The Horror of the Summers Family Tree

Comic books are utterly insane, and I love them for it. A strong stance for someone writing for a comic book website to take, I know.

But this day we’re going to micro-focus on one aspect of comic books. In particular, the convoluted tangled rat’s nest of retcons, confusion, and utter insanity that is the family tree of one Scott Summers.

Marvel’s very own X-Men leader, Cyclops.

Born in… well, born roughly 20 to 30 years ago, Scott Summers is often the leader of the X-Men in some form or another. Most people know him, or at least recognize his optic-blasting eyes thanks to appearances in multiple movies, video games like X-Men vs. Street Fighter, or the many cartoons from the X-Men franchise. Aside from the time he and his second wife spent a decade in the post-apocalyptic future to raise his son or the time he was brought to the future as a 16-year-old, Scott’s life has been fairly straightforward.

Look, this is about his family tree. Not his timeline. He’s a convoluted mess, and it’s amazing.

We will not include Scott’s abusive adopted father, Jack Winters. He has shown up twice in canon and died both times.

Scott was born to Christopher Summers and Katherine Summers. Christopher Summers was in the airforce, while Katherine possibly worked for the local airline owned by Christopher’s parents. Unfortunately, this timeframe is unclear, as both would allegedly die rather horribly in a plane crash. This is also why Katherine does not have a great picture. Readers found out about this tragedy around the time it was also revealed that Cyclops had a brother: Alex Summers.

Alex Summers and Scott were separated at a young age in the American foster care system. Alex was adopted by the Blanding family while Scott remained behind. This left Scott in the hands of the mutant scientist Mr. Sinister, who basically messed with Scott’s genetics for years on end while continually gaslighting the poor boy. The two brothers would reunite in the early days of the X-Men, and both would be with the team through many incarnations. Indeed, both would even lead their own teams at the same time in the 90s, and fans thought that was all they needed to know about the Summers Brothers.

*X-Men volume 2, issue 23: "Leaning Towards Oneself." Writer Fabian Nicieza, Penciler Andy Kubert, Inker Mark Pennington, Colorist Joe Rosas, and Letterer Bill Oakley*

Until 1993, when this magnificent bastard Mr. Sinister let it slip that there could be more than one brother of Scott Summers. Fans went insane, and just about everyone was suspected of being yet another brother of Scott and Alex Summers. Did they have glowing eyes or weird energy powers? Probably a Summers Brother. Three in particular wound up being possible suspects, though a running joke in the letters column at the time was that everyone was the third Summers Brother.

The first suspect of being a Third Summers Brother was Gambit, also on the X-Men at the time. His past was a massive mystery prior to being adopted into the New Orleans Thieves Guild. He had glowing red eyes! He also had a strange past with Mr. Sinister, which was along the same lines as Cyclops at the time. He was also a red herring, though the alternate universe epilogue X-Men: The End did establish he was some Cyclops/Mr. Sinister hybrid, making him a brother-son of sorts.

Adam X the X-Treme was the second possible Third Summers Brother. Adam’s history is convoluted. He is half-human and half-Shi’ar, an alien race of bird people. While readers originally thought Scott’s parents had died, they had both in truth been kidnapped by the ruler of the species, the Mad Emperor D’Ken. Christopher watched as Katherine was murdered in front of him, and he would later escape imprisonment and slavery to become the space pirate Corsair. It was thought that he was a bastard child of Christopher or that maybe Katherine didn’t die quite yet. Recent issues of Marvel’s merry mutants revealed that he was a genetic experiment of Katherine and D’Ken’s genetic material, making him Scott’s half-brother. Close enough… but he was not revealed to be the Third Summers Brother at the time. It was intended, but the main writer left before establishing so.

The mutant formerly known as Apocalypse was also going to be a Third Summers Brother, the child of a tryst between Christopher Summers and a mutant woman who would be cast back in time to ancient Egypt. This did not get added to the run of Cable, a book whose titular character we will get to in a moment. Scott and Apocalypse do share some genetic material, however, from when Apocalypse took over Scott’s body in 2000.

So, who was the Third Summers Brother?

*Red indicates blended genetics, while blue indicates a lab-grown person. There will be a few of those.*

2005’s X-Men: Deadly Genesis revealed that the long-lost brother of Alex and Scott had been on another team of X-Men. Formed when everyone had been lost on the original incarnation of Krakoa, Gabriel Summers was actually an unborn child inside of Katherine when she was murdered by D’Ken. He was dropped into a growth chamber as a fetus and aged up, and would later find himself on Earth.

Then Charles Xavier got them all killed and wiped the memories of anyone involved.

Charles Xavier is kind of a dick. And also kinda Cyclops’s uncle, seeing how Xavier married D’Ken’s sister. We won’t be adding the Xavier family tree, however. I don’t have a lifetime to try and make it work.

It would take many years for Gabriel to get over how horribly his life had gone, including life and death as a king of space. He would be brought back to life with the start of the new Krakoa island nation. He’s fine.

From here, things get more muddled. You see, Scott got married and tried to have his own life, separate from the X-Men. After the death of Jean Grey (the first one), Scott met an air stewardess who had been working for his grandparents. Her name was Madelyne Pryor, and they hit it off. The two would marry and even have a child. This child was initially named Nathan Summers.

The color green is just me adding another drop-down to a next generation, so to speak. Scott didn’t divide his cells to make a second Scott, though there were two of him running around at the same time due to time travel shenanigans.

