Return of the queen.
After her sacrifice to protect the world from Dark Phoenix, a reborn Jean Grey finds her fellow X-Men adrift in an increasingly anti-mutant society - and it's up to her to remind them of their mission.
I know you like stories about how I'm dumb, so here's a doozy for you: I only recently (as in "the past few years") realized that when the comics said Jean became Phoenix after the X-Men crashed into Jamaica Bay, that was a place in New York, not Jamaica Jamaica. For years I've thought it all happened in the Caribbean. But no, there's a town called Jamaica on Long Island (it comes from yameco, the Lenape word for "beaver," while the country gets its name from the Taino Xaymaca, "good springs"), and the town is on an estuary, thus, "Jamaica Bay." Depending on where they hit the water, they crashed in either Brooklyn or Queens. And now, if you also didn't know that, we can both be smarter together.
Bob Layton and Butch Guice thought it was weird that three members
of the original X-Men were all in The Defenders instead of being in an X-book, so they pitched the idea of bringing Cyclops out of retirement to get the band back together, so to speak. Of course, Jean Grey was dead at the time, and Jim Shooter had made an edict that there would be no resurrecting her unless she could be absolved of the planetary-scale murders she'd committed; so the twist of X-Factor was going to be that it was the surviving original X-Men... with Dazzler as the team girl!
Logically, this Jean Grey uses the same molds introduced
for Phoenix - they're supposed to have the same body, so it would be weirder if she didn't. It's a very leggy sculpt, especially for someone who's supposed to be 5'6", but it has better articulation than the other common molds. [and since it's been a while since we've brought this up and some people need constant reminders, it's not a "buck" --ed.] The costume is entirely done with paint, leaving this available for any number of more uses in the future, and it's not like this body shape is not accurate to the art in the comic at the time. You get your choice of closed fists or open gesturing hands.
This paint job represents Jean in her first X-Factor costume, a green suit with yellow gloves and a large X covering the entire torso.
That matches the Cyclops they did recently, though there would have been more potential if they'd chosen her later, red-with-yellow costume. Which would have gone with the Retro Collection Cyclops from several years ago, and would have eventually allowed them to do a non-furry Beast. So it goes. The colors chosen are very nice, a deep forest green and a yellow that's vibrant rather than sickly, and the red they picked for her hair is red red. Like, RED red red.
The figure includes two heads. Right out of the package, she's got one
that's wearing a full mask that just leaves her hair sticking out the bottom, and that one is sculpted with a very angry look, sneering at whoever she's looking at. You don't often see superhero women allowed to look "ugly" (quote/unquote; you know what we mean), so that's refreshing. The alternate head is smiling (and showing a lot of upper gum, unexpectedly), and teh mask only goes up as fa as her eyes, leaving her forehead bare and her hair flowing freely. Not only is this a lot wavier than the hair on the first head, it's also a lot longer.
The second head also allows us to use her one accessory, a small pink flare of psychic energy. It's just a small (approximately ¼" x ½")
shape with several small, wavy spikes coming off it, but you can tuck the longer spike along the bottom behind the curl of hair that falls down toward her eye, and now it looks like the the energy is emerging from her forehead, just the way it's drawn in thc comics. I wasn't too keen on building a Marvel Legends X-Factor team, but this little extra is what made me decide to get Jean (when she was on sale).
So we got Cyclops in X-Men Legends Series 12, we get Jean in the Retro Collection, a new Iceman in Secret Wars packaging... they're absolutely going to want to reuse those Angel wings at some point, so all that leaves is for there to be a re-release of Beast and we'll have the whole team. Jean isn't very exciting by herself, but a good sale price and the inclusion of a clever little accessory no one's tried before make her feel more worthwhile.
-- 02/02/26
What costume would you most want her to wear? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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