New X-Men and Superhero Marriage
Not so long ago, comiXology had a 99-cent sale on Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run. New iPad in hand, I did a bit of impulse buying and grabbed the issues I hadn’t read yet. Last summer I read the first “Ultimate Collection” trade of New X-Men and I really dug it. But knowing what was coming, I smartly decided at the time to stop at the end of the volume. I kind of wish I’d listened to Past-Ali.
I’m not saying it was bad. I plowed through 24 issues in less than a day; it was well written and compelling. I just. Ugh, I hate that story. Ok, I don’t hate it-hate it. I find the rest of the run to be frustrating and infuriating. New X-Men elicited very strong emotional reactions from me as I was reading. It takes strong, solid storytelling to do that. Anyway, the super infuriating, drive-me-bonkers part of the story was Jean’s death. Because I think it was completely and utterly pointless. Here’s why.
Before Morrison’s New X-Men, Scott Summers and Jean Grey were the First Couple of Mutantkind. The superhero equivalent of the star quarterback marrying the homecoming queen, they were a perfect couple, and therefore pretty boring for most readers. My personally feelings on Scott and Jean? Well, this image right here sums up my ideal relationship.
That said, life-long commitments aren’t exactly built for serial dramas – there’s a reason no one stays married on soap operas. Strong marriages are just too stable for media that require high drama month after month. It’s very easy for things to get boring, and not just for the readers.
So I completely understand Morrison breaking up the super-couple. I think, in the timeframe, he did a great job establishing that Scott and Jean were growing apart, and while we saw more of Scott’s frustrations and feelings of inadequecy, I think it’s safe to say that Jean was comfortable with the distance that had grown between them.
Like Scott says, it had been a long time since “that shining, unshakable thing we felt once on the moon.” And while it something he was willing to run out on his wife and kid for when Jean came back from the dead the first time, it wasn’t there anymore. It’s a hard thing to admit. It’s an even harder thing to come to terms with. Which is why Scott does the insanely destructive thing and starts sleeping with Emma. You can argue all you want that it only happens in their heads, but the affair is real enough that it distracts both Emma and Scott from their duties as X-Men.
Fangirl baggage aside, I’m actually ok with Scott and Emma. When Scott felt like he couldn’t talk to anyone, he was able to talk to Emma. And even though she had ulterior motives, Emma was the one who was there to get Scott through his issues. By the end(ish), I was on board with the new relationship status quo. It’s very adult and very real-life for something like this to happen. Morrison has set things up for something that very rarely happens in comics: Divorce.
But instead, Jean is killed in a fit of roid-rage by Magento. For no real reason other than she embarrassed him in front of a lot of people. It’s completely ridiculous and entirely unfair to Jean’s character. It doesn’t matter how much growth we’ve seen from Scott as a character, apparently he needs to be shackled with guilt again. Scott and Jean can’t just break up, she has to die.
I’m not sure what it is about the D word that makes it so rare in comics. The only cases I can think of are Hank Pym/Ant-Man and Janet Van Dyne/Wasp at Marvel and Ray Palmer/The Atom and Jean Loring/Not a Superhero at DC. Hank and Janet split up because of domestic violence; and Jean was a bit off her rocker and went on to kill Sue Dibney, the Enlongated Man’s wife. Both are pretty extreme circumstances and afterwords, the wife (not the husband) ends up dying.
The statistics are shaky, but approximately 40% of all marriages in the U.S. ended in divorce as of 2009. For something that happens that frequently in real life, I think it’s so bizarre that it happens so infrequently in comics. Couples are more likely to have their relationships magically retconned or rebooted out of existence than be served papers. Yes, divorce is messy and ugly. But it happens, and sometimes it’s better than having a couple squabble and fight for years. And when done well, it makes for some compelling drama. I’m not advocating divorces for everyone, but it sure beats killing off spouses.
