Rachel Summers
Rachel Summers is the daughter of Cyclops and Jean. (Apparently John Byrne didn't necessarily believe that, though he plotted Days of Future Past, where she first appeared. To him, that was the future, not an alternate future, and since Jean had already died, Rachel couldn't be her daughter, though she was obviously intended to be before the last-minute death of Phoenix.) A lot of her story is retcons, even during the Chris Claremont years. She has her mother's powers: telepathy and telekinesis. I'm not sure how old she is, but she is a teenager. Like Karma and Rogue, she acts a bit older than she is, due to all she's endured. She's older than Kitty (14) and younger than Rogue (19), at least, if I'm not mistaken.
After Professor X was killed and the mansion destroyed -- Nightcrawler, Amanda Sefton, and Illyana died in the same incident, if I remember right -- Rachel was taken to a facility where she was abused and brainwashed with drugs by a man named Ahab, until she became a mutant hunter known as a Hound. Her telepathy made her the best, and she tracked mutants for her masters to kill. At some point she was freed and joined the X-Men, a tale which ended with the events in Days of Future Past. At some point she came back in time, but somehow got into the wrong timeline. Actually the details of her coming back in time were only resolved after Chris Claremont left, in Alan Davis's later issues of Excalibur. Kate Pryde coming back in time means she fixed a different past than her own, actually, since in her timeline Jean was alive. An unfortunate side effect of this retcon.
Rachel takes on the name and powers of Phoenix shortly before Jean is brought back, and though she's a bit psychotic, she is able to wield the power more safely than Jean ever did. She is extremely powerful, obviously, with the Phoenix powers, even attempting to use the M'Kraan Crystal to destroy the universe in an attempt to kill the Beyonder. She leaves the X-Men after a short while, being taken away by Mojo and Spiral. There was to be a limited series by Chris Claremont and Rick Leonardi, but it never surfaced. (There are a few pages, featuring Power Pack that have surfaced on the internet, however.) She joins Excalibur and becomes a mainstay until shortly after Alan Davis leaves following his run as writer/penciler. Rachel kind of tends to get shuffled aside and forgotten after Chris leaves, though her ties to the Phoenix Force obviously make her important.
The idea of a traveler from another time/dimension seeing the horrors of her own world repeated were being used in the British Captain Britain stories by Alan Moore and Alan Davis at around the same time, with Captain UK and Mad Jim Jaspers in place of Rachel and the Mutant Control Act. (I'm currently planning on covering Captain Britain after X-Men #200.) I still think Trunks from Dragon Ball is kind of a repeat of Rachel, too: A child of two of the main characters from a future where all the characters were killed by evil robots who have ties to previous enemies comes back in time to help prevent his future from happening.
I always remember that the long-time Jetfire on Transformers 2005 when I started was a big fan of Rachel. Heh!
After Professor X was killed and the mansion destroyed -- Nightcrawler, Amanda Sefton, and Illyana died in the same incident, if I remember right -- Rachel was taken to a facility where she was abused and brainwashed with drugs by a man named Ahab, until she became a mutant hunter known as a Hound. Her telepathy made her the best, and she tracked mutants for her masters to kill. At some point she was freed and joined the X-Men, a tale which ended with the events in Days of Future Past. At some point she came back in time, but somehow got into the wrong timeline. Actually the details of her coming back in time were only resolved after Chris Claremont left, in Alan Davis's later issues of Excalibur. Kate Pryde coming back in time means she fixed a different past than her own, actually, since in her timeline Jean was alive. An unfortunate side effect of this retcon.
Rachel takes on the name and powers of Phoenix shortly before Jean is brought back, and though she's a bit psychotic, she is able to wield the power more safely than Jean ever did. She is extremely powerful, obviously, with the Phoenix powers, even attempting to use the M'Kraan Crystal to destroy the universe in an attempt to kill the Beyonder. She leaves the X-Men after a short while, being taken away by Mojo and Spiral. There was to be a limited series by Chris Claremont and Rick Leonardi, but it never surfaced. (There are a few pages, featuring Power Pack that have surfaced on the internet, however.) She joins Excalibur and becomes a mainstay until shortly after Alan Davis leaves following his run as writer/penciler. Rachel kind of tends to get shuffled aside and forgotten after Chris leaves, though her ties to the Phoenix Force obviously make her important.
The idea of a traveler from another time/dimension seeing the horrors of her own world repeated were being used in the British Captain Britain stories by Alan Moore and Alan Davis at around the same time, with Captain UK and Mad Jim Jaspers in place of Rachel and the Mutant Control Act. (I'm currently planning on covering Captain Britain after X-Men #200.) I still think Trunks from Dragon Ball is kind of a repeat of Rachel, too: A child of two of the main characters from a future where all the characters were killed by evil robots who have ties to previous enemies comes back in time to help prevent his future from happening.
I always remember that the long-time Jetfire on Transformers 2005 when I started was a big fan of Rachel. Heh!