teleportation portal to Earth before the Empire's fall at the hands of Vulcan, and it was her that prevented Vulcan from fully accessing the Phoenix Force in Krakoa.

What If? Astonishing X-Men: What if Jean Grey came back

Jean is resurrected during the "Gifted" Storyline instead of Colossus. It is revealed that the Phoenix, who died at the hands of Xorneto, was yet another fake Phoenix Force copy and that Jean is still alive, being tested and tortured by Ord. The Phoenix Force meanwhile was hiding within the bodies of the Stepford Cuckoos and later merged with Emma Frost to destroy Breakworld and attempt vengeance on the X-Men, killing the Cuckoos and Beast. Although there is obvious sexual tension between Jean and Cyclops, Scott claims to be in love with Emma, which allows for Shadowcat to rip out Emma's heart, killing both of them. Jean is then shown with her arm around Cyclops at Shadowcat and Emma's funeral, hinting that Scott and Jean have resumed their relationship.

X-Men Noir

In X-Men Noir, Jean Grey is depicted as the grifter for the X-Men, a group of sociopathic teenagers recruited by Professor Charles Xavier. Adept at running scams, she had a reputation of controlling the minds of men. She is seemingly found murdered, covered in slash marks, in the opening of the series.^[13] It is revealed later, however, that the victim was in fact Anne-Marie Rankin, whom Jean switched places with in order to collect the millions Anne-Marie was to inherit. She is also revealed to be a complete sociopath, who does what she does not because of any past trauma, but because that's just what she is. She then dies when she is tackled off the roof of a building by Robert Halloway.^[14]

X-Men Forever

In Chris Claremont's X-Men Forever, Jean is in nearly all respects the same character as the mainline Marvel Universe character.^[15] Her flirtations with Logan are explored more in-depth in the first few issues of the title, and she confesses shortly after Logan's death that she loved him.^[16] She and Scott both recognize their romantic relationship is over, due to the revelations.^[17] Claremont has also shown that Jean still possesses the Phoenix Force, and has manifested it twice, once in the first issue to subdue Fabian Cortez after he has apparently killed Logan and Kitty Pryde,^[18] and again to attack Storm in retaliation for her killing of Logan.^[19] She has, recently, been acknowledged as the field leader of the team during Cyclops' leave of absence.^[20] Jean continues to demonstrate signs of the Phoenix Force and wears a new blue and gold X-Men uniform which is cut in a similar style to her old Phoenix costume. After dealing with Logan's loss Jean began a relationship with the Beast but it ended after he sacrificed himself. With Cyclops's return, Jean began to share leadership of the X-Men with him and eventually she would be reunited with the true Storm. In the finale of the series, it is hinted that she and Scott resume their relationship.

Prelude to Deadpool Corps

In the second issue, Deadpool visits a world where Jean and Rogue are orphaned kids at an orphanaged run by Emma Frost. There they go to a dance along with Prof. X's Orphanage for Troubled kids. It seems at a young age she has a thing for Cyclops but tells him to maybe wait 20 years.

Battle of the Atom

The Jean Grey of the future- established as the temporally-displaced young Jean Grey grown up- is depicted as a very powerful mutant who has to wear the Xorn mask to contain her powers, being capable of removing it for only a few minutes before becoming dangerous to her environment. She is destroyed in a clash with the original five X-Men, including her younger self; Charles Xavier II, the new leader of the displaced Brotherhood, attempts to attack the team using a psychic illusion of Xorn, but this deception is exposed by the young Jean.

X-Men: No More Humans

When Raze - the future son of Wolverine and Mystique, now trapped in the present - attempted to force the X-Men to accept his new 'status quo' by teleporting all humans off Earth and summoning other mutants from worlds where they were being oppressed, one of the mutants he summoned to be a member of his new Brotherhood was a Jean Grey who was still in her 'Dark Phoenix' state, barely under the control of her world's Mastermind. However, when she confronted the temporally-displaced Jean Grey, the younger Jean was able to appeal to her Dark Phoenix self to help them undo Raze's actions and save the displaced humans while also creating a new Earth in a pocket dimension for the refugee mutants.^[21]

References

1. Marvel 1602 #7
2. X-Men Chronicles 01 (1995);
3. X-Men: Omega (1995)
4. Marvel Zombies 2 #5 (2008)
5. Exiles #3-4
6. New Exiles #9
7. Red Queen (Jean Grey) at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
8. Red Queen (Jean Grey) at the Comic Book DB
9. New Excalibur #24
10. Ultimate X-Men #92
11. Ultimate Comics X #2
12. What If? vol.2 #32-33
13. X-Men Noir #1
14. X-Men Noir #4
15. Interview with Chris Claremont at ComixMix News "No, it’s the Marvel Universe, there’s no real change to it, other than the fact that in a very practical sense that the subsequent sixteen, seventeen years of material following my departure doesn’t exist."
16. X-Men Forever #3
17. X-Men Forever #5
18. X-Men Forever #1
19. X-Men Forever #3
20. in X-Men Forever #11, Beast explicitly refers to her as such.
21. X-Men: No More Humans