[MEME] Character deaths!

First Jean had one of my favourite deaths in comics, and then she had one of my least favourites.

And that was the one that lasted fourteen years

Jean's sacrifice on the shuttle, rebirth as Phoenix, and development for better and worse from there is still one of my favourite arcs in Marvel, which also means I'm often very disappointed when it comes to both adaptations and callbacks in canon

Which tend to focus on Dark Phoenix and that's it

Jean saved the goddamn universe

and the Phoenix Force isn't evil

Now, as much as I love the story we got, the editorial bullshit mandating it behind the scenes was awful

Jean had to go evil because you can't just have a female character be that powerful, basically

Claremont worked damn hard to make sure it made sense as a story, and that it was her story, but yeah

And I'm of course glad that Jean got to come back, even if it undermined the original arc. Claremont basically retconned that anyway so we're good.

When X-Factor got good it became REALLY compelling. The nineties were...the nineties, but Jean still had a lot of really great stuff. The early two thousands are DEEPLY underrated.

And then we come to New X-Men and her bullshit tacked on death that lasted for FOURTEEN YEARS

I feel like they didn't want to bring Jean back right away out of some mistaken impression that Jean always comes back and this time will be different

For a little bit there was a flat out NO RESURRECTIONS thing; Claremont killed Betsy in the first issue of X-Treme X-Men around the time New X-Men started, planning to bring her back within an arc, only to be told NOPE NO ONE ELSE IS COMING BACK

But then, yeah, it seemed like they were really trying to subvert something that didn't even exist

to the point where certain writers acted like it was ludicrous for people to even ask

(JEAN IS DEAD bendis declares while resurrecting corsair)

over to the Distinguished Competition, babs has never actually died

but TKJ could very well have had basically the same effect without the ostranders

Funnily enough, back in the Bronze Age she was almost assassinated, wounded and assumed dead, in a ploy to use her against Batman

but by the end of the story she beats up the would-be assassin and saves bruce

Yeah, you also have to figure the editorial demand for less X-characters must have played into it some :|a

go get em babs don't let anybody kill you just run em over

Betsy did come back after House of M so maybe it was like "well we got rid of most of them so okay I guess"

THANKS SHE WILL