(Here is the basic premise. This follows the basic continuity of the X-Men up to Uncanny X-Men #331 and X-Men #51 (early 1996). This means that the whole Onslaught storyline is drastically shortened, and with a completely differently villain. The Dark Beast only confronts the real McCoy (sorry, bad pun) and does not take his place. (Instead he bluffs his way into the Avengers, and the X-Men don't have to worry about him.) And as you will see, some storylines we thought were the case in the Lobdell era turn out not to be entirely accurate. Depending on how well this goes, I may eventually write stories on other issues. But right now I am starting with Uncanny X-men #342. As you will see this story is in six parts, of which four are basically summaries of the first 33 years of the X-Men. After that, things start to change.)

The Uncanny X-Men #342—Elegy Redux

There was a good turnout at the funeral, but there were thirteen surrounding the grave.

My parents were behind me, more disconcerted than distraught. To be fair, they always knew their other son-in-law better. In a wheelchair, a bald man in his late forties, surprisingly handsome, should be shattered with grief at the death of the man he considered a son. Sometimes people age overnight on such news, but in this case he is calm, thoughtful, the wheels in his head turning as he seeks to mitigate the greatest disaster in his life. By contrast, the real father, once so handsome and brave, has visibly aged, his hair is half gray. On the other side, a young Jewish woman, barely an adult, buries her head in her hands; she restrains her sobs, but not her tears. But only a few of them are for him, most of them are for the others. By her side, a rather tall, rather large man tries to console her without getting too close. He was a pallbearer. Beside him, a tall Southern woman stands with her arm in a sling: recently three of her limbs were shattered, so she's recovering quite nicely. Beside her, is a man with messy blonde hair. Ordinarily he would look much more presentable, but he has two other funerals to attend today in Washington. (The dead can be so inconsiderate.) There are four other pallbearers by the grave; the fifth stepped back to make room for the others. The first two are my oldest and closest friends; one has forgone the mask he used to wear on these occasions. The other has spent most of his adult life in the others' shadow; now he looks stronger. The third man only looks like a demon; once you get to know him he looks more like Errol Flynn, with the soul of William Powell. Right now he is saying a Hail Mary under his breath. The fourth man is young, and a month ago I had never heard of him. He was nothing more than a listing in a ridiculously full encyclopedia. He would never have served as a pallbearer had circumstances been even slightly better. He is impeccably tailored; his family has lost much of its money but it always keeps up appearances. His face is cold, aristocratic, his eyes show little mercy or compassion.

"All my Life, it seemed that every time I turned around-I was losing people I loved: my folks, my brother Alex, the few friends I made at the orphanage. Each time, the loss hurt. Losing you was the loss I couldn't take. Jean, you're everything to me—as necessary as the air I breathe." More than five years ago you said those words over my grave. Now I repeat them over yours. My name is Jean Grey; your name was Scott Summers. And this is our story.

The tombstone reads Scott Summers 1966-1996.

In the beginning there were five of us. It's so hard to believe that now me, Henry and Bobby are the only ones left. I remember the first day when I showed up at Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and you offered me a chair. "That's not necessary," and I used my telekinesis to move one myself. I just seemed like an attractive teenager then surrounded by four admiring boys. In fact Hank and Bobby were never really interested in me. And they didn't know that I actually had telepathic powers, which were traumatized when I felt my friend Annie Richardson die after being hit by a car. That attracted me to Scott, the only orphan of the four. I think I loved him even then.

Of course, that was in the future. First off, we were the X-Men: Marvel Girl, Cyclops, the Beast, Iceman, and Angel, and we immediately had to confront our deadliest, most powerful foe—or so we thought. Magneto, who believed humans would not tolerate mutants and had to be conquered, had attacked an American army base. We were able to drive him off, rather remarkable in retrospect, since he was objectively far more powerful than us. Our next battles against the mutant teleporter the Vanisher, and Fred C. Dukes—The Blob did not go so well. In both cases we needed Professor X's help. Then Magneto reappeared with "The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants." By a strange coincidence it included two children that he never knew he had—Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Then there was Mortimer Toynbee, The Toad. He was not actually a bad man, but years of abuse as a child had made him a sycophant with a brutal streak.

And there was Jason Wyngarde—the illusion casting Mastermind.

We fought several battles against them, thwarting their plans but not really stopping them from making new ones. Then we discovered a new, more powerful entity: the Stranger. We all thought he was a mutant; in fact he was an inconceivably powerful alien. He turned Mastermind into some sort of living stone, and transported Magneto and the Toad back to his home world. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch—not knowing Magneto was their father—believed they were no longer indebted to him and joined the Avengers.

In the next few months we would encounter new, dangerous enemies. First, there was Professor X's vindictive, spiteful stepbrother, Cain Marko, transformed by a mystical gem into the almost unstoppable Juggernaut. Then there were the giant anti-mutant robots the Sentinels. They had been formed by anthropologist Bolivar Trask, who ironically, feared his own mutant son Larry. We were able to stop them, at the cost of Trask's life. Magneto returned to attack us: he temporarily escaped from the Stranger's world; later he would escape permanently. We also faced Lucifer, the alien who crushed Professor X's legs. It was also during this time that we first encountered the strange conspiracy known as Factor Three. They had blackmailed future X-Man Sean Cassidy—the Banshee into working for them, but we were able to stop them.

