Jean Grey is an original member of the X-Men who has constantly been plagued by a great
cosmic being. You can’t think Jean Grey without thinking about her relationship with
the Phoenix Force and all the moral grey areas that come with that issue. Regardless of whether
or not Marvel Girl had control, countless people have suffered because of her interaction
with the Phoenix and someone has to answer for those crimes.
Hello and welcome to the Show With Issues, I’m Auram, and like I said, someone has
to answer for the Phoenix’s crimes so our goal today is to try Jean Grey in a court
of law and once and for all and put an end to the whole affair!
The Phoenix Force is a cosmic entity that has existed for an extremely long time. It’s
a force of life whose purpose is to “burn away what doesn’t work.” What this comes
down to is essentially the Phoenix’s job being to eradicate what has become stagnant
and is no longer evolving. So in the case of humans vs. mutants, the Phoenix leans more
toward the mutant side, but that’s beside the point, when did Jean Grey come into contact
with the cosmic fire bird?
On one fateful Christmas, Jean and her fellow X-Men were captured by a group of Sentinels
created by Steven Lang and were harbored to his space station. The X-Men punched their
way out, as they do, but were met with a bigger problem. First they had to find a way to get
back to Earth, which Jean quickly remedied by reading the mind of a pilot. Everything
seemed fine and good, until they realized that they were in the midst of a solar radiation
storm. They decided to push through to Earth with Jean shielding the ship until it proved
to be too much to handle. Marvel Girl, on death’s door, was reached out to by the
Phoenix who told Jean that she would die without its help. By accepting, the Phoenix said,
she would gain her heart’s desire of saving her fellow X-Men.
Jean decided to succumb to the force which placed her in a coma, allowing the Phoenix
to take full control of her body. Phoenix placed the “real” Jean in the shuttle
bay where she rested while Phoenix continued to act as Jean, stealing a portion of her
consciousness. The shuttle fell to Earth, with everyone miraculously surviving. Phoenix
then went on to live life normally with the X-Men, but slowly became corrupted by human
emotion. After some Hellfire Club shenanigans, Phoenix, emotionally disturbed, transformed
into Dark Phoenix, a force of power and destruction without a human conscience. This is where
things get messy.
The Dark Phoenix was hungry for power so she fled to a nearby system where she absorbed
the energy of a star causing an explosion that killed billions of people. The Shi’ar,
a nearby alien race, witnessed this and came to the conclusion that the Phoenix must die
for her crimes against the universe. Professor X, not wanting to give up on Jean, challenged
Lilandra, leader of the Imperial Guard, to an irrefutable Shi’ar duel for the fate
of the Phoenix. Xavier chose his X-Men as his champions, with the Imperial Guard being
Lilandra’s. Everyone traveled to the Blue Area of the Moon, summoned all the courage
they required, counted to ten, and the duel commenced. Lilandra, losing, almost activated
her “Plan Omega,” which would destroy the entire solar system. Phoenix realizes
this and sacrifices herself to save everyone.
Now, of course, this isn’t the last we’d see of Jean Grey, her original body that was
back at the crash site soon woke up and lived her life without Phoenix influence, but that’s
not really what’s important here. The Phoenix had taken the lives of literally billions
of people, and it had to pay. This isn’t something that would truly be dealt with in
comics until the 2014 crossover event, The Trial of Jean Grey, but before we get into
that let’s go over a little schism that was happening over at Marvel during the Phoenix
Saga.
Sometime before Uncanny X-Men #135 came out, Jim Shooter, then editor-in-chief of Marvel,
looked at proofs for the issue and noticed the infamous scene of Phoenix destroying the
D’Bari system and killing billions. Shooter was perplexed by this as it strayed from his
original idea of the Phoenix being, “the X-Men’s Doctor Doom,” so he decided to
look at the next few issues in the series as well. He was agitated by what he found;
Claremont and Byrne had written a compromise between the X-Men and Shi’ar to depower
Jean and send her home.
Shooter heavily disagreed with this decision, likening it to, quote, “taking the German
army away from from Hitler and letting him go back to governing Germany,” end quote.
See, the way Shooter saw it Jean Grey was the Phoenix, they weren’t separate entities
as Claremont and Byrne intended, they were simply one and the same. Shooter told Claremont
that his ending didn’t work and that he needed to come up with a new one. A few days
passed and Claremont wildly suggested that they kill Phoenix permanently, but to his
surprise Shooter was 100% on board! So, yeah, Phoenix was originally going to be depowered
and sent back to Earth instead of sacrificing herself, who knows how that would’ve changed
things.
But, Phoenix killing herself is the ending we got and that’s really why she wasn’t
put on trial at the time. The Phoenix effectively died, leaving no one to answer for all those
deaths in the first place. Of course, Jean did come back to life, but it didn’t matter,
she just died again a few years later. So what’s going on in this Trial of Jean Grey
event? Who is actually being put on trial if Jean Grey is twice-dead? Well, it’s simple,
Jean Grey! Let me explain.
