HAVOK (Alex Summers)
Created By: Arnold Drake, Don Heck & Neal Adams
First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men #54 (March 1969)
Role: The Lesser Brother, The Second-Leader
Group Affiliations: The X-Men, The Starjammers, X-Factor, The Genoshan Magistrates, The Six (Mutant-X Universe), The Brotherhood of Mutants
PL 11 (158)
STRENGTH 2
STAMINA 3
AGILITY 4
FIGHTING 8
DEXTERITY 3
INTELLIGENCE 2
AWARENESS 2
PRESENCE 3
Skills:
Acrobatics 2 (+5)
Deception 3 (+6)
Insight 2 (+4)
Intimidation 5 (+8)
Expertise (Science) 4 (+6)
Expertise (Science) 4 (+10) -- Flaws: Limited to Earth Sciences
Expertise (Tactics) 4 (+6)
Perception 4 (+6)
Persuasion 3 (+6)
Ranged Combat (Plasma Blasts) 4 (+9)
Technology 4 (+6)
Vehicles 3 (+6)
Advantages:
All-Out Attack, Defensive Roll, Equipment (X-Men Uniform), Inspire, Leadership, Power Attack, Ranged Attack 2, Set-Up, Startle, Teamwork
Powers:
"Mutant Powers: Cosmic Blasts"
"Omnidirectional Burst" Damage 11 (Extras: Area- 60ft. Burst +2, Penetrating) (44) -- [47]
- AE: "Cosmic Stream" Damage 11 (Extras: Area- 60ft. Line +2, Penetrating) (44)
- AE: "Cosmic Blast" Blast 13 (Extras: Penetrating) (39)
- AE: Dazzle Visuals 10 (Extras: Area- 30ft. Burst) (Flaws: Touch Range) (20)
"Summers Brother" Immunity 2 (His Own & Cyclops' Powers) [2]
"Cosmic Sponge" Immunity 10 (Heat Damage, Radiation Damage) [10]
Offense:
Unarmed +8 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Cosmic Burst & Stream +11 Area (+11 Damage, DC 26)
Blast +9 (+13 Ranged Damage, DC 28)
Initiative +4
Defenses:
Dodge +11 (DC 21), Parry +10 (DC 20), Toughness +3 (+4 D.Roll, +5 Uniform), Fortitude +6, Will +8
Complications:
Rivalry (With Cyclops)- Alex always feels like he's in Scott's shadow, despite the two having a pretty good relationship. That ended when Cyclops went off the deep end and started taking extreme measures to protect mutant-kind.
Responsibility (Summers Family Tree)- *deep breath*... Alex Summers' family includes an Eye-Blasting forgotten-brother, a Space Pirate father, a dead mother, a dead telepathic sister-in-law who was also a Cosmic Being (but not really), a demon-worshipping clone of said sister-in-law who later died (then came back, and hooked up with Alex in an Alternate Timeline), a Future mercenary cyborg telepath for a nephew, a telepathic Cosmic Being for a neice (but only in an alternate future), a telepathic super-powerhouse for a sort-of nephew (but only in an alternate timeline), a Space Emperor half-brother, a half-alien super-'90s half-brother (but not anymore), a Mutant Messiah adopted-grandneice, and possibly more. I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody.
Enemy (Living Pharaoh)- The Pharaoh has repeatedly tried to steal Alex's powers.
Relationshiop (Lorna Dane, Nurse Annie, Others)- Alex has a few ladies in his life, but Polaris is the by far the most important. They were together during the '60s run, much of Claremont's, and all of
X-Factor. He's recently been seen hooking up with The Wasp.
Total: Abilities: 54 / Skills: 40--20 / Advantages: 11 / Powers: 59 / Defenses: 18 (158)
Havok- Up In The Air:
-Havok's place in X-history depends on the era in which you find yourself. To me, he'll always be "the low-rent X-leader" who was leading X-Factor while his brother was in charge of the X-Men. In the late 1960s, he was a "Long Lost Sibling" introduced out of nowhere, playing a slightly immature kid. He was out of the picture for YEARS before Chris Claremont suddenly decided he was gonna do something with this dead concept in the late '80s, and made him kind of Wolverine's badass little buddy. By the '90s, he'd been lost again once Claremont lost interest, but Peter David picked him up. Then he got his own solo project in
Mutant X! Then... well, he basically disappeared as a major thing.
