Power That Exceeds the SelfPower That Exceeds the Self

Recently, Spider-Man Brand New day has made the X-men and MCU connection more explicit. In X-men, Jean Grey has always interested me because her greatest power is also something she cannot completely call her own.

That’s especially obvious with the Phoenix. Jean is already extraordinarily powerful as a telepath and telekinetic, but the Phoenix pushes that power beyond the scale of an ordinary human identity. At some point, the question stops being what can Jean do? and becomes how much power can a person possess before that power begins to possess them?

That feels very different from most superhero stories. Spider-Man’s famous equation is almost reassuringly neat: great power produces great responsibility. Jean Grey complicates it. Sometimes great power produces responsibility that no human being could reasonably be expected to carry.