After Avengers vs. X-Men and the tragic death of Charles Xavier (at the hands of a Phoenix-influenced
Cyclops no less), Beast decided that he needed to do something to revive Xavier’s dream
of peaceful cohabitation between mutants and humans in the eye of Cyclops. He attempted
to accomplish this by bringing the original X-Men, Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and
Marvel Girl, to the present from the past and have them confront Cyclops to show him
what he’s become. So that’s who we’re dealing with here, a time-displaced version
of Jean Grey before she ever encountered the Phoenix Force in the first place.
How did the trial start then? Well, it was actually a bit sudden. After relocating the
team as a result of another crossover event, Battle of the Atom, Jean was kidnapped by
the Shi’ar to finally answer for her crimes as the Phoenix. The Guardians of the Galaxy
intercepted this and teamed up with the All-New X-Men to save Jean from trial. She’s charged
with genocide and the whole thing is a back-and-forth between people saying she’s guilty because
she’s still Jean Grey and will eventually be possessed by the Phoenix Force and people
saying she’s innocent seeing as she’s not the Jean who was possessed by the Phoenix
force in the first place. This sort of “pre-punishment” is actually the crux of what’s being dealt
with in the new Civil War II event that’s going on right now, but that’s an entire
video in and of itself.
At the end of it all, Jean is convinced that she’s totally guilty, which activates something
new inside, a powerful new form that the original Jean never achieved, once and for all making
her her own person. The trial ends in a punching contest for the most part. Jean escapes during
a recess, meets up with the rest of her team and they all fight the Shi’ar, reminiscent
of the original duel on the Blue Side of the Moon in the Phoenix Saga.
So the trial in the comics was kind of a bust; she was charged with genocide and nothing
really ever came of it except for some minor character changes and that new “final form”
thing. So how would she fare in our court system today? Now, let’s suspend disbelief
for a second here and say that mutants have the same rights as humans and that the entirety
of the galaxy is tried in the same legal system, because otherwise this video would be half
an hour of me talking out my ass.
So at its simplest, Jean committed murder, genocide sure, but she killed billions, so
that’s what we’re working with here. In US law there are four “types” of murder,
first-degree, second-degree, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter. Those first
two are essentially killing with intent and some kind of premeditation, or at the very
least were aware in the moments before that you were about to commit homicide. Manslaughter,
whether it be voluntary or involuntary, are the “crimes of passion,” or “self-defense”
versions. Surprisingly, the Phoenix would probably be charged with involuntary manslaughter
here. She didn’t intend to kill all those people, she just had a thirst for power that
she needed to quench that happened to kill billions of people. If this passed and she
was proven guilty, the Phoenix would be facing a very high fine or up to eight years in prison,
which is actually one of the suggestions Shooter gave to Claremont after demanding a new ending
be drawn up for the Phoenix Saga. Shooter thought it’d be interesting for the Shi’ar
to depower Jean and imprison her, but Claremont disagreed seeing as the X-Men would just never
stop trying to save her.
This sentence would probably make a lot of people upset, so if you’re the prosecutor
in this situation, you’re gonna need to find a way to up the stakes, so how about
a genocide charge? Surely that would present a bigger punishment, right? Well, unfortunately,
Jean is actually gets off scot-free here as well, if you can believe it. According to
the Genocide Convention that came into effect on December 12, 1951, acts of genocide are
only punishable if there is clear intent to commit the horrible act. So, really, at most,
Jean would be facing 8 years in prison, and, hell, if she had a good lawyer, she could
get that reduced even further!
Jean could plead innocent using an insanity defense, seeing as she was possessed by the
Phoenix when these crimes were committed. In fact, one of the ways the US court tests
for insanity is with the “irresistible impulse” test wherein someone’s mental state is deteriorated
to the point that they felt an irresistible urge to do whatever they did. Instead of being
sent to prison, she could be let out on probation or sent to some kind of mental institution.
The Phoenix was hungry and simply satiated her irresistible needs.
It really is scary to think that someone who commits an act so unimaginable can be back
on the streets in less than eight years. But, what do you all think about this? Should the
Phoenix have a more serious sentence for her crimes? Do you think the time-displaced Jean
should’ve answered for her future-self’s misdeeds? Personally, I don’t think Jean
should really be punished for any of this. Sure, someone should pay for the genocide,
but it was the Phoenix’s doing, not Jean Grey. Although I do have the benefit of being
the reader, who knows that Jean’s real consciousness was still alive elsewhere. Let’s have some
discussion in the comments!
That all being said though, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on anything I upload
every other Wednesday and every Saturday! Oh, and of course, thank you so much for watching!
Next time I BECOME THE PHOENIX!