-He was used by Peter David (with a new '90s-classic ensemble of leather jacket, big X-logos, a faceless, hair-showing mask, etc.) for his "Every character nobody freaking wants to write or read about"
X-Factor, which turned him into kind of a perennially-sighing, droll leader-type trying to move all these nutjobs around. He finally got a push later in
Mutant-X, a long-running "Alternate Universe" comic that ended up not mattering to anything (because it's an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE) once it was cancelled, and after a brief turn as Chuck Austen's "Canon Sue" (he thought Havok was like himself, and thus wrote him as the main character) in his X-run, and then he became the new leader of the Starjammers, flying around in space.
-To say nothing of his relationship to Polaris. They were together, then off for years, then together again, then he dumped her for Annie the Nurse (based off of Austen's wife) and she went INSANE... then she got better and he figured out he loved her after all.... Yeah, okay then. Me, I've never been a huge Havok fan, as he's obviously been "Less Than Cyclops" for his entire existence, and they've NEVER managed to completely replace him from that. The fact that they're both leader-types with Blaster-powers, and that Cyke is the more important character, kinda mean this will never change. It's like if Captain America or Spider-Man got long-lost little brothers with major character pushes. It just AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, you know? Even his run on
Uncanny Avengers was merely pretty good, and failed to make him better than Scott.
Havok- Long-Lost Sibling:
-Alex debuted in the secondary title
The Uncanny X-Men in 1969, when the book was getting closer to cancellation, and Arnold Drake was writing instead of Roy Thomas or Stan Lee. And he was that old trope (before superheroes had 950 of them), "The Long-Lost Sibling". He was revealed to be Alex, the younger brother of Scott "Cyclops" Summers- both boys had survived a plane crash that took their parents, and were raised in an orphanage, Alex being adopted quickly by a family who was looking to replace their dead son. After graduating college, he encountered the original X-Men, and everyone discovered everyone else's identities when he was kidnapped by The Living Pharaoh, who wished to empower himself through Alex's tremendous energy powers. He and Scott also learned that their powers could not affect each other, which was a great "little touch" of Mutant Powers I always felt was interesting, but was never really used much (only these two, and Banshee & Black Tom, possessed such traits).
-Alex was thus an "I fear my own power" kind of guy for a while, as they typically only manifested when he was near-death, and he could generate a shocking amount of it. Given a pretty strange-looking black onesie with an iconic three-pronged facemask-thingie by Larry Trask (who wanted to kill mutants), he finally joined the X-Men. He entered what would become a massively long-term relationship with Polaris, much to the consternation of Iceman, who was also interested in her, creating some good-old Teen Romantic Drama. However, this was nearing the end of the series, and so we saw little of them. Havok & Polaris were in fact with the "Original X-Men" when they were captured by Krakoa the Living Island, and rescued by the new X-Men. They were quick to quit the team, disappearing from the book for years.
-I have zero recollection of Havok being anywhere during the "Claremont/Byrne Era", or even the eras surrounding it, which is weird considering that his older brother was one of the main characters, and we saw things like Jean Grey's funeral and stuff. For the most part, the pair stayed in the background (Havok showed up in
Marvel Team-Up once, being targeted by the Living Pharaoh/Monolith once more), though apparently Havok was involved in the "Muir Island Battle" against Proteus.
Havok Rejoins the X-Men:
-Sometime after I stopped collecting the Claremont-era
Essential collections, Havok rejoined the X-Men once Polaris had been possessed by the evil Malice. During this period, he became romantically involved with Madelyne Pryor (who, strangely enough, was his brother's abandoned wife), since Claremont felt like Scott/Maddie being ended due to editorial edict was stupid and character-ruining (well, he was right), and wanted to keep using the character, out of a combination of pity, frustration, and spite. However, Madelyne soon killed herself after discovering that she was a clone of Jean Grey. He briefly joined up with Wolverine for a Limited Series, but ultimately it had little effect on anyone.
