The Marvel Girl Next Door (Patreon)

 By Kayleigh Hearn

There are remarkable green dresses that linger in our pop culture memory. Scarlett O’Hara draped in mountains of velvet. Jennifer Lopez wearing Versace, her neckline plunging perilously low. Kiera Knightly in Atonement, her gown rippling over her body like water. There is one dress I want to add to that esteemed emerald list: the costume worn by mod, marvelous Marvel Girl of the Silver Age X-Men.

My tongue is only gently jabbing my cheek here, but Marvel Girl’s costume has been surprisingly long-lived, circulating in and out of her closet since its debut in X-Men #39, over 50 years ago. Looking at Jean Grey in Jonathan Hickman’s current X-Men run, the question lingers: what is it about this green dress that makes it so, well, evergreen? Is it a perfect example of what Hickman’s dubbed “mutant clothes” or do comic book artists just like drawing pretty girls in short skirts? What does Marvel Girl’s costume say about Jean Grey, then as well as today?

(IMG: X-Men #39 by Roy Thomas and Don Heck, Marvel Comics)

The first thing we need to know about Marvel Girl’s costume is that Jean made it herself. Though the cover of 1967’s X-Men #39 boasted “New Costumes!! New Thrills!!”, the new looks for the original X-Men only appeared on the last page of the main story. After defeating Factor Three, the X-Men regroup at the Xavier Institute and Marvel Girl reveals a “pet project” of hers. “Here’s a package for each of you!” she says, telekinetically lifting the boxes. “In it, you’ll find—a new costume!” As they shed their identical, Kirby-designed student uniforms, Professor X explains, “The X-Men are scarcely children anymore…It’s time they looked like individuals—not products of an assembly line!” The boys’ ungrateful reaction to Jean’s hard work (“I really look like an angel—I guess!”) undermines that whole “scarcely children anymore” thing, but it is strangely romantic to remember that Cyclops ended up wearing the costume Jean made for him well into the 1980s, even after her death.

Marvel Girl’s costume, broken down to its essential elements, is simple: a long-sleeved green dress with a v-neck and a short skirt, yellow knee-high boots with matching gloves, a belt with the X insignia, and a pointed yellow mask. Designed by Ross Andru after writer Roy Thomas prodded co-creator/editor Stan Lee to let the X-Men have new costumes, it does look like something a college-aged girl in 1967 would wear. The design would fluctuate in some issues; i.e., shorter sleeves and an off-the-shoulder neckline, showing more skin. Her mask, originally drawn like the kind of X-ray specs you’d find for sale on the back of the comic, grew to larger, pointier, Kirby-er dimensions—fitting since all the best Kirby-created female characters sported impressive headpieces.

Jean’s brief, under-explored tenure as a superhero costume designer fits into her designated role as The Girl of the X-Men. While the boys on the team were able to relax, their individuality validated by a single defining personality trait (Cyclops the Leader, Beast the Genius, etc.), Jean had a different burden to bear. Being the only girl meant she had to stand in for all girls. Jean possessed a spark in her character that set her apart from some of the wilting flowers that were Lee/Kirby heroines of that era, and Chris Claremont would later fan that spark into a blaze when she became Phoenix. 

(IMG: X-Men #57 by Linda Fite and Wener Roth, Marvel Comics)

But here, the sheer fact of her femininity required her to not only be a superhero, but to also be, whenever the plot demanded it, a nurse, cook, and seamstress for the boys. Though Jean assures us in the back-up story “The Female of the Species” (by Linda Fite, the first woman to write an X-story) that she’s not “the domestic type,” the green-garbed gal is shown using her telekinesis to make apple pies and clean the mansion as well as hop around live volcanos and nab purse-snatchers. A woman’s work is never done.

(A brief detour: an alternate origin for the Marvel Girl costume is offered in Unlimited X-Men #42. Though J. Torres and Takeshi Miyazawa give Jean some obligatory Girl Power posturing, the ending is more 1967 than 2003, and it somehow manages to give her less agency. The costume is a gift from Professor X, not something she made herself, and she plays dress-up for blushing boys who pant “Homina, homina!” at her. As innocuous as this little story is, it makes her status as the lone woman in the X-Men painfully obvious. Her identity -- who she is and what she wears— is a reflection of the male desire around her. Still, as much as this term means anything, we can file it away as non-canon.)

