The Scott and Jean Archives
(Excerpts from the writers’ commentaries.)
The Gown
This is a girl who showed up for her first day at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters wearing a plaid skirt and a fashionable hat. Back then, it looked like Marvel Girl was off to Vassar, rather than joining a school that trains mutant super folk.
A few years, death, rebirth, and many, many adventures later, Jean Grey will marry her beloved Scott Summers. So the question is: what will Jean Grey wear?
The search for Jean’s dress led to internationally renowned fashion designer Nicole Miller.
Nicole felt that, since Jean is a super heroine, it might be interesting to design a dress that was totally out of this world. We noted that, while that approach might work for a Shi’ar wedding, Jean is an Earthling of style and sophistication, and her dress should reflect that. Miller accomplished her task by “constructing the dress using flat and shiny geometric pieces to create a stylised, yet feminine look,” she explained. Just one look at the glamorous length, offset neckline, and body contouring shape shows that Miller successfully accomplished the task she had set for herself.
Dearly beloved...
“...we are gathered here today to get through this thing.”
Although lacking in romance, this truncated Purple Rain lyrical pearl could easily represent the X-Men’s attitude toward the upcoming Scott Summers-Jean Grey nuptials, after thirty years of hardship, heartache, and the “star-crossed lovers” bit.
But the X-Men are, in a very real sense, a family, loved by one another and by countless numbers of fans. And families don’t think that way. When there’s cause to celebrate, they do it right.
Rest assured, X-Men Group Editor Bob Harras promised -- the wedding “special” will be just that.
“This isn’t the wedding of Reed and Sue or Hank and Jan, who are all public heroes,” Nicieza said. “This is a private ceremony. I imagine other Marvel Universe characters will be invited to the wedding, but only if they come in their civilian identities. It’s going to be a suit-and-tie affair, not a spandex affair.”
“For all the crap the mutants go through, they’re going to have a wedding day that’s as normal as can be -- as normal as any wedding day can be, anyway.”
“It’s going to be how the characters react to this wedding. They’re all going to see this as a relationship that’s working despite it all, and it’s going to make them think about their own lives.”
“Scott and Jean probably haven’t ever had as hard a two-year period as they’ve just had,” Nicieza said. “‘The Executioner’s Song’, combined with the Legacy Virus, on top of the return of Magneto...I think all of these things have done more to make them rather than break them. And because they’ve seen they can’t be broken, even during the worst of times, there’s more hope than ever for the best of times.”
“Jean has realised there are no constants in life,” Lobdell added. “There’s nothing to depend upon, for sure, with the exception of her love for Scott and his love for her.”
At the end of the day, Scott Summers and Jean Grey may always maintain the hope that the mutant crisis will end, but they’ll recognise the reality that it will be a long, hard road, with no guarantee of success.
“They’re getting married more in spite of the situation than because the situation is resolving. It’s a try for normalcy in desperate times. And why shouldn’t they have that?”