Marvel Comics has finally released an official Summers family tree in the pages of X-Men Legends #2, but has left out perhaps the most tragic member of the whole family, Katie Summers. The Summers family is infamous for including various time travelers, clones, and alternate reality counterparts of established X-Men, some of whom have only appeared briefly in incredibly obscure comic books.
It’s no surprise that Marvel’s official Summers tree would omit some long-forgotten, possibly out-of-continuity mutants, such as Cyclops and Emma Frost’s daughter, Megan from Earth-41001, or Havok and Madelyne Pryor’s son, Scott from Earth-1298. However, one major branch from Earth-616 is missing from this family tree, ignoring the most tragic moment in the life of Cyclops’ brother, Alex Summers, and possibly preventing this data page from nearly doubling in size.
During his brief time leading the Avengers Unity Squad in the pages of Uncanny Avengers by Rick Rememder, Havok fell in love with teammate Janet van Dyne, also known as the Wasp. During one of their first missions, the Avengers Unity Squad fail to prevent the destruction of Earth at the hands of Apocalypse’s twin children. Having survived on a new planet for 6 years, Alex and Janet eventually conceive a young daughter, Katie Summers.
The storyline ends with longtime Avengers foe, Kang the Conqueror resetting the timeline, therefore preventing the annihilation of Earth. Along the way, Katie is lost forever in the timestream, and Havok starts down a long path toward villainy. Only recently has Havok been able to return to a life of heroism with the X-Men, though he is still suffering from immense trauma and mental instability from his time on the Avengers.
Due to her appearance in only one singular storyline published nearly a decade ago, and the lack of any reference to her existence in a number of years, it seems unlikely that the fate of Katie Summers will be addressed in any meaningful way for the foreseeable future. Erasing Katie from the history of the Summers family is particularly cruel considering she was only a small child when she was stolen by Kang. The comics have never addressed the notion that she could still one day be saved.
What makes Katie Summers’ existence in continuity so interesting, however, is how it links the Summers’ with another infamous Marvel family tree, that being of the Pyms. Introducing the Wasp to the Summers clan links them not only to Hank Pym and his android progeny, Ultron, but also to that of Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Through them, the extended Summers family would include Quicksilver, Vision's children Wiccan and Speed of the Young Avengers, as well as possibly Magneto if he could still be counted as a type of father to Wanda and Pietro. While the omission of Havok's daughter from Marvel’s official Summers family tree may seem like an oversight to longtime X-Men fans, an expanded family tree may also prove too unwieldy and complicated for one single page.
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