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X-Men: '80s Members

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    Ariel / Sprite / Shadowcat / Star-Lord II / Red Queen / Shadowkat 

Katherine Anne "Kate" Pryde / Shadowcat / Red Queen

Characters in X-Men: '80s Members
Kitty and Lockheed.
Click here to see her as The Red Queen.

Nationality: American, Krakoan

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980)

Kitty Pryde is a mutant gifted with the ability to become intangible and phase her entire body through solid material. A talented prodigy, she became the poster child of the X-Men; eventually reaching maturation and becoming the team's leader for a time.


    Lockheed 

Lockheed

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/996750_82_s_w_o_r_d__3.jpg

Notable Aliases: Frumious Bandersnatch

Nationality: Flock, Krakoan

Species: Flock

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #166 (February, 1983)

Lockheed is a purple, winged, quadrupedal alien that resembles a small dragon. He is the longtime companion of Kitty Pryde with whom he shares a special bond. He is a valued member of the X-Men and founding member of The Pet Avengers.


  • Alternate Self
    • His Universe 597 counterpart is a slave Nazis use as a power source, and is a giant, and a female
    • His counterpart on Kymri's world is a taller, more humanoid and capable of speaking the human language, but can't fly. He inducts Kitty Pryde into his Draccic society, much to 616 Lockheed's annoyance
  • Breath Weapon: He wouldn't be a dragon without a fire breath.
  • Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: He happily greets Lightning Force, the Excalibur team from an alternate world where the Nazis excepted mutants into their ranks and used them to win World War II, when they come to the Braddock Lighthouse while team is trying to save New York during Inferno. Lockheed should have learned his lesson when the Lightning Force Shadowcat chokes him out and leaves him for dead, but he happily greets the very next Kitty Pryde doppelganger, a much less convincing one at that, that he sees. Luckily for him, the second one isn't hostile. Annoyed that he's ruining her attempt to keep a low profile, but not violent.
  • The Dreaded: Played for Laughs. Lockheed is feared by all the Brood. When the Brood fled in terror from him, the X-Men assumed that he was some terrible monster.
  • Familiar: The relationship between Kitty Pryde and her pet dragon, Lockheed, fits the trope fairly nicely, despite not being of a supernatural nature.
  • Killer Rabbit: Lockheed, a tiny sapient alien dragon that befriended Kitty Pryde. He's so adorable that most people tend to forget the "sapient" and "dragon" parts. In his introduction, the Brood were running terrified from him as he burnt their nests. The X-Men assumed he was some terrible monster until they finally saw him...
  • Meaningful Name: Lockheed are the ones who designed the SR-71 Blackbird, and as the X-Men use one of those as their method of travel, it makes sense they'd find some way to pay tribute
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Small but intelligent, he's Kitty Pryde's partner. He also gets along with Magik.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Has many traits which western society considers common to dragons. He's reptilian-like, he has wings he uses to fly, he has a long snout with sharp teeth, breathes fire, and demonstrates intelligence beyond that of an animal. He is different from other dragons in that he's about the same size as a domestic cat, is purple, didn't say a word for many years despite being capable of speech, sometimes stands on his hind legs, and seems to have opposable thumbs on his front legs, He's a Flock, which are aliens that look very similar to dragons.
  • Parrot Pet Position: Lockheed often rides on Kitty Pryde's shoulder, though in a twist on this trope he actually considers her to be his pet.
  • Purple Is Powerful: His body is purple and he should not be underestimated because of his size.
  • Runaway Groom: Actually Lockheed did not abandon his fiancée at the altar out of malice, but rather the abandonment of The Flock and his fiancée because he went to Earth with Kitty Pryde after he met her and saved her from a swarm of Brood on the Brood homeworld. As he recovers from the wounds obtained from fighting Doctor Doom, his astral form is seized by the Flock and put on trial for treason for abandoning his species and his fiancée. After managing to explain his motives and save his teammates from a piloting accident, he is officially exiled from his race, but on friendly terms.
  • Shipper on Deck: He assist Kitty Pryde in her efforts to win the affection of Allistaire Stuart
  • Shoulder-Sized Dragon: He's small enough to ride on Kitty's shoulder.
  • Team Pet: He, when Kitty Pryde is on the team, most of the time. Lockheed isn't harmless, though — when roused to fighting fury, he's single-handedly routed Brood hunter packs and utterly annihilated an entire squad of alien Sidri hunters. Both have given respectable fights to experienced X-Men. He can also speak and has actually been spying on the X-Men, albeit benevolently, for quite some time.
  • This Is My Human: Some X-Men stories, imply Lockheed sees Kitty this way. X-Men Annual #8, AKA The Adventures of Lockheed the Space Dragon and His Pet Girl Kitty, told from the perspective of Illyana Rasputina, shows she sees their relationship this way. In Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, it is revealed that Lockheed is very intelligent, and was working for S.W.O.R.D. to spy on the X-Men. Presumably he was doing so in part to protect "his girl".

    Rogue 

Anna Marie LeBeau / Rogue

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9c25f565_abab_4f02_91af_773b68ffef48.jpeg
All the looks of Rogue. Artwork by Russell Dauterman

Nationality: American

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: Avengers Annual #10 (August, 1981)

The adopted daughter of Mystique, Rogue was once a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Now reformed, Rogue has become a veteran member of the X-Men.


    Phoenix II / Marvel Girl III / Prestige / Askani 

Rachel "Ray" Anne Summers/Grey / Phoenix II / Marvel Girl III / Prestige / Askani

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/daredevil_vol_5_19_resurrxion_variant_textless.jpg

Nationality: American (Earth-811)

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: X-Men #141 (January, 1981)

"I'm not my mother. I'm not Phoenix. I'm my own woman... and before I'm done... they'll wish I were the Phoenix."
Rachel Summers, Uncanny X-Men #468

Rachel is the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from an alternate dystopian future timeline where Senator Robert Kelly was assassinated, and as a result, the Sentinels were allowed to take over the world. Rachel used her telepathy to send Katherine Pryde's mind to the past so she could save Senator Kelly. Katherine succeeded but their timeline remained unchanged, so Rachel used the Phoenix Force to go back in time and find out what had gone wrong. Rachel discovered she was stuck in an alternate timeline where her mother was dead and her father was married to Madelyne Pryor. She'd join the X-Men and later Excalibur.

Rachel remained with the team until her parents' wedding in X-Men #30. Then she travelled to another far-flung remote future where the Earth was a desert world ruled by Apocalypse. Rachel founded the Askani in order to oppose him, and brought Scott and Jean to the future to raise Cable.

However, the events of Apocalypse The Twelve changed the timeline, and Rachel was kidnapped by a cyborg soldier called Gaunt. She was rescued and brought back to the present by her brother Cable, and attempted to lead a normal life until circumstances forced her to join the X-Men again.

Rachel was Marvel's first (of many) "child from the future" characters, one of the best known, and one of the very few who stuck around. In addition to her mother's telepathy and telekinesis, Rachel can also send her astral form through time and across realities. She doesn't do this often though, since outside her stint with Excalibur - who were frequently involved in multiversal shenanigans - the rules of time travel make it largely ineffective.


