Listen to the episode here!
At some point, someone pointed out that this is technically Anniversary X, and it was a pretty slippery slope from there.
We are aware that our favorite romance has its share of detractors. We don’t care. (Art by David Wynne.)
Actual photograph of Rachel and Miles at their 8th-grade graduation dance. (X-Men #32)
This is literally as explicit a conversation they have about it for… pretty much the entire Silver Age. (X-Men #32)
Proposal #1. Unfortunately, Jean is a) actually the Phoenix Force, and b) about to die on the moon. (Uncanny X-Men #136)
Not directly pertinent, but it’s one of our favorite moments. (Uncanny X-Men #137)
Scott saying goodbye to Jean immediately before marrying Madelyne Pryor. That really, really didn’t work out, but we like the sentiment–that “true love” doesn’t always have to mean “one true love.” (Uncanny X-Men #175)
Scott doesn’t actually work out that Madelyne and Jean are identical until X-Factor #14. Headcanon: Hella prosopagnosia.
Scott and Jean are reunited in a panel that appears to have fled from Apartment 3-G to X-Factor #1.
Jean gets Madelyne and Phoenix’s memories–and her own telepathy–back. (X-Factor #38)
Proposal #2. (X-Factor #53)
Jean’s response. (X-Factor #53)
“Fatal Attractions” was a rough time for everyone, but probably worst for Wolverine. (X-Men vol. 2 #75)
Proposal #3, guest-starring John Romita, Jr.’s profoundly alarming faces. (Uncanny X-Men #308)
Fate can go fuck itself. Damn, we love these two. (Uncanny X-Men #308)
There is probably no other panel from the entire 50 years of X-Men that we’ve sent back and forth more than this one. (Uncanny X-Men #308)
He’s actually fighting some dude who broke into the X-mansion and bonding with his time-displaced kid, but the basic principle of failing-at-bachelor-party still stands. (Uncanny X-Men #310)
And now, the main event. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Andy Kubert x body language. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Charles Xavier of X-Men vol. 2 #30 is the best Charles Xavier.
He also has the best timing. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Look at all those X-Men. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Can we have a moment of silent appreciation for the fact that Storm managed to find a dress that perfectly encapsulates the 1990s? (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Best vows? Best vows. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Scott, Jean, we’re gonna let you finish… (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
…but Rogue and Gambit’s kiss in X-Men vol. 2 #41 is the best kiss in X-Men.
September 4, 2014.
Links:
- Print of the week! You can find prints of David Wynne’s “Haters Gonna Hate” Scott & Jean illustration over at our shop until September 14–or drop David a line to buy the original!
- The real Cats Laughing
NEXT WEEK: Rachel and Miles are going on vacation. Read a book. WEEK AFTER NEXT: The New Mutants!
Rachel and Miles,
Thanks for sharing so much of yourselves in this episode. It was very heartfelt, moving and not sappy at all. You both continue to amaze with the depth of meaning and heights of silliness you can extract from the X-men canon. Have a great vacation!
This episode. The FEELZ. I had all of them.
I’m not choked up, I’m not choked up….
Wow, I loved this book when it was published but it means more to me today because have a deeper understanding of the characters and history. When I purchased this issue, it was my first major event issue and I was delighted. For the next 6 years, I avidly read all the books and was happy to see a functional relationship that really worked amid all the other emotional messes that populated the X-verse. I was disapointed to find out after picking to books back up that they were on the verge of a divorce at Jean’s death and Scott was having a emotional affair with Emma Frost. I really wish that a writer would find a way to redeem Scott’s relationships with Jean and Professor X, even if they are just ghosts.
Your argument over whether or not Jean/Rachel could be compaired to Catelyn/Jon Snow brought back something I meant to ask when I heard the Days of Future Past episode: who IS Rachel’s Mom in her timeline? Is it ever stated clearly?
Let’s go back to that Days of Future Past episode, since it happened before all the subsequent time-travelling mess, and the timeline is supposed to be simpler. When you explained that episode, you said that before old Kitty travelled into Young Kitty’s body, and prevented Senator Kelly’s murder, the timelines were similar, and they split on the Kelly dying/not dying event. Hence, those times were simpler.
Well, not really: even back then, Jean Grey had just died on the moon. But a few issues later, her daughter from the future sends Kitty travelling in time. Because all this happened, editorially, years before the “Jean is alive” retcon, weren’t those timelines supposed to be different from the start, one with Jean dying on the moon, and the other with Jean living to have Rachel?
Reading “Phoenix: The Untold story” sort of made things clearer later: the original story didn’t kill Phoenix on the moon, but de-powered her instead. So THAT would be Rachel’s Mom? But wouldn’t that mean Claremont actually knew that when he wrote DOFP, hence knowing that Kitty going back to the past was dommed to fail since it was not HER OWN past. Or was the “Future Past” story written in advance, when they still thought Jean would just be de-powered on the moon, but when Jean did die, they still went along with the story with Rachel in it?
And of course, after the retcon happens, it raised another problem: if Phoenix was kept alive in Rachel’s timeline, depowered or not, wouldn’t she eventually run into the “real” Jean when the Fantastic Four shipped that one out of Jamaica Bay. Or are we supposed to assume that if Phoenix hadn’t died on the moon, she would have been the real Jean Grey from the start, just because it makes things simpler?
Sorry for opening that can of worms, but I just meant to say that Rachel (you, from the podcast, not Phoenix) shouldn’t diss Miles’ Catelyn/Jon comparison so definitely: after all, even though she absorbed the memories of Madelyn and Phoenix during Inferno, in the issues you mention, she is still the Jean-not-Phoenix retcon who is facing the daughter of Phoenix, who even took Phoenix as her own codename and power. It’s kind of as if Catelyn had absorbed the memories of Jon Snow’s mother: he would still be the son of “the other woman”. Just like Rachel is the daughter of “the other woman”, since Busiek’s retcon idea depended on that very fact, Jean is ANOTHER woman, not Jean Grey.
And even if Jean heard teh argument “but Mom in my timeline YOU are Phoenix (or maybe you’re not but the FF never shipped the real you out of Jamaica Bay since everyone was busy being slaughtered by anti-mutant sentinels, so yeah, let’s say Phoenix was the real you), for Jean Grey, Phoenix would still be her Nemesis, and Rachel, still the Official Daughter of Phoenix, so I’m not sure she’d care for the distinction.
So no, Miles comparison is NOT so wrong. Agreed, it is still quite different if you think Catelyn’s hatred for Jon came from her official humiliation: Ned would have cheated on her and brought back Jon as The Evidence. At least when Scott made love with Phoenix, he though Phoenix was Jean (whether she was or not -has that ever been made clear in canon? Have I already asked that before?) Making Rachel’s existence less of a social humiliation than Jon’s
(And all this, of course, without mentionning that Jon Snow is quite possibly NOT Ned’s son, but the baby his sister had with the Mad King, who Ned passed as his own to prevent the bastard child from being slaughtered by King Robert). Because well aren’t things complicated enough on the Marvel side of things? OK I’ll shut up now. Happy Anniversary, still ^^
Rachel could be be the biological daughter of Jean/Phoenix because in that timeline instead of being 2 seperate people, it was the merged identity that Chris originally thought up when they started the story.
Also, John is most likely the son of Brandon Stark and Ashara Dane. Ned’s sister did NOT have a baby with Arys. She was involved with Rheagar and THAT baby was taken by John Connington and is the one that is being raised as young Griff or taken by Howlen Reed and is Meera Reed.