Jean Grey’s place in this X-Factor is both very familiar and increasingly difficult to describe. She is a founding X-Man working with four old friends, but the events surroundin…

Jean Grey’s place in this X-Factor is both very familiar and increasingly difficult to describe. She is a founding X-Man working with four old friends, but the events surrounding Phoenix and Madelyne keep changing what it means for her to be herself among them. Her telekinesis gives the newly public team an immediate way to help people. In X-Factor #26, Jean contains an explosion and later moves injured people to hospitals. There is nothing abstract about that service. People need protection and transport, and she can provide both while the city is still deciding whether to trust her team. The search for Scott’s son puts her in a more uncomfortable position. Helping him means entering the unresolved story of his marriage to a woman who looks like her. Jean chooses to take part, but that does not make her uncertainty or anger disappear. She is a person inside this situation, not simply the power that carries everyone to the next location. Inferno forces the connection much further. In #38, Jean survives the confrontation with Madelyne by accepting the Phoenix and Madelyne into herself. Surviving leaves her with memories and influences that she has to understand afterward. Judgment War makes that struggle part of the action. In #43, Jean’s response to open space puts her in danger and requires Warren to rescue her. By #50, she has fought to regain control of herself, and the conclusion distinguishes the departure of those presences from the memories she retains. Jean spends this era helping hold X-Factor together while her own sense of identity is under pressure. Her considerable power matters, but so does the fact that she needs help from the same people she regularly protects.