  • '80s Hair: Her (in)famous femullet.
  • The Ace: Aside from Psychic Powers on par with her legendary mother, if not stronger (though thanks to her Hound conditioning, she's notably vulnerable to Mind Control), she's a time manipulator and multiversal traveller capable of leaving her brothers in the dust (and neither of them is a slouch in that department), and was so good at handling the power of the Phoenix despite her phenomenally Dark and Troubled Past (it's comparable to Magneto's) that the entity itself recognised this and granted her full control over its power, believing she would use it more wisely than it would. As she once points out with a smirk, after nicking some of the power of Korvus Rookshir's 'Phoenix Sword', "the Phoenix likes me." Add to that Emma Frost deciding to make A Project out of training her after the two got into a telepathic brawl that Emma eventually won thanks to being Weak, but Skilled, by Avengers vs. X-Men, Xavier considers her his telepathic equal in skill as well as power, and she only gets considerably stronger from there.
  • Alliance with an Abomination: This is usually the status of a Phoenix Host, so long as they've got a strong enough will to stay in control. The tension tends to derive from the fact that the Phoenix a) is volatile, b) is operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality, and c) usually has its own aims in mind. Given that it's a force of both creation and destruction, it can be an ally or an antagonist. Some hosts handle it better than others — Jean Grey actually does pretty well, most of the time, but Rachel is the first who the Phoenix gave full use of all of its power, deeming her judgement superior to its own.
  • All-Loving Hero: At heart, under her spiky temper, enough that for a while, the Phoenix entrusts her with all of its power - and we mean all of it.
  • Alternate Self: Averted; In an other-dimensional space where inhabitants' alternate selves can be manifested, Rachel can only summon aspects of her past, meaning she is apparently wholly unique in the multiverse (there are other daughters of Scott and Jean called Rachel Summers in the multiverse, but they aren't versions of her). This saddens her, as this means her tragic life is the only one in which she could exist.
  • Alternate Timeline: The universe she is from, Earth-811, was originally one of the possible Bad Futures of Earth-616, but was later retconned into being a completely Alternate Universe that paralleled Earth-616 (except for a few details revolving around Jean Grey's relationship to the Phoenix Force) up to Senator Kelly's assassination.
  • Ambiguously Bi: As of the Krakoan era, there is nothing ambiguous about it, though the history bears some mentioning. Rachel is yet another Claremont character who was originally intended to be portrayed as queer, as often hinted at with her "special friendship" with Kitty. The ambiguity came from Claremont being unable to outright say it, and every other writer ignoring it in favour of having both dating guys exclusively. In the Krakoan Age her close relationship with Betsy Braddock received a lot of focus, culminating in the two kissing in Knights of X #4 and finally confirming Rachel's interest in women after decades of ambiguity.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing
    • She was also trained as a Hound, and while she has firmly rejected that part of her life, in the 2019 Excalibur run, her psychic avatar that guided Rogue back to consciousness took the form of a friendly dog, signalling how she's come to terms with that aspect of herself.
    • Phoenix, when she was Phoenix Force host.
  • Anti-Hero: Of the Knight in Sour Armor variety, although she started as a Pragmatic Hero or Unscrupulous Hero.
  • Anti-Hero Substitute: Zig-Zagged. At first glance, she's one to her mother, Jean Grey - she certainly has the style, as well as the whole 'younger and angrier' aspect. However, unlike her mother, she held the Phoenix Force for years without losing control(Jean only lost control becuase she had been brainwashed by the Hellfire Club, Mastermind in particular, but Rachel was the first host Phoenix gave access to all of its powers, believing she could handle it, and as many times as Rachel herself has been brainwashed, she was never turned into a planet destroying Dark Phoenix, though she also didn't need to lose control to go a space rampage against the Beyonder and then the murderous, slave trading Shi'ar Empire), and proved to be an All-Loving Hero like her mother (if a more sarky version), on the grounds that Vengeance Feels Empty.
  • Arch-Enemy: Rachel has Ahab, Selene, the Beyonder, Apocalypse, and the Shi'ar Death Commandoes.
    • Ahab was the man who turned her into a Hound, and after she escaped he fixated on getting her back. He even turned 616 Cyclops and Invisible Woman into hounds mostly to taunt Rachel
    • Selene is a thematic foil, as Rachel's a young woman from the future and Selene's an ancient evil. Especially after Magma and Nova Roma were largely written out of the comic books as writers became disinterested in Mirage's feud with Selene.
    • Rachel made multiple attempts to kill the Beyonder because he was a threat to the multiverse, but the Beyonder made things personal when he gave Rachel a portion of his power, and proceeded to threaten the lives or her friends just to test her. Eventually, Rachel delved into He Who Fights Monsters territory and nearly destroyed the universe to free it from the Beyonder's influence.
    • Apocalypse mostly applies to the "Books of Askani" setting, were Rachel lead Clan Askani in opposition to him.
    • Rachel is one of the few members of the Grey family the Phoenix Force hating Shi'ar have yet to execute. Just when she thought she was done with them they reemerged during Avengers Versus X-Men to ruin her attempts to pacify the conflict and help Hope Summers. Going by later appearances, they seem to have made it policy to leave her alone.
  • Ascended Extra: She was mentioned in one comic book, appeared in another, and then was totally absent from X-Men for three years before suddenly returning and becoming a regular.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: During one of Excalibur's stops on the Cross-Time Caper, Rachel temporarily burns out her powers (causing the team to be temporarily stranded since her powers are what allowed them to jump between universes). In the meantime, she's able to fight instead by copying Kitty Pryde's ninja skills. Kitty never taught Rachel any of those skills, she was simply able to duplicate them by watching Kitty use them. Once.
  • Badass Longcoat: Her costume from Schism to ResurrXion sported a long red trenchcoat with many tails, resembling the tailfeathers of a bird.
  • Bad Future: Rachel escaped from, pretty much, the ultimate Crapsack World. One of her driving motivations is preventing it from coming about, or at least preparing her students to face it.
  • Battle Aura: She often has a firey one, or a purple/pink one like her mother
  • Battle Couple: She fought alongside Franklin Richards, Korvus and Betsy Braddock while also dating them.
  • Betty and Veronica: In Excalibur she was the Veronica, Shadowcat was the Betty, and Alistaire Stuart was the Archie.
  • Big Sister Instinct: For young Nathan Summers, before he became Cable. When Nathan was still young and had to be sent to an alternate future after he was infected by Apocalypse's Techno-Organic Virus, Rachel mentally took Scott and Jean to have a honeymoon to the future so that they could raise young Nathan properly.
  • Birds of a Feather: Rachel and Korvus. Both wield the power of the Phoenix Force and both had their families murdered by the Shi'ar in a needlessly brutal fashion in order to wipe out potential Phoenix hosts. They end up dating, though Rachel realises that they aren't good for each other and decides that they're Better as Friends.
  • Bodyguarding a Badass: In House of M reality, she becomes bodyguard for Psylocke, who is an Action Girl herself.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: She has a tendency to get mind-controlled into being a Hound or turning against the X-Men. 2018 alone saw her brainwashed at least three times. note 
  • Break the Cutie: She started as a sweet, happy child, and at her core she's still a sweet child, but she's been mentally and physically scarred by living through both Days of Future Past (1981) and "Books of Askani". She's been kidnapped, physically modified against her will, and witnessed mass murder even in the 616 timeline, which itself is constant reminder of her failure to undo the previous two, and she has the whole dying and being brought back to die again thing that comes with the Phoenix Force, having basically destroyed herself to stop Necrom and unable to do anything as the Phoenix lashed out at those checking on her as it regenerated her body.
  • Brought Down to Badass: Just slightly before War of Kings, the fragments of Phoenix power she still had in her unceremoniously up and left mid-fight. This still left Rach with her Omega-level telekinetic powers.
  • Bullet Dodges You: After thwarting a plot to murder Xavier after his secret is discovered by a group of anti-mutant bigots, one of the villains tries to shoot Rachel Summers, who uses her telekinesis to grab the bullet and redirect it at the shooter. Then the bullet freezes just in front of his head, having been caught by Magneto, who refuses to let Rachel become a murderer like himself. The bullet just hovers in front of the now-terrified assassin's face while they push against each other, until Magneto manages to talk Rachel down.
  • Butt-Monkey: Rachel is one of those characters who goes through a hell of a lot of misery with very little positive gain. Over and over and over again. Things were looking up for her in the Krakoa era, however.
  • Calling Parents by Their Name: She bounces back and force between calling her (sort-of) parents Mom and Dad or just by their names.
  • Catapult Nightmare: She had these regularly while living in the concentration camp, and for a bit of time after arriving in the 616 timeline. Once she's mostly come to terms with her trauma she gets a second round of these nightmares after accepting the Phoenix Force, with the added downside of pulling other sleeping mutants into the experience, though these too eventually fade.
  • Celibate Hero: Rachel had a relationship with a grown-up Franklin Richards in her own timeline, who was killed before her eyes. After that, she wasn't interested in romance for a long time.
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: She is able to change into multiple outfits within a matter of seconds as due to her Phoenix powers, she can alter the molecules of her costumes at a whim. She has also done this with multiple other people's clothes at the same time, when the X-Men need to become inconspicuous by changing into civilian clothes. However, she almost collapsed from the effort because at the time she didn't have Phoenix powers, just "ordinary" telekinesis.
  • The Chosen One: If Jean Grey is the Phoenix Force's best friend, Rachel Summers is its favorite child. This works out as well as anything can with the Phoenix, once Jean accepts Rachel as her daughter.
  • Civvie Spandex: Danskins and leg warmers, before becoming Phoenix.
  • Clothing Damage: Her green outfit from her X.S.E. days got shredded during her time in outer space, and without the necessary resources to rebuild, she was forced to improvise with what she had.