Despite the more dated aspects of Jean’s Silver Age characterization, this era for Marvel Girl was one of growth and transition. Her telepathic powers blossomed as she assumed her place as Professor X’s successor, and she was the only X-Man trusted with the truth when he faked his death. Moving from the astral plane to the material one, she worked as a model and solidified her relationship with longtime sweetheart Cyclops. Marvel Girl’s atomic attire arguably never looked better than when Neal Adams drew her. Under his pen, every X-Men page was a pop art poster, and Jean’s simple dress-and-mask combo (comparatively normal next to, say, Cyclops’ visor and pirate boots) added a dose of fiery, familiar humanity to a comic crawling with dinosaur people and giant purple robots.

(IMG: X-Men #63 by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, Marvel Comics)

Fashion inevitably ages, and what was groovy in 1967 looked geriatric by 1977. As the original X-Men comic series faded into reprints, the costume gradually disappeared as the X-Men made guest appearances elsewhere in the Marvel Universe (the blue and gold Kirby designs were the ones featured on the reprint covers, after all). When John Byrne revisited this era in his X-Men: The Hidden Years series, he made a point of putting Jean, and only Jean, back into her student uniform. (“Maybe this gives me a sense of continuity!” she tells Cyclops.) The green costume does briefly appear on Angel’s girlfriend, Candy Southern…creating a minor psychosexual nightmare once you remember Angel’s attraction to Jean Grey. Candy does get one dig in, however: “Don’t you have anything more stylish?”

The lasting power of the Andru-designed Marvel Girl look is that it cemented green and yellow as Jean’s primary color scheme for decades. She’s worn five different costumes with that color combination since the 1960s, with the latest one—a green and yellow palette swap of her X-Men: Red armor—appearing in early 2020. And those colors would prove to be well chosen. Green is a color of life and renewal, while yellow symbolizes energy and enlightenment—perfect for the character who would become known as Phoenix.

“I had started badgering [Editor-in-Chief Archie Goodwin] to let me do something with Jean because I hated her costume. We felt that Marvel Girl was a dumb name too.” So said All-New, All-Different X-Men artist Dave Cockrum in Comic Creators on X-Men. Of course, he would not have to call her Marvel Girl for very long. Giant-Size X-Men #1, by Cockrum and Len Wein, would be Marvel Girl’s last mission for some time. Captured and drained of her life energy by Krakoa (“The Island That Walks Like a Man!”), Jean is, like the rest of her team, a body to be rescued; carried away in Cyclops’ arms, she’s limp and inessential. “She was a wimp,” according to Wein in The X-Men Companion.

Giant-Size X-Men #1 presents not only a rescue, but a shocking collision between the old guard and the new. Next to vibrantly-designed characters like Storm and Nightcrawler, the original X-Men immediately feel obsolete. When she leaves the team in X-Men #94, Marvel Girl defends her decision to Professor X by repeating the same words he said to her when she put on the costume for the first time: “We’re not children anymore, Professor. We have to live our own lives now.” Marvel Girl, as a costume, name, and identity, was something she had outgrown. Jean’s character would need a complete revamping if she was going to keep up with the X-Men of the swinging seventies. She’d be reborn, like a phoenix from the ashes.

(IMG: Dave Cockrum’s “Phoenix” style guide, Marvel Comics)

Jean Grey’s transformation into Phoenix, and her subsequent feminist awakening, is worthy of its own essay. Her powers enhanced to cosmic levels, she went from sewing costumes to repairing the fabric of the universe itself inside the M’Kraan Crystal. Dave Cockrum designed an iconic new costume for her, shedding what remained of her schoolgirl image for one that was all superhero. Gone is the mask that hid her face, and her short skirt is replaced by a full-coverage bodysuit tied off with a dramatic sash. Writer Chris Claremont emphasized her interior development and her search for an identity outside of Cyclops and the X-Men, diving deeper and deeper into her psyche until he discovered the darkness that would be her undoing.

