X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

As a person, I like Jean Grey, but as character, I despise her.

This issue was going along rather nicely despite the fact that it’s still weird to see Kitty on Scott’s side, but her interactions with Illyana were pretty cool. Then suddenly this issue is all about how much everyone loves Jean Grey. It’s not even a commentary on how good of a person or whatever she is, nope, it’s about a bunch of guys who can apparently only think about why Jean doesn’t love them. To make it work, their thinking is horribly wrong and flawed, a lot of it is why the term ‘friendzoned’ is now offensive. No one can seem to write Jean as her own character, it’s always about her relationships and how everyone is in love with her.

I know, these are teenage boys and they are hormonal like that but do we really need panel after panel of these boys and their unhealthy obsession with Jean? Because that’s what it is, really unhealthy and I’m actually glad that Bendis does try to show how idiotic Hank is being and lets Jean get rightfully upset over how wrong the whole thing is. But at the same time, it all feels trite because he caps it off with a ‘rescue from the Angel’ and now there seems to be another goddamn contender in the ring.

Basically, what Bendis has here is an opportunity, he can either show how the objectification of a female by males is a bad thing by correcting these boys behavior towards her, or he can turn this into some kind of ‘wet dream’ fantasy over a character he had a hard on for when he was a teenage boy.

Forgive me if I don’t have a lot of faith right now, especially since this whole series seems to be one bad ‘teenage romance’ trope from the beginning.