  • Combo Platter Powers: Rachel Summers is a massively powerful telepath and telekinetic, and sometimes called 'the One True Phoenix'. Additionally, she's a Chronokinetic of awe-inspiring power, being the one behind Kate Pryde's mental time travel in Days of Future Past (1981). She also later used this power to send Scott and Jean to the future on their honeymoon to raise baby Cable, and one future self became Mother Askani, matriarch of the Clan Askani, a bunch of weird, predominantly female psychics who pretty much wrote the book on psychic time travel, and even later used it as part of the famous 'Cross-time caper' story in Excalibur, which involved the titular team bouncing around a lot of alternate timelines.
  • Commonality Connection
    • Her first friend at the Xavier Institute was Amara Aquilla, Magma, who was as unfamiliar with the world around her as Rachel was, was as much of a novice in combat and had just as much of a grudge against Selene Gallio
    • She grew close to her uncle Havok out of mutual dislike for Emma Frost and her relationship with Scott Summers
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • The first time Rachel tries to fight without any super human abilities she gets backhaded through a wall by a mook Kitty Pryde has to handle. It was a weak wall Pryde went on to break more of by accident, but still. The very next time she fought, however, against the Hounds that killed the Jean Grey of Barsoom, and their slave master, she instead made short work of them.
    • After being re-brainwashed by Ahab as a Hound, then nabbed by a young Stryfe and kept sedated by his pet telepaths, you'd think she wouldn't be in a state to hand one of these out to anyone. You would be incorrect, and Stryfe quickly finds this out the hard way, going from smug to begging for mercy as he lies curled up on the floor, bleeding from several orifices.
  • Daddy's Girl: She acts like this whenever she's with her father Cyclops, notably Scott tends to be quicker to accept Rachel as his daughter than her mother Jean does (though Jean had her own reasons for freaking out that had nothing to do with Rachel herself, and immediately regretted lashing out).
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Her mother was killed by a nuke when she was a little girl. Shortly after that, the government laid siege to the X-Mansion and she saw them shoot Professor X dead right in front of her. She was then taken to a lab and spent her childhood and early teenaged years being tortured into a living weapon to hunt other Mutants down, after which she was thrown into a concentration camp.
  • Dark Feminine Light Feminine: With Shadowcat, in terms of fashion sense (and perhaps backstory) if nothing else. Her personality, however, isn't especially dark.
  • Death Is Cheap: In the 90s, she got shunted off to Cable's future, where she lived out her life and died of old age. This got undone when that future stopped existing, and Rach managed to come back to her early 20s.
  • Deflector Shields: She commonly uses telekinetic force fields to protect herself and her teammates.
  • Depending on the Artist: The size, shape and color of her Hound markings, and her eyes, which, though usually green, are sometimes coloured blue - which would be just about the only feature she inherited from her father (whose eyes are blue behind the optic blasts).
  • Destructive Savior: She nearly destroyed the entire universe trying to rid it of the Beyonder, before Storm talked her down.
  • Deus Exit Machina: A lot of Phoenix-related stories have Rachel knocked out, incapacitated or just plain not there whenever it shows up. Avengers volume 8 #41 had all known telepaths locked away to keep the Phoenix Force from them, for one example. And any decent telepath would have been able to stop the actual Big Bad, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Rachel probably just by talking to him.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: Her "permanent" connection to the Phoenix Force was broken right before War of Kings, mainly to ensure the lost X-Men, Starjammers, In-humans and Kree would be at a disadvantage against Vulcan and the Shi'ar Empire. It stayed broken so that the Phoenix itself could be a source of conflict in further events like Avengers vs. X-Men. Exactly what separated Phoenix from its favorite adopted child has never been revealed, getting Rachel out of the way was really all that mattered.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Galactus. Though technically, Rachel's own consciousness was in a coma while the Phoenix took him on. Just before that, however, she'd gone toe to toe with Necrom in his an Anti-Phoenix state. He hurled planets at her, reignited stars to try and destroy her, and was condensing the multiverse into a singularity to feed off and allow him to ascend to godhood. She won, albeit barely.
  • Dirty Mind-Reading
    • She reacts to this in an issue of Excalibur, during the Cross-Time Caper story (where Excalibur was bounced around the multiverse), from a version of Nigel Frobisher - a creep in the 616 'verse who's obsessed with Rachel, and apparently a creep throughout the multiverse. This results in her very suddenly tarring & feathering him. We never find out what the exact thoughts were, but when Brian Braddock (Captain Britain) rebukes Rachel for her behaviour - they are, after all, guests - she shows them to him by way of explanation. Cue an expression of shock from Brian. Cut to the next panel where his temper slips as well and it takes his entire team to prevent him from turning alt!Frobisher into a greasy smear.
    • Her enemy Mesmero used his own psychic powers to boost Rachel's...so that she'd realize Nightcrawler was infatuated with her and realize she felt the same way. It was the only nice thing he ever did for her, but Rachel still broke up with Nightcrawler upon learning the truth, and Kurt was fine with that.
  • Divine Parentage: According to her creator, Chris Claremont, Rachel's father isn't Scott Summers, but the Phoenix Force itself. This is quietly ignored by everyone else. Alan Davis showed it was as protective as a parent would be, but explained that it saw a chance to make up for the trouble it caused Jean in Rachel, the time displaced orphan of Jean with all of her mother's good nature and potential power.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap
    • After arriving in the Books of Askani timeline, Rachels finds herself struggling to hold onto the Phoenix Force as it tries to depart from her, preventing her from using it on Apocalypse and his forces. The Phoenix does obliterate her most immediate enemy, Prelate Nero, before departing4, but Rachel has to do the rest on her own, leading to the formation of Clan Askani, as she can't do it on her own.
    • She tells Cable that the Phoenix Force sometimes ditches her to go "sight seeing" when it discovers timelines it didn't know about. She fully expects it to come rescue her from Gaunt, and is distraught when Cable, who she doesn't think can beat Gaunt, shows up instead.
  • The Dreaded: Rachel's reputation is an extension of her mother's, for the most part, thanks to in-depth connection to the Phoenix. However, she also expands the reputation on her vengeful rampage in Shi'ar space after her family was massacred. Likewise, she was Brainwashed and Crazy as one of the most powerful mutant Hounds of Ahab.
  • Dressed Like a Dominatrix: She frequently has had costumes that have this theme to one extent or another - her main costume while she was with Excalibur, for instance, was a spiked spandex bodysuit. Later costumes, barring her Marvel Girl one, were less obvious about this and tended towards a spiky component.
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: To an extent as a teacher at the Jean Grey School during Wolverine and the X-Men to the point of being being noticeably grumpier than usual. Then again, if you had to teach Kid Gladiator and keep Omega class teenage rebel and generalised irritating little twit Quentin Quire in check, you'd wind up more than a little annoyed. When Logan asks her about this, she explains that she feels like the Bad Future that she came from is coming for them, and they have to be prepared.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: It was initially explained that Rachel was a superior Phoenix Force host because the Phoenix itself didn't fully understand human emotion when it was in Jean Grey and saw Rachel as a chance to make up for what it did to Jean. This logic became questionable with the introduction of Feron, who understood human emotion just fine and had been in contact with the Phoenix, but has completely fallen apart as more Phoenix hosts before Jean Grey were introduced in The Avengers volume 8 and spinoff Phoenix Song: Echo. The Phoenix is also portrayed as inherently corrupting, ignoring how it originally simply didn't know any better, and Jean's nature still kept it in check before the Hellfire Club brainwashing, that Rachel also kept it in check just fine once it knew better.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Subverted in Excalibur. She eventually ditches her original spiked red bodysuit (which was based on her Hound costume) and settles for the blood-red ensemble of Dark Phoenix. But it's not a Face–Heel Turn; she just prefers these colours over "Light" Phoenix's costume. "[Dark Phoenix] might have been a threat to the universe... but she had great taste in clothes!"
  • Exact Eavesdropping: Professor X catches Rachel, Roberto Da Costa and Illyanna Rasputina trying to eaves drop on a private conversation the X-Men are having and orders them to go to bed. While Sunspot and Magik do as they're told, Rachel manages eaves drop anyway and loses control of her telepathy when she hears that Jean Grey died before Rachel was born, meaning Rachel is not in the past. Charles has to use his own telepathy on her, for everyone's safety.
  • Extremely Protective Child:
    • While Jean Grey (or Cyclops, for that matter) rarely needs rescuing, their younger children, Rachel Summers and Nate Grey are both more than happy to get violent in her name if need be.
    • Rachel flew off from a Excalibur mission when she felt an alternate Earth Jean in danger (and avenged her death, with prejudice). She also avenged the Jean Grey of Barsoom(a living planet where Earth 1289 would be if Earth existed in that timeline).
  • Facial Markings:
    • When she was converted into a Hound, she was given facial tattoos (or scars, depending on the writer/artist). Her Hound marks are almost always tattoos but Depending on the Artist, their shape, number, and coverage vary from thin dark spider-web-like lines to six larger red marks to two reddish triangular tattoos pointing inward on her cheeks. Generally, she uses her telepathy to mask them from others... or they're forgotten. As she's prettier without them/with fewer tats, she drops the illusion when she wants to be more intimidating, or when she's too pissed off to concentrate on it.
    • During her Marvel Girl 2000s stint, a Phoenix emblem flared up over her left eye when she used her powers, even when she didn't have a Phoenix Force fragment.
  • Fainting Seer: When she first accepts the Phoenix Force, Rachel proceeds to pass out from the sudden uptick in her physic powers. She proceeds to pass out several more times before she really gets the hang of it. The warwolves initially give her seizures!
  • Fake Weakness: When Excalibur is forced into Saturnyne's office, Rachel disguises herself as Kitty Pryde to avoid the death sentence. Saturnyne's staff realize something is wrong with "Kitty" and try to forcibly restrain "Pryde" for examination but they are using weapons designed to capture Shadowcat specifically. Rachel just has to escape in a manner that doesn't betray her own mutant or Phoenix powers. Saturnyne knows it's Summers on sight even without seeing Rachel in action, but by the time Saturnyne can personally view Summers, Roma has ordered Rachel be sent home unharmed.
