Fictional Obituary: Jean Grey / Phoenix, Marvel Comics (Comic spoilers: the original Dark Phoenix Saga, written at the time of X-Men #138)

Fictional Obituary: Jean Grey / Phoenix, Marvel Comics (Comic spoilers: the original Dark Phoenix Saga, written at the time of X-Men #138) Jean Grey, a founding member of the X-Men who served first as Marvel Girl and later as Phoenix, has died on the Moon following the team's confrontation with the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. Scott Summers, her longtime partner and fellow X-Man, was with her at the end. Her teammates have returned to Earth, where they and her family are mourning her. The daughter of John and Elaine Grey, Jean entered Charles Xavier's school as a young woman learning to live with abilities few people around her could understand. She became part of the original team alongside Scott, Hank McCoy, Warren Worthington and Bobby Drake. The school gave them training and a shared purpose, but it also became the place where friendships and attachments developed during years that most of their contemporaries spent far from danger. Known initially as Marvel Girl, Jean used telekinesis and, as her abilities developed, telepathy. She helped the team confront threats to humans and mutants while learning how much responsibility came with entering another person's thoughts or moving objects through concentration alone. Her relationship with Scott grew through that early life together. His reserve and the demands of leading the team often complicated their ability to speak openly. Their attachment nevertheless endured changes in the X-Men, separations and repeated threats to their lives. To those who knew them, their relationship belonged to the history of the school itself. Jean also built a life beyond her place beside him. She pursued work, maintained friendships and formed a particularly close bond with Ororo Munroe after the team's membership changed. She was part of the connection between the original students and the people who joined them later. During a mission in space, she took the controls of a damaged shuttle to bring her companions home through a lethal radiation storm. Her emergence afterward as Phoenix brought power on a scale that transformed her role among the X-Men. That power helped avert disaster within the M'Kraan Crystal and placed her at the center of events reaching far beyond Earth. It also made her a target. Jason Wyngarde, known as Mastermind, subjected her to sustained manipulation as part of his effort to gain standing within the Hellfire Club. The resulting crisis led to the emergence of Dark Phoenix and destruction on an immense scale. The loss of the D'Bari world and the lives upon it brought the attention of the Shi'ar and their allies. Xavier and the X-Men sought a way to save Jean. Their challenge to the Shi'ar resulted in a battle on the Moon, with her fate dependent on its outcome. During the fighting, the Phoenix power returned. Jean's death followed while her friends were still trying to prevent another catastrophe. Her family and teammates gathered for her funeral on Earth. For Scott, the farewell brought memories of their earliest days together, when the lives ahead of them had seemed much longer and the school was still a new beginning. The people around him mourned someone who had shared that beginning and remained central to what followed. Jean is survived by her parents, her sister Sara and the people with whom she made a home among the X-Men. Her death leaves a profound loss in a family already forced to share her with dangers they could rarely influence. To the wider universe, Phoenix had become a matter of power, judgment and fear. At the graveside, her parents and friends were saying goodbye to Jean.