By this time Cyclops had become the team leader. He had finally gotten the courage to tell me that he loved me. Meanwhile, we encountered new friends. The first was Vera Cantor. For a long time, she was Hank's girlfriend. Recently she came back into his life and out of the closet. I see her standing there by Amara Aquillia. At one point she wore contacts, but now she's back to her old glasses. The second was Candace "Candy" Southern. A superficial glance would think she was just a superficial debutante. But she was more than that: she was tough, brave. She was Warren's girlfriend and she would have made him a good wife. But that wasn't to be, and it was partially my fault. Shortly after Scott told me he loved me, Factor Three kidnapped Professor X. We eventually tracked them down to find old foes like the Vanisher, the Blob, Unus—and Mastermind. They were serving "The Mutant Master," and his henchman the Changeling, until we found out that he was actually an alien. Both teams turned on him and he killed himself.

Shortly after the Changeling visited Xavier and me. He was dying and he wanted to do something good. Xavier had recently received a premonition of a future evil and wanted to concentrate all his time to it. So he allowed the Changeling to take his place, and released my telepathic powers, while he went into seclusion. Keeping up this charade didn't last long. We encountered a strange underground being—Grotesk—who wanted revenge on humanity for destroying his race in an atomic explosion. In the course of the battle the Changeling died.

It was a strange experience. Scott was stunned, the others were upset, and they didn't realize that my copious tears were all an elaborate charade. That was the first time, I think, that I really lied to Scott. I even had to manipulate things with two cheap shysters from New York while explaining to the Professor's real friends and the government that he wasn't actually dead. We were briefly split apart, then reunited. Except for the Changeling and an annoying frat boy named Calvin Rankin who briefly had superpowers and who later unfortunately died, no-one else had belonged to the X-Men. That would change. First Bobby met a young woman, Lorna Dane, who had green hair but was otherwise apparently normal. But then the mutant Mesmero, thinking he was working for Magneto, but actually for a megalomaniac named Starr Saxon managed to transform her into Polaris, the mistress of magnetism.

We defeated him, and shortly thereafter, we met Scott's younger brother, Alex at his college graduation. I didn't know anything about him until shortly before the Changeling died. He was very intelligent, much more academically inclined than his older brother. He might have settled down and become a geology professor. But he possessed the ability to absorb and deploy cosmic powers. In doing so, he limited the abilities of another mutant, Pr. Ahmet Abdol—the Living Pharoah. By limiting Alex's access to cosmic radiation, Abdol was able to turn into the Living Monolith, a vastly more powerful being that we could only stop by freeing Alex. Shortly thereafter we faced the return of the Sentinels. Larry Trask, not knowing he was a mutant himself, rebuilt them in misguided revenge for his father's death. Scott managed to stop them by convincing them to face the source of mutation on Earth—the sun. We confronted other foes, Karl Lykos, Magneto again, as well as the Japanese mutant Sunfire, who had been manipulated by his fascist uncle to attack the United States. Then Professor X returned. The future evil was an unspeakably vicious and cruel alien race, the Z'nox. Even after all we've encountered, they are still the most vile creatures we have ever faced. By forming a telepathic union with humanity as a whole, and our own efforts, the Professor was able to drive them back into space, but at the same time formed a telepathic link with someone uncounted millions of light years away.

Then for a long time, very little happened. We encountered the fascistic Secret Empire, Lorna realized that she loved Alex and they decided to study geology together. Most of the rest of us studied courses in case we actually wanted to work for a living. And then Henry got his doctorate, left the team and worked for Roxxon corporation, only to realize that it wanted to control his special genetic extract for nefarious purposes. So he swallowed it, and instead of being the witty, intelligent strongman of the group, he was now the witty, intelligent strongman covered in blue fur with extra strength. I suppose I shouldn't make light of it, but considering the future metamorphosis we would face, he got off rather easy.

Of course, fate abhors a quiet life, and when the six remaining X-Men visited a South Pacific Island of Krakoa looking for a powerful mutant, and five of us were captured, Professor X and Scott set about finding a new team. They got Banshee and Sunfire to join us, and found five new mutants: the Canadian soldier Logan, whose super senses, uncanny healing factor, and unbreakable admantium bones made him the perfect Wolverine; the Russian farmer Peter Rasputin, would could turn into organic steel and became a Colossus. There was Kurt Wagner, the teleporting Nightcrawler; Ororo Munroe, who could master the weather as Storm, and the strong John Proudstar, Thunderbird. They returned to Krakoa, only to find that the island was the mutant. We defeated it, using Lorna's powers to briefly cut off gravity and so fling it into space.