  • Fanservice Pack: She started out in Uncanny X-Men as a skinny woman with a crew cut and a penchant for leotards and legwarmers (probably since it was the 80s). After a Wolverine-related injury, she was taken to Spiral's other dimensional "Body Shoppe" and subjected to a never-elaborated-upon process (the Body Shoppe usually specialized in cybernetics but Rachel was just told she could change her body by dancing inside), so that when she reappeared in Excalibur she looked like a bombshell and wore a spike-studded red leather catsuit (granted she had a mullet, but it was the 80s). She also wore a similar catsuit in flashbacks (when she was a brainwashed slave of the anti-mutant Sentinels), though that was more a case of an Evil Costume Switch. Part of it might also be that Alan Davis (co-creator of Excalibur) is a better artist, and/or that he noticed various characters had mentioned Rachel looking a lot like her mother Jean Grey and decided to make it true.
  • Fiery Redhead: Not only does she fit the personality trope, but she also happened to manifest her powers in the form of giant birds made of fire when she was Phoenix Force host. She often still displays a fiery aura even without the Phoenix Force or any fragments of it. In Otherworld, this becomes quite literal.
  • Flaming Hair: While in Gaunt's prison, and in Otherworld, her hair is made of flames.
  • Flight: She can fly by using psychokinesis, often at multi-mach speeds and in the depths of space.
  • Flying Firepower: As someone who has spent ten years as the host of the Phoenix, it's safe to say that she does a lot of this, against the likes of Galactus and the Beyonder (though in the former case, it's the Phoenix using her body with none of Rachel's input).
  • Game Face: She gets scary-looking lines on her face when she gets serious. They're tattoos or scars always there, her telepathy making others see an marked face. When she has to use her full power for butt-kicking, she can't spare any for the illusion. Sometimes she's not going all out but just too angry to keep up the illusion.
  • Generation Xerox:
    • Rachel Summers is perhaps the prototype of this among the X-Men, being in many ways a carbon-copy of her mother in terms of appearance and power-set (with an additional temporal component), right down to claiming the name Marvel Girl and powers of the Phoenix. This is occasionally lampshaded. However, their relationships with the Phoenix and their personalities are quite different... not entirely surprising, given that Rachel was trained as a mutant-hunting Hound and raised in a concentration camp. On the other hand....
    • For a long time, the dynamic between her and her mother mirrored that between her father and her uncle, Havok - basically playing second fiddle, with Rachel frequently considered a poor man's substitute for her mother and used as such. Unlike Havok, however, she's got enough unique plotlines, different associated characters, and difference in personality, plus the whole 'Mother Askani' future, that she's managed to carve out for a niche of her own, being on different teams such as various iterations of Excalibur.
  • Genocide Survivor: She is a survivor of an anti-mutant genocide that happened in the timeline she came from.
  • Glass Cannon: She's got powerful telepathy, and Emma Frost has taught her how to use it against similar telepaths, but Rachel tends to be in trouble if she doesn't go "first", more so than mom based on instances where they were "blindsided" by Madelyne Pryor.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: And glowing tattoos if she's serious or angry enough.
  • Guardian Entity: The Phoenix Force was her sworn protector, helped move her to the past in the first place, erased memories to protect her sanity, merged with her for a very long time, and then a fragment - a 'shadow' - merged with her when Korvus Rook'shir (then a Punch-Clock Villain) tried to use the Phoenix Blade that contained it to kill her and she responded with a Bare-Handed Blade Block. In the face of his utter bafflement, she smirked, with a glowing blue Phoenix symbol over one eye, and said, "The Phoenix knows me. It likes me."
  • Hairstyle Inertia: Her mullet stays in place even when she loses her mutant and Phoenix powers, and she's held upside down, next to Shadowcat, whose hair falls as expected
  • Hidden Depths: She was forced to learn how to play the piano while enslaved by Gaunt, and learned quickly.
  • Homefield Advantage: In addition to the White Hot Room, her connection to the Phoenix Force, which was removed right before War of Kings, returns whenever she is in Otherworld, and goes back away when she leaves Otherworld, as she needed Jean's help to summon the Phoenix during the last assault on Krakoa by Orchis, and it only empowered Jean upon arrival.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: In Excalibur #37, she lets Kitty Pryde take Doctor Doom to Limbo with the Soulsword after reading Doom's mind and determining he has no evil intentions. The Lady of the Lake groans and takes Excalibur before the West Coast Avengers, where she complains about Excalibur advancing Doom's plan to destroy England. Doom was out to obtain clean energy for all, Rachel just missed that part about trading England for it.
  • Hot Wings: Starting with taking on the Phoenix mantle, and in later comics depicted as blue flames instead of yellow.
  • Hunter of Her Own Kind: In the future world she came from, Rachel was forcibly brainwashed into becoming a Hound by Ahab after being captured and tortured by the government as a child. Ahab considered her the best of his Hounds thanks to her psionic abilities making her extremely talented at tracking other mutants. It left her both with long-lasting trauma, and tattoos/scars (it's never been entirely clear what they are) that she usually keeps concealed with her telepathy.
  • Identical Grandson: Zizagged. She does look incredibly like Jean and is often drawn as such, to the point where the only differing features are her usually short hair, Hound markings (which are often concealed), and Depending on the Artist, blue eyes (like her father), though she's usually drawn with green eyes. However, she's also sometimes drawn looking utterly dissimilar.
  • I Have Many Names: Rachel Grey, Marvel Girl, Phoenix, Mother Askani, R'chell, Revenant, Starchilde, Prestige.
  • I Have No Son!
    • Previously, Jean had dramatically freaked out when meeting her, which sent Rachel running, something that Jean in turn immediately regretted - she'd freaked out because Rachel popping up was the culmination of a number of experiences that made her feel like she had no choice about marrying Scott and no agency whatsoever. They patched things up, and Jean later apologised.
    • Inflicted on her by her own grandmother, just before the other woman was horribly killed by the Shi'ar Death Commandos.
  • I Have You Now, My Pretty: A recurring plot with Claremont is Rachel running into women(Selene Gallio, Spiral, Gatecrasher, Sat-Yr-9, the 23238 Kitty Pryde and Illyana Rasputina(who want every Excalibur member who isn't 616 Kitty), Captain Cymru, Baroness Krieg) who want to take her captive and either do things to her or convince her to turn evil, in ways not at all suggestive. It's shocking when Saturnyne and Nova only want the Phoenix terminated and just view Rachel as an acceptable loss.
  • I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: While some of her costumes were dodgy, there have been worse. However, her buzzcut and her mullet are close competitors for the title of 'worst hairstyle in comics'. Thankfully, she has a much nicer bob cut these days.
  • In-Series Nickname: Ray.
  • Inconsistent Coloring: She is fairly notorious for this, sometimes having bright green eyes like her mother (often highlighting just how much she takes after mummy dearest), and sometimes having blue eyes like her father (when his powers aren't working).
  • Instant Costume Change: When she became Phoenix she would instantly restructure the clothing she was wearing into her costumes by telekinetically rearranging the molecules.
  • Interspecies Romance: She dated Korvus, a Shi'ar, who look like humans, only with feathers instead of hair. Korvus didn't like life on Earth, however, and ditched her. She also became romantically interested in John Sublime, a sapient colony of bacteria, but he just wasn't into her. She fell out of love with him when she realized he wasn't just a literal scumbag, but a figurative one as well
  • Jerkass Ball: The first time she took the name of Phoenix was when Scott had no idea who the skinny, green-eyed redhead telepath was, but shortly after he'd married Madelyne. Kitty figured it was a private "screw you" from Ray.
  • Kid from the Future: She is this trope played absolutely straight and is probably the Trope Codifier (predating Chibi-Usa and Future Trunks, other famous examples of the trope, by about a decade): she's the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey in the "Days of Future Past" timeline's future, who goes back in time and joins various X-Teams.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: She comes from a Bad Future where mutants were hunted down and killed or herded into concentration camps. She still fights to keep the dream of peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants alive.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: When Alistaire Stuart's attempt to teleport Galactus away to safe distance fails, Phoenix surrenders, as even with Excalibur helping her Rachel doesn't think Galactus and his herald, Nova, can be beaten at the same time without destroying much of Earth. Too bad for Rachel, letting Galactus destroy Phoenix will cost more than just Earth.
  • Lady-In-Waiting: In the House of M reality, she becomes lady-in-waiting for Psylocke, princess of the British Empire.
  • Last of Her Kind: She's one of the last of the Grey family line after most of her family were brutally murdered by Shi'ar Death Commandos. The only currently extant other examples are Cable, Nate Grey, and Jean herself after her resurrection. Maddie Pryor is also around, but she is not considered part of the family line by the others.
  • Legacy Character: She has taken on both of her mother's identities, Phoenix and Marvel Girl.
  • Leg Focus: A lot of comments were made by other characters about her legs - which went on forever (thank/blame Alan Davis) - during her time with Excalibur, wherein she usually wore a skintight red leather costume.
  • Leotard of Power: During her earliest days with the X-Men, she didn't have a proper costume, and was usually wearing a black leotard with some leg-warmers. When she got her first real costume, she commented about having been running around in her Danskins to that point.
  • Made a Slave:
    • Her childhood and adolescence were spent as a Hound, a brainwashed and tortured slave of an oppressive government.
    • She and Magma were enslaved by Selene as gifts to the Hellfire Club after deluding themselves into thinking they were ready for rematch with her. Charles managed to negotiate their release
    • Being hunted by the Hellfire Club, Nimrod and the X-Men(really, Wolverine), Phoenix was offered refuge by Spiral at her "Body Shoppe", which was a ruse for forcing Rachel to perform for Mojo's television programs. Rachel did get a new body out of the deal, but it wasn't enough payment and she eventually escaped