He now could be called Nathan Christopher Dayspring Askani’son Charles Summers. We are, however, running with just his codename: Cable. Cable would travel with his dad on some adventures early on. It turned out Madelyne was actually a clone of Jean Grey made by Mr. Sinister, as he believed any mutants born to the genetics of Scott Summers and Jean Grey would become incredibly awesome kids.

As it turns out, Cable is still nowhere near that simple.

You see, Cable was hurled into the future when he was infected with a techno-organic virus as a baby. This future was also run by Apocalypse, who we mentioned earlier. His initial caretaker, Mother Askani, would clone him in case something stupid happened. While something stupid did happen, it was that the clone was snagged by Apocalypse. The dictator would raise this extra Cable as his own son. This boy would become known as Stryfe and is best known for wearing the most blades on a suit of armor.

Also, the older incarnation of Cable was killed by a younger version of himself and has been replaced by… himself? Maybe? Cable has done so much time travel, he is now a Gordian knot of paradoxes and bullshit. It is amazing.

Madelyne Pryor would also die during the events of the original Inferno storyline. Around this time, Jean Grey returned from the dead… having not actually died. Instead, her body was left at the bottom of Jamaica Bay to heal up from horrible space injuries while the space entity known as the Phoenix took her place. Genetically, all three are technically the same person. However, we are listing Jean and the Phoenix as one entity, while Madelyne is another due to her extreme difference in personality. They would also be blended mentally at the end of Inferno, giving Jean Grey the experience of trying to raise Nathan while her husband was editorially mandated to join X-Factor.

The genetics of Jean and Scott have been used to make several more kids, all of whom have found their way to the world of most Marvel Comics. It’s called Earth-616, but that’s not super important here. What other kids are we talking about?

*The orange color indicates children from other universes who have migrated to Earth-616. We will not color-code how they were made.*

Nate Grey comes from the alternate universe colloquially known as The Age of Apocalypse. That universe’s Mr. Sinister was also obsessed with blending the genetics of Scott Summers and Jean Grey and would cook up Nate in a lab. He would somehow escape the lab and migrate over to Earth-616 when the event ended in 1995. Nate would function as several McGuffins for storylines and was most recently seen having made a pocket universe filled with no sex or romance in Age of X-Man.

Rachel Grey is the first alternate universe kid to come visit the X-Men of 616. She comes from the universe better known as Days of Future Past and was responsible for sending Kate Pryde back in time to her younger self’s body in the original comic story. When the end was near, Kate would hurl Rachel back in time and apparently across universes. She was born to the Jean Grey and Scott Summers of her world, though her creation was actually drawn from the Phoenix itself through parthenogenesis.

Comics, man.

Rachel has been with various X-Teams since she first showed up in the 80s and has even hosted the Phoenix Force during the 90s. Everyone seems to forget about that, as 98% of the writers doing Phoenix Force events remember only Dark Phoenix.

An alternate Rachel would also grow up to become Mother Askani, who would take care of Cable in his younger days. We’re not going to add her here, but just remember that Rachel is as fragmented as her younger brother Cable.

We will not be including the alternate universe daughter Ruby Summers, who comes from a universe where Scott Summers married Emma Frost. However, she is awesome, which is what earned her a mention. But she never came to the 616 continuity, so she is not on the list.

We will also not be including Alex Summers’s own children. He has one named Katherine Summers, who was born in what became an alternate timeline where Alex married Janet Van Dyne. The future that was there never came to pass, but Alex remained with his memories of her and went evil for a little while, trying to restore that timeline. He also has an adopted son, Scotty. This son was actually his son in an alternate timeline where Alex Summers ran that world’s version of the X-Men, married Madelyne Pryor… and Scott was a space pirate.

Alex is his own snarl of multiversal shenanigans. It looks like this runs in the blood.

Finally, we have the children of Cable himself. There are two.

Tyler Dayspring is a child from the distant future, born to Cable and Aliya Dayspring. She also went under the not-confusing name of Jenskot, the portmanteau of Jean and Scott’s names. Like his father and Uncle Stryfe, Tyler would return to the 90s to cause chaos in the world as the villain Genesis. However, his time in the past would be cut short by Wolverine.

In that Wolverine killed him.

I don’t think anyone realizes this means Logan killed Scott’s first grandson.

Hope is a different twist. She was the first mutant born after the time the Scarlet Witch wished for mutants to no longer exist. Cable would kidnap her through the time stream and eventually adopt her as his own. Hope would also possess the Phoenix Force for a brief time, like her aunt Rachel and grandma Jean. The fact that she is only a few years younger than Rachel doesn’t seem to bother anyone because the Summers Clan has either gone insane or has taken to drinking.

While we’re done with the warped and gnarled wood that is the Summers Family Tree, there’s something else we need to cover. You see, unlike many Marvel characters, we actually know the source of the family name.

Scott Summers himself.

After spending time in the future raising their son Cable for a decade or two, Jean and Scott found themselves cast back to 1859. There, they would foil the machinations of the Mr. Sinister of that day in London, England. They would also save the Edge family from his deeds and inspire the young Daniel to take his family name from the two who had been so cool and awesome while saving his life.

Yes.

The Summers Family Tree is a massive circle trapped in a time loop.

This is why comics are so awesome, and why you should read more of them.