The Third Summers Brother and the Most Convoluted Family Ever

For years, first X-Man Cyclops had been regarded as an orphan, entrusted to the care of Charles Xavier and never really having had a home. That is, until Uncanny X-Men #54 (then just called X-Men), where his long-lost brother Alex was revealed! And Alex was a mutant! We of course know him now as Havok, but somehow Cyclops had forgotten to mention his brother until the blonde ragamuffin graduated from college, which in itself is a conundrum.

So we had two brothers, but then in Uncanny X-Men #266, we suddenly had a character with glowing red eyes who charged cards with his eyes. A few months later, this would be ret-conned so that this mysterious character charged the playing cards with his hands, and thus we had Remy LeBeau, a.k.a. Gambit.

Originally, Gambit was meant to be either a brother or a clone of Cyclops, hence their similarities. Claremont would get the chance to live this out in the imaginary land that was X-Men: The End.

But in X-Men #23, released in 1993, Sinister actually dropped the first hint that there was a brother that wasn’t Havok. Go ahead and read it below.

(thank you to Uncannyxmen.net)

So he drops the “brothers” bomb and go fans salivating. Of course, many fingers pointed to Gambit. But then a half-Shi’ar character appeared in X-Force Annual #2. He went by the code-name X-Treme (this was the nineties after all), but his real name was Adam.

In X-Men #39, he would use his powers to keep Phillip Summers alive in the Alaska wilderness before they could return to safety. As Scott and Jean were in Alaska after their honeymoon, they went to visit Scott’s grandfather in the hospital, and Jean would feel a great connection between both Adam and Scott. This was because they were supposed to be half-brothers, Adam being the offspring of D’Ken and Katherine Summers.

But then came Ed Brubaker. He hinted that in X-Men: Deadly Genesis, he would reveal the Third Summers Brother, and it would have been right under our noses the whole time. Speculation abounded, especially because Claremont had confirmed Gambit out of continuity, but also because Adam had long been known to be the Third Summers brother.

Instead, we got the new character, Vulcan. Young Gabrielle Summers had been in his mother’s womb at the time Christopher and Katherine had been captured by the Shi’Ar, hence “right under our noises.” That Brubaker!

But wait! There’s more! Sinister said brothers, so potentially Adam and Gambit could still be brothers, or gen-engineered clones, or whatever. But former Cable writer Robert Weinberg had a very different idea. Namely, En Sabah Nur.

Quoth Weinberg: “Then, in typical Marvel melodramatic style, shortly after this nameless woman gave birth to this incredibly powerful mutant child, the boy was taken from her. Stolen by a mysterious figure from the far future, a being who used a time machine to complete his master plan. Not only did this time-traveler kidnap Christopher Summers’ first child, but the traveler then took the baby back into the past and left him there. The time traveler abandoned the baby, who knew neither his father nor mother, on the burning sands of Egypt with only a name. He was called The First One, because the baby was the First Summers’ child, and the most powerful. Or as he became known in the language of those who found him and raised him, En Sabah Nur, the mutant known as Apocalypse.”

So now, we have at least four candidates, but why not more? Hell, they said brothers. Here are some of my ideas for other Summers brothers.

Corsair himself!

Let’s just make it so he was raising his little brothers born of the real son of Phillip and Deborah Summers. Easy enough, right?

Wolverine!

I almost posted a picture of a fat guy in a leather jacket with kitchen knives in his sleeve. Count your blessings. But really, what better way to drive up the tensions between Cyclops and Wolverine than to make it sibling rivalry?

Onslaught!

Forget Xavier. Let’s just make it the ultra-powerful eighth Summers brother, who turned energy projection into reality warping.

Captain Marvel!

Don’t give me that wizard bull, or tell me that he was a Fawcett character who was bought out by DC Comics. This is the plot twist of the century folks, and you’re just too dumb to realize it.

Mark Summers!

The former host of “Weinerville” is hiding more than just a sagging career.