    • Once the Books of Askani timeline was averted, she was enslaved by Gaunt and forced to periodically cry for Cable to rescue her, Gaunt hoping to break Nathan's body the way Gaunt did her mind
    • And again, after she came back from the dead, courtesy of Elias Bogan. Mind Rape was also involved. The X-Men at least managed to save her that time, though it did alter the look of Rachel's powers.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: She lies on the ground dying after being forcibly pulled into London 23238 by it's Illyana Rasputina, and has no appreciation for Allistaire Stuart's attempts to care for her, rudely dismissing his concern for her well being and even rising to fight Magik when she starts hexing Stuart, despite being in no condition to defend herself, much less him.
  • Manchurian Agent
    • Mesmero turned her into a sleeper hound who would destroy the X-Men from within when they least expected it. He even pushed her into romancing Nightcrawler, so her betrayal would hurt Rachel more when it was all said and done.
    • When Jean Grey returned to life following Xorn murdering her, Cassandra Nova turned Rachel into an assassin to kill Jean again, with the message Rachel's right mind would be restored if Jean just let herself be killed, should Rachel be having trouble offing her.
  • Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: She already styled her hair and clothing in more masculine ways than Betsy, and has increasingly done so as they started dating. She's also the more compulsive, socially assertive and physically playful, which can be interpreted as more masculine. Betsy is the larger, more physically capable and assertive one at work, and has also been dressing in more gender neutral fashions as Captain Britain, so aside from Betsy's longer hair this mostly refers to their personal lives.
  • Meaningful Name: Askani is a word in a few Indo-Iranian languages, ranging from "traveler" to "warrior", which both fit Rachel; she uses the exceptionally archiac definition "outsider". It has a different meaning still in Otherworld; "The bright lady of the flame", which still fits her.
  • Mercy Kill: While lost in the multiverse and trying to get Excalibur back with Lightning Force's Train, Rachel got to meet and befriend a younger version of her mother. And then had to kill her, failing to stop that world's version of the Hellfire Club from corrupting Jean as they had on Earth 616.
  • Messiah Creep: Much like her mother, she underwent this - from concentration camp survivor to Phoenix host and saviour of the multiverse, being considered the One True Phoenix, starting a quasi-Jedi religion in the future, and organising the raising of mutantkind's chief Messianic Archetype, Cable.
  • Mind over Matter: She has telekinesis. However, molecular manipulation is a signature trick of hers, as is time travel, across millennia and multiple alternate timelines, to the point of being deeply intertwined with the Multiverse itself.
  • Mindlink Mates
    • Siblings example. She created a psi-bond with Cable shortly after his birth. It is unknown if that link still exists, however.
    • Of the other sort with Korvus - she absorbed the power of his Phoenix Blade, and it led to a mental connection, and their dating, as well as influencing her personality for the darker. In the end, Rachel recognised this and broke up with him, presumably breaking the link too (though her mother taking back the Phoenix fragment she absorbed might also have been behind it), though they remained on good terms.
  • Mind Rape
    • Unusually susceptible to this, especially considering her powers and their scale - though, the perpetrators are usually enormously powerful beings like Selene, Elias Bogan, Maddie Pryor, Mastermind, Cassandra Nova, the Shadow King and Emma Frost (who noted that the only reason she could do it was because Rachel was all raw power and no skill). Her background and conditioning as a Hound might have something to do with it. It has also diminished considerably as she got telepathic lessons from Emma Frost.
    • She's also more than capable of dishing this out, as Quentin Quire found out when he tried to taunt her by bringing up her memories of her horrific childhood. The result was Quire getting a Psychic Nosebleed and keeling over about two seconds later.
  • Ms. Fanservice
    • When she disappeared in Uncanny X-Men, Rachel was a stick-thin tomboy who usually wore gym clothes. When she reappeared in Excalibur, she had a much more developed "movie-star" figure (as she had spent time in the Mojo Universe) and wore a skintight, stiletto-heeled, spike-studded, red leather catsuit when on duty, and as little as possible off duty. This was followed by a skirt during her Marvel Girl days. She's toned it down since she came back from space, but she still looks like a younger (or older, around Teen Jean, who Rachel dubbed 'Baby Momma') version of her famously drop-dead gorgeous mother and still has a tendency towards tight clothing.
    • Lampshaded at one point during Excalibur when she and Kitty go shopping, dissatisfied with the conservative suit and pumps Kitty picks out for her she uses her powers to re-arrange Kitty's outfit to resemble something Rachel normally wears. Kitty immediately thinks that she looks like a hooker.
    • Later, also during Excalibur, she ends up disguising herself as Rachel, right down to costume, and grumbles at how Rachel possibly fits into something so ludicrously tight.
  • Mundane Utility
    • In Wolverine And The X-Men #20, she's brainwashed by Calcabrina and forced to use her temporal powers for fortune telling.
    • During the Krakoan era, she used her telepathy, telekinesis and temporal abilities for detective work.
    • While dating Betsy she began using temporal shields to extend their longue time and put off their other commitments. It wasn't full proof, however, as Technet reached them easily when hired by Saturnyne to kidnap Betsy and or Rachel.
  • Nom de Mom: After Cyclops hooked up with Emma Frost after Jean's death, she started using her biological mother's last name to voice her disgust, and has kept it ever since.
  • Not Himself: During World War Hate, she was hit with an "inversion" spell that turned Rachel into a sadistic torturer and mass murderer
  • "Not So Different" Remark: The Phoenix, while possessing her comatose body, gets one of these from Galactus in Excalibur after she attacked him in a misguided attempt to protect a world since overextending her Phoenix powers shortens the lifespan of the universe. Unusually for this trope, it actually does give her a new perspective on Galactus.
    "Who is the greater evil, Starchilde? I, the devourer of life that has run its course... or you, who denies existence to future generations?"
  • Noodle Incident: Her transformation into a reptile-humanoid thing is either treated as this or quietly ignored.
  • Only One Me Allowed Right Now: When she traveled into the past, she ended up in the primary universe instead of the offshoot where she was born (where Jean Grey was depowered instead of killed). She didn't realize she wasn't in her own timeline until she saw Jean Grey (well, actually Madelyn Pryor, but close enough) and Scott Summers had a son... she never had a brother.
  • Out of the Frying Pan
    • When she first physically arrived in the past, she headed for the Xavier Institute but ran away when the person who answered the door bell was Magik. While Rachel wasn't wrong about Illyana Rasputina being an aberrant, Summers would have been better off taking her chances instead of fleeing right into the waiting arms of Selene Gallio, who wanted to study the "New Mutants" and was eager to take Rachel apart.
    • During Extermination, Ahab returns to the 616 timeline, again, manages to kidnap Summers and turn her into a hound again. She's rescued by Stryfe, who undoes her hound programming, so that he can turn her into his own brand of Human Weapon to use against Clan Askani. This did not turn out well for Stryfe, though.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Opal Luna Saturnyne, who lost her patience with Excalibur's efforts to unlose themselves in the multiverse, directed Lightning Force's Train to her station where she would pass judgment on them in person and deal with the Phoenix "once and for all". Rachel panicked and disguised herself as Kitty Pryde, well enough to fool even Lockheed, but Saturnyne saw through the ruse immediately. She just ignored it and let Excalibur go because Roma ordered Saturnyne to leave them alone and send them home, Saturnyne instead making sure their path to Earth 616 would cross Galactus, so he could finish off Phoenix for her.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: After accepting the power of the Phoenix, Rachel tried to kill Selene to finally avenge Nicholas Damiano, a stranger who tried to help Rachel when she first ran from Selene. Wolverine stabbed Rachel through the heart to stop her.
  • The Phoenix: She kept the motif even after ditching the actual cosmic critter itself. Rachel's connection with the Phoenix isn't in a constant state of Retcon like her mother's; she and the Phoenix were merged for years, then separated via a fairly complicated (though simple by Summers/Grey family standards) Time Travel storyline. She also never went Dark Phoenix like Jean, despite generally being more the hot-tempered of the two, but she came close when subjected to the same brainwashing before Kitty and Meggan saved her.
  • Progressively Prettier: Originally, Rachel, in both actual art and in spoken dialogue concerning her is shown to be borderline emaciated, with a very unflattering buzz-cut. When she joined Excalibur she was given a very well-developed build and a skintight costume that didn't leave much to the imagination. Justified since her transformation happened while she was in Mojoworld, a place known (among other things) for reshaping people into attractive movie stars.
  • Psychic Powers: Telepathy and telekinesis.
  • Redhead in Green: She is a redhead and has worn green on numerous occasions, although she generally prefers to wear red.
  • Restrained Revenge: After Mastermind tried to turn her into a Dark Phoenix, as he had her mother, Rachel called for capital punishment upon being rescued by Meggan and Kitty Pryde. They convinced her to accept imprisonment, but she still used her psychic powers to put a mental block on his.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Who were the Mother Askani haters who sicked Gaunt on her when the Books of Askani time line was averted? It seemed to be the Dark Sisterhood at first, but then it became clear that they lacked the resources, narrowing it down to any faction with access to a generic time ship.
  • The Rival: After learning how to use her temporal powers in conjunction with Betsy's Starlight Sword to more freely travel the multiverse without Saturnyne's assistance or approval, Rachel does all she can to keep Saturnyne out of her life, under the guise of keeping Betsy free of Saturnyne. It's definitely not that Rachel has any personal issues with the Magistrix.
  • Rogues Gallery: Ahab and his hounds, Nimrod, the Hellfire Club, Mojo's Warwolves, Saturnyne, Vulcan
  • Sand in My Eyes: Rachel is somewhat prone to crying, especially in her early days with the X-Men. It's not because of any painful memories watching mutants she helped hunt down get murdered or fear for her friends' safety, really. The wind just blows things in her eyes sometimes.
