I liked Louise's first few years on X-Factor, but I think she lost track fast. Killing Doug Ramsey showed a big lack of imagination on her part, and her New Mutants was generally awful. By the time Walt left and she did Judgement War... I was just about ready to give up except they got Terry Shoemaker to draw the book and Whilce and I couldn't say no to that artwork!

Right, I know that. But it was established retroactively that it WASN'T
Magneto, which means, as far as Marvel is concerned, Jean Grey was killed
by a two-bit Magneto imposter. Weak.

Why blame Morrison for that, though?  In his story she was killed by Magneto, not an imposter.

What are you reading the books chronologically, Victor?

*****

My only exposure to the X books has been thru the Essentials volumes. I started in 99 with Essential X-Men 1 and 2. After that I bought every essential X-Men that comes out. I nearly stopped at Essential #5 (This was the time it became almost a storm solo comic), but I got 6 very cheap, and it was really good. It had X-Factor issues that I liked. So I started buying X-Factor volumes. So this stuff is all new to me.

QUOTE: Not so sure about that. I thought that it was established--perhaps too subtly--that Jean had accepted and merged with the Phoenix force by the time the Morrison run began.

Not to my recollection.  Steven Seagle was starting a Phoenix story with her and it was aborted several issues in.  So, for the next year to year and a half, including the Twelve storyline where Cyclops supposedly died, Jean has no Phoenix powers or imagery. 

Next, Claremont came onboard and she's using the imagery, but she has no Phoenix level powers.  She had no tk, just telepathy.  Psylocke got her tk and Jean had enhanced telepathy because she had Betsy's as well.

When Scott Lobdell wrote for several months between Claremont and Morrison, there was no Phoenix imagery again, but she had regained her tk.  In Search for Cyclops, she doesn't use Phoenix powers to separate Scott and Apocalypse.

Morrison turned her full fledge into Phoenix again, noone else had done that.  That's on him.  Depends on how you interpret what he said.  My take is that it's incredibly high end telekinesis.  She, and others, that achieve that level comprise the Phoenix Foce, or Phoenix Consciousness as Morrison called it.  Jean must have been an elevated or maybe special Phoenix because she was the Phoenix of the White Crown.  I think that's what it was called.  That title may not be exact.

In any case, he is saying that she was the character in UXM 101-137, she is the person who died on the moon.  She dies and is reborn.  The Phoenix Egg in
Here Comes Tomorrow looks like the caccoon in FF 286.         

No, this is on Morrison, for good or bad.  That was 4 years ago, maybe they've amended it a bit.  The only thing I read myself was Phoenix Endsong and in that series Jean Grey is most definitely a part of the whole that makes up the Phoenix Force.

QUOTE: I would hope not! I liked those issues, and the stories in X-FACTOR that followed them.

You're preaching to the choir here.  Jean was my favorite X woman from long before the time FF 286 hit the stands. 

QUOTE: Yes. A pretty clear case of one person (or persons, in case this was an editorial mandate rather than just something the writer wanted to do) going out of his way to undo the work of others simply because he personally didn't like something that was done years earlier--instead of just focusing on telling the very best stories he could. Because, really, what purpose did the death of Jean serve in Morrison's story? It was an afterthought, a throwaway bit. It turned her into a VICTIM. Cannon fodder. And it wasn't even a prominent A-list X-Men villain who killed her--it was some character created by Morrison, disguised as Magneto. Huh???????

I don't know this, but I think these were all Morrison's ideas.  Morrison wanted to make Jean Phoenix again, break up Scott and Jean, kill Jean and put Scott with Emma.  Morrison wanted to do what he did with Magneto intending that it was the real Magneto.

The proof is what happened with the latter.  If that's done in conjunction with, or at editorial behest, then you don't have the clumsy Xorn was Magneto in disguise retcon to undo what Morrison did .  I think he wanted to do all this stuff, but Marvel also let him.
If they were that against all this stuff, they could have said no.      

My feelings about Jean's death don't change based on whether the real Magneto killed her or an imposter.  Truthfully, neither one of them should have been able to kill her based on the stunts we saw her pulling earlier in NM 150.

IMO, that's one of the major problems with Phoenix.
To make stories workable requires an inconsistent application of her powers. 

When you want to create a situation where she can't save them as she by all rights should have been able, her and Logan headed towards the sun on Asteroid M, her powers magically don't work  Then when you need her to get them out of the jam, no spaceship headed into the sun, she can construct a vessal out of nothing and transport them back to earth at light speed.  Then when you want Magneto to be able to kill her, a big dose of electro magnetic energy(as opposed to what comes out of the sun) can do it.   
This all happened within the space of 3 issues in Morrison's X Men.  

But I don't think that he viewed her as cannon fodder.
It was a significant death that would have lead to a new era.  Xavier and Magneto would be gone and Scott and Emma would run the school.  I specifically remember an interview where Morrison said that they could usher in a new era of greatness for the book.
It was part of his justification, sales pitch if you will, of the couple.

QUOTE: My only exposure to the X books has been thru the Essentials volumes. I started in 99 with Essential X-Men 1 and 2. After that I bought every essential X-Men that comes out. I nearly stopped at Essential #5 (This was the time it became almost a storm solo comic), but I got 6 very cheap, and it was really good. It had X-Factor issues that I liked. So I started buying X-Factor volumes. So this stuff is all new to me.

Where X Men is concerned, I really didn't buy any Essentials because I had the issues themselves.  How do they handle the crossovers like Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants?  I guess you only get the X Men or X Factor stories?

As long as there is some independence, I guess that's alright.  With things like Inferno and Xtinction Agenda, you're lost without all the parts.  All the characters cross over into the other titles.    You can't just read the X Factor portion of Inferno without missing a ton. 

With Mutant Massacre they included the importent X-Factor and New Mutant issues that directly tied in. But with Fall of the Mutants it has been completely seperate. The volume im on now will have four or five X-Factor issues due to Inferno. So I guess they only include other books when it is absolutely nessecary for the story.

Volume 7 included FF vs X-Men limited series. Which was interesting. Claremont's FF is interesting. But I think he tends to write Reed as too weak willed and wimpy.

Where X Men is concerned, I really didn't buy any Essentials because I had the issues themselves.  How do they handle the crossovers like Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants?  I guess you only get the X Men or X Factor stories?

***

For Mutant Massacre, you get both the X-Factor and the X-Men pieces in each Essential, so if you buy both Essentials, you get those issues twice.  You also get the relevant Thor and Power Pack issues.  Strangely enough, you only get the New Mutants Mutant Massacre issue in the X-Men Essential -- not the X-Factor Essential.

For Fall of the Mutants, you only get the X-Men issues in the X-Men Essential and you only get the X-Factor issues in the X-Factor Essential.  Which makes sense, because they were separate storylines (X-Men vs. Adversary and X-Factor vs. Apocalypse, respectively).  New Mutants was a third storyline (New Mutants vs. Ani-Mator), and it doesn't appear in either Essential.

The third big X-book crossover of that era -- Inferno -- has been covered in the X-Men Essential, where they gave us both the X-Men and X-Factor issues, but not the New Mutants issue.  That makes sense to me, since X-Men and X-Factor directly crossed over, with one book leading into the next, while New Mutants was a separate but related plot thread.  Inferno hasn't been covered in the X-Factor Essentials yet, but I imagine that if and when they do a third X-Factor Essentials, it will include the X-Men issues.  The real question is whether it will include the X-Terminators miniseries.