“The Dark Phoenix Saga” can be read as a story about Jean’s sexual awakening--she consummates her romance with Cyclops and Mastermind distorts her desires to turn her into the corseted, whip-wielding Black Queen. In Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men #137, the final chapter of the saga, she asks the Shi’Ar to replicate her Marvel Girl costume. She reveals it to Cyclops before the fight on the blue side of the moon that will decide her fate. Her lover is surprised: “You’re dressed as Marvel Girl! Why?” Taking off her mask, Jean answers: “I’m not sure—nostalgia? Pride? I started as Marvel Girl, and that’s how I’ll finish.” Frightened by her adult, sensual power, she yearns for her younger, more uncomplicated self. The vixen remembers the virgin. Chris Claremont confirmed this when talking about the scene in The Intelligent Collector: “This is Jean reaching back to a more innocent, more heroic age…it’s her drawing a line between Marvel Girl and Phoenix even though at that point, I think there was no line.”

In the originally produced ending for X-Men #137, published in Phoenix: The Untold Story, Marvel Girl is indeed how Jean finishes. Neutralized by the Shi’ar, her tattered costume clinging to her crucified body, Jean undergoes a psychic lobotomy. As drawn by John Byrne, it’s a disturbing scene, depicted almost as an execution, with her loved ones watching helplessly. Jean is just a victimized body here, saying nothing throughout the entire scene. When Cyclops picks her up and carries her home, it’s a strange mirror of Cyclops carrying Marvel Girl on Krakoa—with her powers cut away, it feels like all her growth and development as a character has been cut away as well.

(IMG: X-Men #137 cover by John Byrne, Marvel Comics)

That ending was itself excised and replaced by a different conclusion that cemented “The Dark Phoenix Saga” as one of the greatest X-Men stories of all time. Editorial interference demanded that Jean pay for her crimes as Dark Phoenix, and in the published final pages, Jean does not die as Marvel Girl. Plenty has been written about Dark Phoenix’s place in a long line of fictional women who are demonized and punished for their power, but between the two endings, this is the one I greatly prefer, because as devastating as the final pages are, Jean’s autonomy and agency are paramount. Transforming from Marvel Girl to Phoenix to Dark Phoenix (“A progression as inevitable as death,” in her own words), she sacrifices her life to save the universe. Youthful innocence cannot be regained; this is the tragic, triumphant choice of the woman, not the girl.

Jean Grey ultimately proved to be an unkillable character, her cycle of deaths and rebirths becoming one of her defining attributes, and as if touched by her power, the Marvel Girl costume has clung to life. No matter how many times Jean’s thrown it away, it would spontaneously reappear in her closet over the next thirty years, appearing in flashback stories, pin-ups, and variant covers. Considering that the green dress is such a simple design, with nostalgia and revolving fashion trends taking it from “dated” to something more retro-cool and timeless, it’s fascinating to see how different artists have reconstructed and re-stitched the garment to fit the art styles of the era. When ‘90s megastars Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell draw Marvel Girl, for instance, she’s vacuum-sealed into the dress, its skirt cut so short that Jean must use her telekinesis to prevent it from flashing us. And when Jean’s alternate-future daughter Rachel Grey inherited her mother’s possessions, she wore a variant of the green-and-yellow costume that was now a midriff-baring two-piece, conveniently in-line with early 2000s costume trends for female superheroes.

In this past decade, Marvel Girl’s costume has made some noteworthy returns, perhaps symbolizing a nostalgic yearning on creators’ parts for a lighter, less complicated time in the X-Men’s history. That seemed to be a theme of Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen’s All-New X-Men, which brought the original five X-Men of the 1960s into the then-present of 2013. 

(IMG: All-New X-Men #5 by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen, Marvel Comics)

The teenage Marvel Girl, plucked from the earliest Lee/Kirby issues, becomes telepathically linked to the older version of her teammate Beast and finds herself wearing the green and yellow costume, which she’s never seen before. Immonen draws Jean with a look of disgust as she tugs her short skirt: “Seriously, Hank, like I haven’t had enough to deal with, now I’m wearing this?” Beast, channeling countless CBR message board posters, replies, “That is my favorite Jean Grey costume.” The series later reveals that Beast was once in love with Jean, adding a creepy sheen to this sequence—an outfit that once represented Jean’s agency and her “growing up” has since become a kind of fetish object for those who over-idealize her youth and vulnerability.