  • Scaled Up: An infamous heroic example; during a 2005 trip to the Savage Land, she was brainwashed by a telepathic member of a race of lizard people into believing herself to be one of them. Because of the strength and fine control of her telekinesis, her body started gradually changing into that of a lizard woman. Once she snapped out of it, she reversed the change in the space of a single issue. Aside from occasional jokes, it has been quietly ignored ever since.
  • Sensor Character: When she was a Hound, she was forced to use her psionic abilities to detect and hunt down mutants in a dystopic alternate future. She's regularly called on by other characters to employ those skills and eventually reconciles herself to using them for that.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: She came from a future where mutants were outlawed, hunted down by the military, or locked into concentration camps. She was drugged, brainwashed, and forced to use her telepathic abilities to track down mutants. Wolverine once compared her to Holocaust survivors.
  • Ship Tease:
    • A metric ton's worth with Kitty Pryde. One issue has her being heartbroken over Kitty being... together with a just-back-from-the-dead Colossus. Chris Claremont, the creator of both characters, enthusiastically fanned the flames by saying that Rachel was actually the love of Kitty's life. It is possible that he meant this in a Platonic Life-Partners sense, but considering that this is the same man who codified the Mystique/Destiny relationship and tried to reveal Nightcrawler as their son, with Mystique having transformed into a man to impregnate Destiny (something which was later canonised), it seems unlikely.
    • One issue has a brief moment between her and Nightcrawler... which didn't get mentioned again or go anywhere for 12 years. Letters to the editor have noted that their romance seemed to come out of nowhere.
    • During the Krakoan Age, she gets a significant amount with Betsy, culminating in the two finally sharing a kiss in issue 4 of Knights of X, after Betsy seemingly permanently destroyed her relationship with Angel. They became an official couple afterwards.
  • Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Like her mother, she has red hair and green eyes (though, Depending on the Artist, they can come out blue).
  • Sins of Our Fathers: Rachel was almost killed because of the crimes her mother had committed as Dark Phoenix. Of the entire rest of her mother's family, she is the Sole Survivor.
  • Sole Survivor: From a technical point of view, of the Grey family line, who were all murdered by the Shi'ar Death Commandos on the belief it would prevent the Phoenix from taking any of them as hosts, though from an even more technical point of view, Goblin Queen, Cable and X-Man still existed, despite all being abberants. Jean Grey's subsequent resurrection changed this regardless.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Originally, Rachel's Hound uniform was depicted as black with metal studs around the neck and wrists, down her front, and along the outside of her arms and legs. Her Excalibur catsuit was an adaptation of this: red with spikes instead of studs, and none on the legs. Alan Davis consistently drew the black studded uniform in flashbacks, but other artists instead put Rachel in the very same red. The outfit mix-up may have started with Days of the Future Present, where Rachel refers to her costume as her "Hound uniform" even though it's a variation with fewer pokey parts.
  • Squishy Wizard: Rachel is an omega-level mutant with telekinesis and telepathy that are practically reality-warping and her comatose body curb-stomped Galactus while the Phoenix Force was steering it, but in a pure melee she gets dropped fairly often including an absolutely vicious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from her uncle Vulcan after he ambushed her.
  • Story-Breaker Power: Rachel is conspicuously absent from most Marvel and even just X-Men mega-events. Since an Omega-level psychic with full control over the Phoenix Force would solve any conflict very, very quickly, the writers constantly come up with excuses for sidelining her.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: She often looks almost exactly like her mother, usually right down to the red hair and green eyes - though sometimes the hair is a slightly different shade of red, and her eyes are sometimes blue like her fathers really are - with only styles and her Facial Markings (which she can hide) to seriously distinguish them. The resemblance is so uncanny that in an alternate reality, she successfully disguised herself as that world's version of Jean.
  • Superdickery
    • The cover of Quasar #11 depicts her roasting the heroPhoenix has been possessed by Mordred the Mystic
    • Excalibur #29 shows her standing above the downed bodies of her teamshe is being tormented by Nightmare
  • Super Hero Packing Heat: While she was a regular in Cable, she regularly carried guns.
  • Superpowerful Genetics: She inherits her mother's psychic powers.
  • Superpower Lottery: Like her mother, Rachel has telekinesis and telepathy so powerful, it's almost limitless even when she's not Phoenix - for instance, she didn't need the Phoenix to master molecular manipulation, she's mastered Time Travel to the point of being able to travel across millennia, and she's effectively the only person to consistently and successfully control the Phoenix Force, to the point of being called 'the One True Phoenix'. Needless to say, she gets nerfed a lot, but she's still fairly impressive, flattening an entire Avengers squad in one shot during Avengers vs. X-Men.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: During periods when Jean Grey has been rendered temporarily dead or otherwise unusable, she has been substituted numerous times, most commonly by Rachel.
  • Tangled Family Tree: She is Scott and Jean's alternate timeline daughter and half sister to Scott's son with Jean's clone Madelyne.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Emma, early on. Partly because Emma had still been a villain last time Rachel was around, partly because she was dating Ray's dad, and also because Emma just tends to enjoy pissing off everyone around her.
  • Took a Level in Badass: She's risen several levels from the girl who once ran in fear from a not even hostile Magik, particularly since the start of the 2000s - after a humiliating loss to Emma Frost, the latter brusquely started training her to make sure she was Strong and Skilled. After House of M, she can reach halfway across the universe from Shi'ar space while in a coma, by Avengers vs. X-Men she can go one on one with Thor with minimal trouble and hide the presence of a Phoenix host from Xavier, who explicitly warns Logan to treat her as he would Xavier himself, and she only gets stronger from there. By the Krakoa era, despite being telepathically sedated and mind-controlled for an extensive period, she was capable of comfortably overpowering a young Stryfe and leaving him begging for mercy, demonstrating casually multiversal range.
  • Tough Spikes and Studs: Deconstructed as she can't even get into the first spiky outfit she creates without telekinesis, as it lacks a zipper and she'll poke herself trying to slip into by hand. Then reconstructed, as most of her outfits end up lacking spikes altogether, as she comes to enjoy other fashions, but finds more practical ways to add spikes to her clothing when she's in a study mood.
  • Unskilled, but Strong
    • Rachel was this in most respects when she first became Phoenix - what she was good at, like tracking and molecular telekinesis, she was insanely good at, but with everything else, she got by through raw strength. As Spiral put it when Freedom Force (the former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants turned government agents) tried to arrest the X-Men, "So much power. So little skill." Rachel counts on it in her fight with Necrom, noting that he's a lot better than her but isn't too powerful, relatively speaking, opting that along with the injuries he sustained prior to fighting her she can just burn him out.
    • Later, Emma Frost beat her in a telepathic duel for this exact reason, and started briskly tutoring her. Fortunately, Emma is a good teacher and Rachel was a quick study and is now one of the most skilled telepaths and telekinetics in the Marvel Universe, to the point where in one of the tie-ins to Avengers vs. X-Men Xavier explicitly warns Wolverine to treat her as if she's Xavier himself. She has also got considerably more powerful since, and is capable of scanning the entire planet by herself, the sort of feat only regularly matched her brothers in their borderline omnipotent phases, and more rarely, by her mother at her peak. This means that her powers are often understated or she'd be a complete Game-Breaker.
  • Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Betsy tamed a "cub" of one of the warwolves Mojo deployed to recapture Rachel, and gifted it to her. Rachel named it "Amazing Baby".
  • Vengeance Feels Empty: A recurring theme with her, surprisingly.
    • During her return to the Days of Future Past (1981) reality, she spares Ahab, largely on these grounds, being content with the Sentinels having been reprogrammed to preserve life.
    • During War of Kings, she gets the chance to explode the head of the Shi'ar Death Commando who led the extermination of her family. She doesn't enjoy it, however, and promptly breaks down in tears.
    • During her time on the all-female X-Men, she saves the life of the Shi'ar official who suggested the 'exterminate the Grey family' plan in order to prevent another Phoenix host arising... though, granted, after being conflicted over the point. Instead, her ultimate response is to telepathically force him to feel how she feels, to make him understand, and leaves it at that.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: She seeks the approval of still living 616 alternates of her parents. Scott gives it to her early, relative to his discovery of just who Rachel is, and is reinforces her knowledge of his pride in her often. Jean initially rejects Rachel, and while Jean has a change of heart, circumstance keeps Jean from vocalizing it to Rachel for years. Rachel does connect with the Jean Grey of Barsoom, while the awaited reconcilliation with the 616 keeps getting put off, however.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: She used the Phoenix Force to temporarily take the life force of the X-Men, without their permission, in a bid to become strong enough to kill the Beyonder. Storm gives Rachel the cold shoulder for weeks, and Wolverine ends up trying to put Rachel down the next time he thinks she's getting out of line
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Subverted, oddly enough, as Rachel, who already had ample reason to have gone insane (but didn't) before acquiring the Phoenix power, managed to wield it for years without going crazy. She's been reverted to her "hound" state several times, but was only at risk of becoming another Dark Phoenix when Mastermind was brainwashing Rachel into one, and Rachel was saved before it was too late, unlike Jean.
  • The Worf Effect: Like all incredibly powerful psychics, whenever the plot needs it, Ray tends to be taken out of action. In fact, X-Men: Gold, X-Men: Red, and Extermination saw her get brainwashed no less than three times in the span of a few months (though, granted, in the latter two cases it was by a ridiculously powerful telepath - Cassandra Nova - and a man who dedicated a lifetime to brainwashing mutants, especially Rachel - Ahab).
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: When she's brainwashed by anthropomorphic dinosaurs in the Savage Land into believing she's one of them she starts to telekinetically rewrite her own DNA and make it true.