And then we all came home, and the original members of the team all left, except for Scott. That was not strictly true, I moved to New York and even had Ororo as a roommate. But I wasn't part of the team. Sunfire also left immediately, leaving Scott and the new sextet to fight Count Nefaria. He was a second tier megalomaniac, and indeed Professor X had little trouble stopping his plan to take over America's nuclear arsenal. But then Thunderbird tried to stop him from escaping and leaped on his plane. Nefaria teleported away harmlessly, but Thunderbird died in the crash.

Privately, I thought it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I kept my views to myself. At this time a new person entered our lives: Moira MacTaggert, the Professor's former lover, the winner of the Nobel Prize for her own scientific work, and, very peculiarly, the Professor's new housekeeper (Henry couldn't stop laughing when he heard how the Professor tried that ruse). But at this point we became involved in two conspiracies. When Professor X defeated the Z'Nox, he encountered telepathically an alien mind, the Sh'iar princess Lilandra, fleeing from her brother, the emperor D'Ken. D'Ken learned of the connection before Charles understood what it was, and sent his agent on Earth, "Erik the Red," to attack the X-Men, by brainwashing Lorna and Alex, now Polaris and Havok, into attacking us.

While dealing with that body blow, we encountered the second conspiracy. The Hellfire Club, a group of the world's wealthiest men and women, had secretly supported an anti-mutant fanatic named Steven Lang. He rebuilt the Sentinels, and they attacked us, taking me, Banshee and Wolverine to his space station. The other X-Men were able to rescue us, but the only way our shuttle could return to earth was for me to pilot it through a radiation storm. The radiation should have killed me; instead I burst from the ocean as the Phoenix. I was apparently more powerful than before, and I needed it, as Erik the Red through both Juggernaut and Banshee's mutant cousin, Black Tom Cassidy, against us. Then he revived Magneto, and finally convinced a herald of Galactus to attack us.

By then Lilandra had met Professor X, and oddly enough, both fell in love at first sight. Transported across the stars we learned that D'Ken has heard of a powerful crystal called the M'Krann Crystal. Essentially someone with way too much time on their hands had reduced an entire galaxy to the size of a pinprick and put it in the crystal. If the crystal broke, it became the ultimate black hole, destroying the universe. D'Ken just thought it was a weapon, and broke it. But my phoenix powers were so great I was able to rebuild it; rebuild it my with powers, and my love, and the love of the X-Men.

I put elaborate psychic dampers to control these new powers. Not longer after that we were all captured by Mesmero. Hank found us and rescued us, but then Magneto appeared and imprisoned us all in his Antarctic base. We managed to break free, thanks to Ororo's skill with locks. But the battle triggered a volcanic explosion. We and Hank were separated from the others, and each group thought the other dead. The two of us quickly returned to Xavier, and on learning of the team's "death"—the first of many, he decided to go back with Lilandra to serve as her consort. The team took a rather roundabout route going back through the Savage Land, Japan (where Banshee temporarily lost his powers saving the country), and Canada.

Meanwhile I had gone to Scotland with Dr. MacTaggert, and while there I met a dark, handsome stranger, Jason Wyngarde. Shortly thereafter I faced strange "timeslips" where I lived the life of an ancestor two centuries ago who was in love with an ancestor of Wyngarde. They were strange timeslips, dangerous, decadent, cruel and intensely erotic. But before me and the rest of the X-Men could investigate them any further, we had to confront Proteus, Moira's evil son with vast reality shifting powers.

After "killing" Proteus the X-Men returned to the United States, where the Professor had returned. There Wyngarde and the Hellfire Club made their next move. We had encountered two mutants. The first was Kitty Pryde, spunky, thirteen years old, and the ability to walk through walls. The second was Alison Blaire, the Dazzler. She was beautiful, brave, intelligent, with the power to turn sound into light. She could do anything really, except write decent pop songs. When we tried to contact them the Hellfire Club, under Emma Frost, the White Queen, and Sebastian Shaw, the Black King sought to attack us.

After defeating Frost, we tracked down the Hellfire Club, and there we learned the truth. I was not undergoing timeslips: Wyngarde was the real name of Mastermind, and his illusions had turned me into the Black Queen. But Wyngarde had made a fatal mistake. He thought I was just a powerful mutant he could control. In fact, I was really a universal, infinitely powerful force, with ramifications neither of us could comprehend. So when I broke free I first used my powers to drive him completely insane. Then I turned into Dark Phoenix. I easily defeated the X-Men, and then, to gain nourishment, I moved to the Sh'iar galaxy and made a sun supernova, completely destroying the billions of D'Bari who lived on one of its planets. I came back, and Scott and Xavier managed to work with me to put dampers on my powers. I was back to my old Marvel Girl self, and Scott asked me to marry me…

It was not to be. Lilandra did not think this was sufficient. And she was right. In the course of a battle over my fate, I saw Scott cut down, and the Phoenix power smashed through the dampers like wet toilet paper. Xavier got the other X-Men to throw their strength against me just long for to have some sense of sanity. I found an alien energy weapon, told Scott that there was no other way, told him I loved him, and blew myself to bits. There was not even ashes left, and I was quite dead. Or so it seemed.