Even the Phoenix Force is not immune to mistaking the Silver Age for a more golden one. In the 2018 miniseries Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey, the Phoenix revives Jean, its most perfect host, and seeks to bond with her again. Artist Joe Bennett illustrates the Phoenix’s tempting offer to take Jean back in time, from Dark Phoenix to Marvel Girl, an unnatural progression from death to life. For a moment, Marvel Girl seems enchanted, but Jean rejects the illusion by dropping her mask to the ground. When next we see Jean in X-Men: Red, she’s exchanged the short skirt and go-go boots for more protective, defensive armor that suits her position as the team’s leader. But then came a comic cover that struck the fanbase like lightning, and we saw Jean in full Marvel Girl regalia once again in House of X #1.

Which brings us to our current, controversial status quo. Marvel Girl lives! Since summer 2019, Jean has taken up her former codename and costume, appearing as Marvel Girl in Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and X-Men. The retro look was immediately a source of debate among fans; before details of House of X were fully teased out, the cover image of Marvel Girl stepping out of a portal sparked online theories that it would be a time-travel story. After all, why would the powerful, Omega-level telepath who just led her own team in X-Men: Red go back to a miniskirt and a silly name?

(IMG: House of X #4 by Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz, Marvel Comics)

The actual House of X series only exacerbated these fears about the reverse trajectory of Jean’s character. During a deadly space mission in Hickman and Larraz’s House of X #4, Marvel Girl stays behind on the ship, acting essentially as a telepathic phoneline to Earth. In what I would say is the only truly bad scene in a series I love, the world’s most powerful telepath is suddenly whiny and useless, making teammate M dismiss her with “I dunno what to say, Marvel Girl. Try harder” before she’s killed by Sentinels. (She’s Jean Grey, she gets better.)

It’s a frustrating and strange scene, with decades of development awkwardly distorted, and though Hickman would later show a firmer grip on her character, it was jarring enough that inspired online theories that maybe this wasn’t the real, adult Jean at all, but another past version or clone. I believe subsequent events have invalidated this idea, but the consternation lingers: why Marvel Girl? Why now?

Jonathan Hickman expressed disappointment with the controversy. Answering a fan’s question about why Jean dressed as Marvel Girl again, he said, “Go back and look at the most famous time she put this costume back on. That should help.” This, presumably, is X-Men #137, with Jean’s “Nostalgia? Pride?” explanation, but is it really that simple? Looking deeper, there is something symbolic in Jean shedding her X-Men: Red armor when joins the new mutant nation of Krakoa; in our first glimpse of her walking through the portal in House of X #1, she smiles, teary-eyed, as Professor X welcomes her home. There is also the idea that in wearing the Marvel Girl costume again on Krakoa, and in her new home on the Blue Area of the Moon (the site of her first death), that she has triumphed over her greatest traumas and is rebuilding her life from those ruins. 

There is also Hickman’s assurance on Twitter that “MUTANTS DON’T WEAR HUMAN CLOTHES.” If the X-Men’s costumes are, in actuality, mutant clothes for a mutant society, Marvel Girl could be a perfect embodiment of that idea; the green dress and boots are recognizably normal, even casual clothes, but with the radioactive flourishes of the x-insignia belt and pointed mask. On the other hand, consider Russell Dauterman putting Jean back in her armored costume in Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey + Emma Frost #1 because he wanted her to wear something “modern.”

(IMG: X-Men vol. 5 #1 cover by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau, Marvel Comics)

What is ultimately unsettling about Jean stepping into her Marvel Girl boots again is that it suspends her between two warring states of being. Jean is an adult woman, a superhero, a member of the Quiet Council, a partner to Cyclops and Wolverine, and the mother of the time-traveling teenager Cable. But she’s also Marvel Girl (her codename still carrying the scent of 1960s paternalism, all these decades later), a helpmate instead of a leader, the “wimp” who needs to “try harder.” 

It’s a brutal dichotomy, one that perhaps exposes a weakness in the way the sliding timescale is applied to Marvel superheroes. Jean has no age, really, none that will be set in stone on any page of a current X-Men comic. She could be in her mid-twenties, or a very vibrant forty, and if you put this question to X-Twitter you might not get a single identical answer. And with the Resurrection Protocols on Krakoa granting mutants effective immortality, and the ability to come back from the dead in their preferred, idealized body, she may never age at all. No matter the character’s developments, her sagas and transformations, true progression in the ever-resetting world of comic books is illusionary. 

She’s the girl in green and gold, now and forever. She started as Marvel Girl, and that’s how she’ll finish.