    Magneto 

Erik Magnus Lehnsherr / Max Eisenhardt / Eric Magnus / Magneto

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/magneto_4316.jpg

Notable Aliases: Magnus, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Master of Magnetism, Auschwitz I.D. #24005 (retcon from #214782), Michael Xavier, "The Creator", Erik the Red, "Red," Grey King, White Pilgrim, King Erik Magnus, Eric Lensher, Mr. Sullivan, White King, Miraculous Magneto, Phantom Saboteur, the Leader, Master (by Toad), Merciless Magneto

Nationality: German, Krakoan

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: X-Men #1 (September, 1963)

Among the most powerful, recognizable, and infamous mutants to inhabit the planet Earth, Magneto was the X-Men's first major nemesis. Now known as a revolutionist and terrorist, Magneto has fought for the X-Men as many times as he's been against them.


    Psylocke / Captain Britain III 

Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock / Psylocke / Captain Britain III

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bbcapb2023001_dc71_4295f25d_4332_48da_92ab_35f295b3bd5e.jpg
Click here to see her as Psylocke

Notable Aliases: Betts, Bets, Kwannon, Lady Mandarin, Lady Briton, Death, Elisabeth/Elisabetta

Nationality: English, American, Krakoan

Species: Half-Otherworlder, half-human mutant

First Appearance: Captain Britain #8 (December, 1976)note ; Captain Britain Vol 2 #12 (December, 1985)note ; New Mutants Annual #2 (October, 1986)note ; Uncanny X-Men #213 (January, 1987)note 

British beauty Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock is a mutant with vast telepathic and telekinetic powers that she can focus into deadly weapons. She is a stealthy martial artist, a former fashion model and longtime X-Man.


    Dazzler 

Alison Blaire / Dazzler

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/6546649_dazzler_4.jpg

Notable Aliases: Agent Blaire, Alison Brown, Buzzler, La de los patinetes que canta, Dazz, Dazzler, Disco Dazzler, Dolores Rudolph, "Lightengale", Sandy Blossom, Skippy, "Songbird", Brightengale

Nationality: American, Krakoan

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: X-Men #130 (February, 1980)

Can you hear it? The wind. Cars. The ocean. The laughter and the screaming and the hum of everything. This city is a symphony. And I'm her speaker.

The musically-inclined Alison Blaire is introduced as a young mutant who has no desire to be a hero or villain, but just wants to use her powers to entertain and further her Idol Singer career. Although initially popular, after coming out as a mutant to help quell anti-mutant sentiment, the public rejects her. After a short stint as a back-up keyboard player, she joined the X-Men and developed a romance with Longshot. After a long time in limbo, she resurfaced as a successful techno-trance musician and rejoined the X-Men.


See Dazzler

    Longshot 

Longshot

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/longshot.jpg
Some guys have all the luck. Longshot's that guy.

Notable Aliases: The Lost Messiah, The Lucky One, Jumping Jack, Ziggy Stardust, Leather Boy Leather-Queen

Nationality: Mojoworlder

Species: Mojoverse slave race (Freemen)

First Appearance: Longshot #1 (September, 1985)


    Forge 

Forge

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7208240_xforce5cov.jpg

Notable Aliases: Maker, Skitch

Nationality: American, Krakoan

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #184 (August, 1984)

"I am a midwife of the impossible. I am Forge. I make the impossible real."

A Cheyenne Indian, born to be a shaman. He ran from his responsibilities and joined the military, only to conjure up some badassery in Vietnam and releasing the Trickster. Then he worked for the US government as their gadget man, only to create the gun that stripped Storm (accidentally: it was meant to be Rogue) of her powers. He nursed her back to health, then got a What the Hell, Hero? for it when she found out he was at fault. Sacrificed the X-Men (at the time) with their permission to lock away the entity he had released, after it wreaked havoc in Dallas. He eventually joined the X-Men and wanted to marry Storm, but ultimately left her (and the team) for Mystique when he felt Ororo didn't love him. You can imagine how well that relationship went, and he regretted his actions when Storm went on to marry the Black Panther. It is theorized he'll become the founder of the X.U.E. (Xavier's Underground Enforcers) in Bishop's future.


