X-Men Origins: Jean Grey

Out of the series “X-Men Origins” I chose the background story of Jean Grey to review today. Jean, or “Marvel girl”, as she was called in an earlier stage, meets Professor Xavier at a young age. She is confused and blames herself for a tragic accident where she lost a good friend. The concerned parents contact several doctors and psychiatrists before asking Xavier to help her. Xavier tries to teach her how to control her gift and wants her to attend his “School for the Gifted Youngsters”.

The short story about how Jean Grey joined the X-Men does not try to introduce a new version of what could have happened. Even those people that only saw the X-Men movies have learned about Jean’s background in “X-Men: The Last Stand”, and the film version was very similar to this Origins comic.

The illustrations by Mike Mayhew seem very realistic, almost like painted photos, but especially the sequences where Xavier and Jean explore her mind show the real creativity of the artist. The story by Sean McKeever is pretty simple and it jumps radically through the events, but since it is a “one-shot”, he could not go into every detail. But Jean Grey’s story could absolutely fill a whole movie or book, as we could witness in “The Last Stand”. At the end, she really is the strongest mutant of them all… some say.

Story                  7

Art                      8

Reread Value     6

Overall Rating   7/10

Malik