Madelyne Pryor

Madelyne Pryor is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. She was a clone of Jean Grey, created by Mister Sinister. Although originally a supporting member of the X-Men cast for quite some time, a variety of troubles in her life (including being rejected by her husband and losing her son) eventually led to her manipulation into becoming a demonic-powered supervillain named the Goblin Queen. Chris Claremont apparently got her name from Maddy Prior, lead singer of the folk-rock band Steeleye Span.

Character biography

Romance

Madelyne's biography is complicated because of the many retcons involved. She was originally introduced as a human love interest of Scott Summers with a few mysterious traits: she had survived a fatal airplane crash on the same day Phoenix died on the moon, and Professor X was unable to scan her mind (which, he said, was occasionally possible among normal humans). After a series of events involving Mastermind (who wanted revenge for Phoenix having driven him insane) and his telepathic illusions, Madelyne married Scott, and he soon decided to retire from the X-Men.

Madelyne gave birth to a child, named Nathan Christoper Charles Summers. Although Scott tried to live a normal life, he received a call from his former teammate Angel that Jean Grey had been found, alive. He abandoned Madelyne and his son, who were attacked by Mr. Sinister's Marauders, and Nathan was taken away. Madelyne was hospitalized, but Sinister had erased all her records.

Madelyne called the X-Men, and they arrived just as the Marauders did, and fought them off. She stayed with the X-Men as they fought the Adversary, and sacrified their lives to stop him. Resurrected by the goddess Roma, the X-Men worked secretly out of an abandoned Reaver base in Australia.

Inferno

The demon S'ym later came to Madelyne in her dreams and offered her the power to hurt Scott just as he had hurt her, and she accepted. She then struck a bargain with another demon, N'astirh, to find her missing baby; the demons then fully activated her latent telekinetic and telepathic powers and she became the Goblin Queen. This started the "Inferno" crossover.

This crossover retconned in a new origin for Madelyne. In this origin, Mr. Sinister, believing that a child of Scott Summers and Jean Grey would have great powers, had created a clone of Jean specifically to fall in love with Scott and produce a child. When Phoenix committed suicide, a part of the Phoenix Force entered the clone and gave it life. Sinister named the clone Madelyne Pryor, created a false background, and sent her to Alaska, where she fell in love with Scott Summers.

N'astirh took Madelyne to an orphanage in Nebraska, the front for Sinister's genetic laboratory. Sinister captured her and told her all about her creation and her intended goal. She used her black magic to escape, and N'astirh brought her son, intending to sacrifice him to ensure a permanent demonic presence on Earth.

She pitted X-Factor against the X-Men by reverting to Madelyne and claiming that Scott wanted to take their baby away. The teams defeated N'astirh, but Madelyne, becoming suicidal upon the discovery of being a clone, trapped herself and Jean Grey in a telekentic bubble (as per Psylocke's assessment), then killed herself and tried to telepathically take Jean with her. Jean survived by re-integrating the portions of her essence absorbed by the Phoenix Force and by Madelyne (which she would later expel).

Her son, Nathan Christopher, was retconned into being the time-travelling soldier of fortune Cable, who had already been appearing in comics for some time by then.

X-Man

Madelyne mysteriously re-appeared in X-Man #5 (July 1995) with little memory of her past. Under the tutelage of Selene, this new Madelyne served as the Hellfire Club's Black Rook, gradually learning more of her previous life. X-Man#25 (March 1997) revealed that "Madelyne" was in fact a psychic construct, unconsciously formed by the mind of Nate "X-Man" Grey; however, unlike other psychic constructs, he was unable to uncreate her.

After apparently aging in X-Man #52, when X-Man lost a lot energy during a battle, she did not appear again until much later in X-Man #67. It was soon revealed that this Madelyne was an impostor, a parallel universe Jean Grey. The then-current writer Steven Grant (who did not write Madelyne's earlier appearances in the series) stated that he intended that Madelyne had been an impostor for the duration of the entire X-Man series (which would be a retcon). The in-story evidence is more ambiguous; at one time the impostor implies that Madelyne was fake all along, but at another time she claims she "replaced your Maddie several months ago," implying that only some of Madelyne's appearances (probably #67-up) were fake (one possibility is that the parallel version of Jean was able to kill Madelyne in her weakened state and replace her).

Madelyne's last appearance was in Cable #76, when Cyclops and Cable encountered her ghost on the astral plane and made peace with her.

Alternate reality versions

In the alternate reality known as the Mutant X universe, Cyclops was carried away into space during a plane crash (instead of his father Christopher and his mother), leaving his brother Havok as one of the founders of the X-Men. As in the main Marvel universe, Jean Grey died and was replaced by her clone Madelyne, also known as Marvel Woman. She fell in love with Havok and had a son, Scotty, with him. She also made a deal with S'ym and N'astirh and initiated the Inferno Crisis, unlocking her latent mental abilities. However, she survived the encounter and left with her husband Havok when he formed the splinter group called The Six. Her evil side resurfaced a number of times, first as the Goblyn Queen and later as the Goblyn Force. When it returned the second time, it merged with the Beyonder to form a nigh-omnipotent being. Havok supposedly saved her by placing the Nexus of Realities in her body, purging it of the malevolent Goblyn Force, before he returned once more to the void.

In addition to the fact of being married to Havok, the Madelyne of this reality also had another key difference: when she manifested the Goblyn persona she transformed into a demonic appearance, having red-orange skin, long horns, claws on her fingers and a third eye in the middle of her forehead.

Powers

Since Madelyne was cloned from Jean Grey's DNA, she was essentially another version of Jean, and possessed Jean's telekinetic and telepathic abilities (just at a lower level of power than Jean has). As Goblyn Queen, her powers were enhanced by demonic magic to the point where her telepathy could be used to release the dark side of a person's personality, and make them evil, and her telekinesis could even warp reality in a localized area. After her resurrection by X-Man (Nate Grey), Madelyne's telepathy was reduced to a much lower level, limiting her to reading minds and communicating by broadcasting her thoughts. Her telekinesis was still strong enough that Madelyne could move, lift and manipulate fairly large objects, channel her telekinetic powers to fire powerful mental force blasts, focus her psionic energy into a protective shield, and levitate herself in order to fly at fairly high speeds. She also developed powers that Jean never possessed. Madelyne was able to teleport over long distances by psychokinetically shunting herself in and out of the astral plane (she was also shown to be able to carry additional weight, such as another person, when she teleported, but her limits were never fully tested). Madelyne also discovered that she was able to siphon the psychic energies from other psionic mutants. She could then use the stolen pyschic energy to boost her own powers or channel the energy into someone else (usually Nate Grey) to temporarilly increase their psionic abilities.

Trivia

A child identifying herself as "Maddy Pryor" appears in the Chris Claremont-scripted Avengers Annual #10. It appeared that Claremont had named her after the singer too and there was no in-story connection, but the child reappeared as Madelyne's mental image of herself in X-Men #238, wearing the same clothes as the character from Avengers Annual #10 and saying almost the same line. This was never elaborated upon and is likely just an extended in-joke.

External links

Madelyne_Pryor - Marvel Database Project
Goblinesque -Madelyne Pryor fansite
Once Upon A Time - Madelyne/Scott Summers
UncannyXmen.net, Spotlight feature on Madelyne Pryor