With Disney’s hot new ‘90s nostalgia trip just over the horizon, let’s talk about X-Men ‘97’s villain, the Goblin Queen.
Marvel’s mutants have always served as emotionally charged allegorical fables for the trials of everyday life, and the Goblin Queen invited fans to consider the all-too-relatable experience of being a mystical clone of a dead superhero imbued with the power of the cosmic personification of the terrible and inescapable cycle of life. Real Aesop’s Fables stuff.
If you’re looking for an in-a-nutshell summation of the character, you’re in for a long wait. There comes a point in even the biggest X-Men fan’s life when they have to admit that the post-Chris Claremont writers kind of went bananas, and that point is, as often as not, Madelyne “Maddie” Prior. From a dramatic perspective, she was always a little hat on a hat, being introduced as an amnesiac dead-on lookalike for Jean Grey who happened to appear in a plane crash at the exact moment of Jean’s death. Jean’s boyfriend, Scott Summers, found the whole thing pretty suspicious, but managed to put aside his concerns long enough to totally marry Prior. The Xavier School is full of stuff like this.
The complicated history of X-Men ’97‘s Goblin Queen
In 1983, readers learned that Madelyne Prior had been set up by a vengeful Mastermind, made to seem like the reincarnation of Jean Grey’s evil Phoenix persona in the hopes of convincing the X-Men to kill her. The plan didn’t pan out, and Prior marries Scott, with Claremont later stating that his plan was for Scott to retire permanently, flying off to Alaska to raise a bunch of kids with his super-coincidentally Jean-looking bride. Say what you will about marrying the doppelganger of your dead lover, you save a ton of money on printing up new couple’s photos.
Then came X-Factor, the Marvel comics series in which the original X-Men roster of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, and Angel were reunited as a hip ‘80s super team. The writers decided that Scott had enjoyed enough downtime, and had him leave his wife and kid so that he could go hang out with his newly-resurrected high school girlfriend. Around this point, Madelyne started developing the tonal equivalent of an ominous eye twitch.
X-Men’s Madelyne Prior becomes the Goblin Queen, among other things
What followed was a years-long Mardi Gras parade of comic book weirdness. Madelyne got mad, punched a computer screen, knocked herself out, and made the first of several deals with demons. She kissed her ex-brother-in-law a bunch, turned Jean’s parents into monsters, opened a gateway between Hell and Earth, rebranded herself as the Goblin Queen, and started wearing a lot of skimpy black leather outfits. That last part is kind of a traditional move for X-Men-adjacent ladies going through some stuff.
In the biggest, most confounding twist of all, Madelyne Prior was then revealed to have secretly been a clone of Jean Grey all along, created by master genetic manipulator and perennial winner of Marvel’s Biggest Lapels Award Mister Sinister. Sinister had created the clone as a means of ensuring that Jean’s DNA and Scott’s DNA would eventually work together to make some particularly potent baby DNA, capable of giving the mutant despot Apocalypse a run for his money: Nathan “Cable” Summers. It was a plan so convoluted, it couldn’t not work.
In the years that followed, Prior served as an occasional demonic bad guy to the X-Men, dying and coming back to life like all good Jean Grey spin offs must. She also developed a whole range of wild abilities – enough that she becomes a little bit of a pain to sum up.
What are the Goblin Queen’s powers?
As a Jean Grey photocopy, the Goblin Queen seemed capable of doing whatever psionic business her genetic template was capable of, including telepathy, telekinesis, and carrying around a tiny nugget of Phoenix energy in her body. Additionally, she landed herself some reality warping powers, putting her dangerously close to Scarlet Witch’s “She’s Weird” designation from Avengers: Age of Ultron, and was able to drain the energy of other mutants with brain-stuff powers in order to make herself more powerful. She also had demon powers. And she could do magic. She’s a demonic psychic vampire sorceress clone with cosmic god abilities and the power to warp worlds, and she’s very upset with her ex-husband over their messy divorce. Like I said, “hat on a hat.”