  • According to My Calculations: During X-Men volume 6 #14, Jean Grey telekinetically launches Iceman into orbit to defend the planet from aliens trying to cook it with a coronal eruption. Iceman uses Jean to telepathically send a message to Forge, asking him to calculate exactly where the resulting hunks of ice are going to fall. Forge has already determined exactly how large they will be, where they will land, and "uploaded" the information to Jean, so she can download it into Firestar, who is nonetheless surprised by their size and multitude despite having the exact math. Turns out Forge was wrong about Firestar being able microwave it all, but Synch stepped in to assist.
  • Animal Motifs: Eagles, possibly a winking allusion to his prototype real name.
  • Anti-Hero: He technically started out as a weapon-dealing, ex-Vietnam war criminal, so Warren Ellis probably had a good point in interpreting him as type V or a Nominal Hero and or Villain Protagonist. Over the years he has softened considerably but in the 616 comic books Forge is always a little rough around the edges.
  • Artificial Limbs: His right hand and leg are cybernetic.
  • The Atoner: He joined the X-Men to make up for making a superhuman-depowering gun. And also in the hope of getting into Storm's pants.
  • Biotech Is Better: After the founding of Krakoa, Forge began to develop much of his technology from the living island itself, creating biotech armor and weapons for use in combat, as well as artificial limbs for mutants who lost them on missions.
  • Ditzy Genius: In X-Men Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men cartoons, he's still great at mechanical engineering but he's a lot less intellectual than one would expect him to be for it.
  • Evil Mentor: Forge was unaware of the fact his Shaman mentor, Nazé, had been replaced by a Dire Wraith who was preparing to sacrifice the entire planet Earth for power. Luckily for Forge, and Earth, the one who answered the call was the Adversary, who slew the Wraith because he wasn't about to let any rivals of his gain that much strength, and Forge is able to save the real Nazé. Not before Forge lost his mechanical leg, again, however.
  • Famed in Story: He's happily welcomed at the Rez as a super hero, though Echo herself has no idea who he is beyond member of the X-Men
  • Felony Misdemeanor: Storm fans hated Forge for breaking up with her just as she was going to accept his proposal, leaving her for Mystique. Debate over who was wrong for the break up can get intense, but the two ex-lovers eventually met up and agreed that both were at fault to some extent.
  • Fighting from the Inside: In X-Men: Red he was captured and brainwashed by Cassandra Nova into helping create nanosentinels that would infect people to hate, identify, and murder mutants. He spends much of the series attempting to fight out of her control or sabatoge her plans, but was only freed once Jean Grey defeated Nova.
  • Florence Nightingale Effect: He strikes up a romance with Storm after treating her when she is shot with a power nullifier Forge himself designed. When Storm won't quit the X-Men for him, Forge strikes up a romance with Mystique while rehabilitating her after she was possessed by the Shadow King.
  • Foil: He's a foil to Red Wolf, the first Cheyenne super hero Marvel published stories about, as while Red Wolf was deeply connected to both spirtuality and magic, Forge has limited use for the former and actively shuns the latter. Forge is also far more guarded than Red Wolf, who freely shares his name, William Talltrees, before and after earning his title, while Forge only gives people aliases. Forge is also a foil to the two Cheyenne super heroes Marvel published after him, as where Danielle Moonstar, Mirage, refused to associate with white people until her guardian ordered her to, Forge was all too eager to get away from his tribe and into white society, at first. Forge's natural aptitude for mechanical engineering also heavily contrasts Echo's for kinesiology.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: His mutant ability helps him build machines by simply imagining what they should do, rather than working out the pesky details. Notably this does not always mean that he understands how it works completely, and there are several instances of other geniuses looking at his working and immediately seeing ways to improve it. Forge's power essentially allows him to brute force the creation of an item he needs to function, with room for him to improve on the design later.
  • Gadgeteer's House: His homes tend to be filled with inventions in various stages of completion and function.
  • Godzilla Threshold: Forge's disdain for magic and the spirit world becomes much less intense in situations where the Adversary makes himself known, as Forge will resort to just about anything to get rid of him.
  • Hero Antagonist: He's the third antagonist of Phoenix Song: Echo, but he's got just as much of a point as the protagonist does, both being out to save people in their own way, and until more plot points are revealed, actually has the better argument.
  • Home Base: Most commonly Eagle Plaza in Dallas, when he is not an active member of any given x-team.
  • Literal Disarming: He had his bionic hand (and leg) removed by Cameron Hodge during the X-Tinction Agenda crossover to make him less dangerous. It was also twisted payback for deliberately putting himself in stasis so nobody could find the X-Men's plan by scanning his mind.
  • Machine Empathy: His ability allows him to see the potential kinetic energy in machines.
  • Magical Native American: Doesn't come up very often, but Forge is described by his mentor as a "Once in a century" shaman talent. The problem is, he would rather do anything else.
  • Mr. Fixit: In addition to being able to create the machines he needs out of scratch, Forge can use his powers to improve, fix, or reverse-engineer any other machines he sees.
  • Nano Machines: Making nanites grow on trees was one of Forge's long term projects during the Krakoan era. The fall of the nation put that on hold, but his efforts did mean he had an ample supply of them when Druig declared war on the mutants.
  • No Name Given: He has only ever been referred to by aliases, usually just "Forge". Even his "legal name", Doctor Silvercloud, is a forgery.
  • Older Than They Look: Since his origin is still entrenched in Vietnam with no Retcon to update his service to a later conflict, he fell into this trope as it became clear he'd have to be in his 60s at the least to have served in the Vietnam War.
  • Power Nullifier
    • He crosses paths with the X-Men after people start trying to use a mutant power nullifier he created on them
    • He develops guns designed to neutralize Psychic Powers. They only annoy the Phoenix Force, but most Marvel psychics aren't as powerful as the Phoenix and will be in much more trouble if shot, though Forge by this point in his Character Development still makes sure to make them as less lethal as he can afford to.
  • Prescience by Analysis: After the loss of Krakoa, Forge builds a globe that helps him predict where the next global threat to mutants, humanity as a whole or the planet itself will most probably originate from. What forms the threats take still manage to take Forge off guard, however,(such as running into an Ethiopian mutant arms dealer and Spaniard chemist-alchemist-sorceress in Japan) but that's what the new X-Force is for.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: The Ethiopian mutant weapons designer and arms dealer Moses Magnum was originally an Iron Man villain before moving unto Black Panther. X-Force then makes him The Rival of Forge. Both want to save the world, but while Forge is trying to prevent further violence, Moses Magnum is trying to cull a few hundred million people across the globe to give the survivors a common enemy.
  • Sanity Slippage: After being badly injured and shot in the head by Bishop when he went rogue to kill Hope during Messiah Complex, Forge became increasingly paranoid, delusional, and ruthless. His mind was eventually fixed by Cable, who used his telepathy to trap Forge within an illusion of his own broken brain and fix it with his powers.
  • Science Wizard: Forge's mutant power gives him a natural intuition for inventing mechanical devices. He also has some knowledge of magic inspired by Cheynne folklore, though he'll try literally anything else he can think of before falling back on it.
  • Start X to Stop X: He develops a mutant detector for the US government, one that only detects mutants the US government already knows about, to stop the development of a mutant detector that can find those not yet outed. Unfortunately, "Raven Darkholm"(Mystique) doesn't believe Forge.
  • Sticky Fingers: If Forge finds an interesting piece of technology, he feels a compulsive need to take it, or a piece of it, especially if it belongs to an enemy trying to kill his team
  • Still Wearing the Old Colors: During the Krakoan Era he leaves the X-Men but still wears an X-Men field uniform when he ventures out to shoot things. He curiously decides take his time returning to uniform when he returns to the team proper in X-Men volume 6 to defend the island
  • Super Hero Packing Heat: Forge has a gun for just about every kind of enemy, and if something does take him by surprise he can always build a new one, provided he has the raw materials
  • Talking the Monster to Death: He does manage to talk Echo down from letting the Phoenix Force influence her, for a half hour at best. He doesn't hear what he wants from the woman herself beyond that, though, so he feels forced to spring his trap.
  • Techno Wizard: A classic example. In X-Men (2019), this was actually expanded upon; he's actually the most powerful mutant of his power classification, and the only reason he isn't considered an Omega-level mutantnote  is due to having been surpassed by non-mutant humans (i.e., Tony Stark).
  • Took a Level in Kindness: He's a hardened criminal of several fields, but he's left his criminal career behind to the point he genuinely prefers to talk his problems over before resorting to deception or violence, and is motivated by protecting as many lives as he can, not just of his tribe or country, be it Cheyenne, USA, Krakoa or otherwise.
  • Totally Radical: In X-Men Evolution cartoon. Made rather funny because he actually looked a LOT like Fez from That '70s Show.
  • Tranquillizer Dart: He creates gun larger than himself, too heavy to carry, on the beaches of Krakoa to shoot the approaching Hex with Nano Machines designed to put them to sleep. Forge underestimates them, turning out to only have enough ammunition to stall one of the six
  • The Vietnam Vet: He served in Vietnam, but Comic-Book Time is not in effect.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: In Uncanny X-Men #185 Forge chews out Henry Gyrich for hunting mutants with Forge's untested power nullifier while there's a Dire Wraith infiltration going on, and more so for shooting known ally Storm, not only causing her powers to go out of control and cause property damage, but also potentially turning the X-Men against the US government. The Dire Wraiths, watching the conversation, conclude Forge has to die for being too competent.

Alternative Title(s): Rachel Summers

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