Death isn’t forever in comics. In 2003, Jean Grey died during an iconic run on New X-Men by acclaimed writer Grant Morrison. Since then, that version of Grey has been dead, but this December, Grey will return in the five-issue miniseries Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey.
The new story written by Matthew Rosenberg and drawn by Leinil Yu will follow–you guessed it–the resurrection of one of the original five X-Men: “Strange events are no surprise to the X-Men,” reads the official synopsis from Marvel. “But when events start occurring that are more specific and stranger than usual, the group is forced to confront the truth: could Jean be alive after all? And how will this Jean Grey deal with a world that is now so different from the one she left years ago?”
The story is still a pretty big mystery at the moment, but the upcoming months in the current X-Men titles should shed some light on what’s coming ahead. “This is very cool mystery building to a mind-warping climax,” said senior editor Mark Paniccia. “And it has plenty of what you’d expect from an X-Men epic of this magnitude. Action, romance, sacrifice, lots of X-Men, and five great artists.”
In addition to Yu, the series will feature five artists taking on the story. It has yet to be revealed how that is going to come into play, whether each issue will be an individual artist or all five will be featured in each issue.
Jean Grey does currently exist in the Marvel universe, as a version of her from the past has been living in the present for the past few years. However, the teenage Jean Grey doesn’t have the experience, memories, or the connection to the Phoenix Force of her future counterpart.
It will be extremely interesting to see these two characters meet and find out how the adult Jean Grey reacts to her younger counterpart, the deaths of Cyclops and Wolverine, and an older Logan from a parallel world currently on the X-Men. Again, this mutant team is no stranger to the strange.
Phoenix Resurrection will hit stores on December 27, and interestingly enough, Phoenix will be returning to comics 11 months before the big screen adaptation of the legendary story The Dark Phoenix Saga. X-Men: Dark Phoenix is set to release on November 2, 2018.