-By the time I'd gotten into the X-Books, Havok had long since left the book, falling through the Siege Perilous and disappearing. Many of the other X-Men were altered by the experience, and had become very disparate (it seems to me that Claremont was looking to shake things up once again, and split the roster anew). In Havok's case, he ended up on GENOSHA, where as a Mutant, he'd have been expected to be oppressed and turned into a literal slave. However, his skills and capability had instead led him to be the highest-tier Mutant in the Genoshan Military, acting as a Magistrate. This was discovered during
The X-Tinction Agenda- during a pitched battle with Cyclops (where of course they couldn't harm each other with their Blasts), his memory returned, and he delivered the killing blow to Cameron Hodge, buring him beneath his citadel.
X-Factor:
-Havok was expected to remain on Genosha and help rebuild it, but things weren't to be- Claremont seemed to want to be rid of him, but when Peter David was given a relaunched
X-Factor book, he fashioned a team out of an Island of Misfit Toys concept, taking un-used X-characters and making a disparate squad led by Alex (who had never led a team before), featuring Polaris (with whom he hadn't interacted for a LONG time), Wolfsbane, Quicksilver, Strong Guy and the Multiple Man. Here, this was a government agency, with Alex as the somewhat-stoic, somewhat-sarcastic leader, living in the shadow of his much more capable brother. As
X-Factor was the lowest-tier of the Big Four X-Books (behind two
X-Men titles and the smash hit
X-Force), they were mostly quiet, and got to play the "Jobber Role" in a lot of Cross-Overs, where he barely mattered.
-The dissolution of X-Factor struck Havok hard, as he watched Strong Guy be rendered comatose, Wolfsbane leave the team, and Jamie Madrox dying of the Legacy Virus. After a bit where he went undercover with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, he attempted to reform X-Factor, but was instead thrown through a portal by Greystone (one of his most-recent teammates), ending up far away.
Mutant X:
-In an odd circumstance that pre-dates the
Exiles book, we now saw Alex Summers as a MAIN CHARACTER, appearing in
Mutant X, a book set in a Parallel Universe! Alex had been thrown through to an alternate reality, where he inhabited the body of his other self, who was the leader of the original X-Men instead of Cyclops, and had married Madelyne Pryor, siring a son named Scotty. In this book, the creative team had crazy fun basically going "how can we screw with Marvel history?", popping up with all sorts of alternate X-Men (like a Storm who'd never been cured of vampirism). Havok eventually saves this world, but not before most of the super-humans die, and he's eventually tossed back to our world. Where things surely will go GREAT for him!
Chuck Austen Writes Havok:
-Well, shit. Never mind. Instead, Chuck Austen, who hadn't quite earned the reputation of "Most-hated comic book writer of all time" just yet, had decided that Alex Summers was the hero most like him, and rather than invent a new Mary Sue, instead wrote Havok as an idealized version of himself, and gave him a girlfriend he based off of his own wife. Yes, Alex enters a relationship with the nurse Annie Ghazikhanian, becoming a father-figure of sorts to her young son Carter. In doing so, he basically rebuffs the advances of Polaris, who goes INSANE because Austen was kind of a hack who wanted to "justify" his personal relationship, and then finally we learned that young Carter had telepathically caused Havok & Annie to fall in love in their dreams, and he called off their planned wedding. However, they continued to see each other, until Annie left him with Carter, feeling that the pair weren't safe at the X-Mansion (given this was the era in which approximately 9,500,772 supporting characters were slaughtered at the Mansion, I find it hard to blame her). Alex refused to go with her, feeling that he needed to be with his team.
Havok Falls To Whatever:
-Here things kind of devolve in an "I dunno, whatever" mess. Polaris dates Iceman, to Havok's frustration, but then she & Alex got back together. Until she disappeared again. They got back together and went into space, getting involved with the Shi'ar and some associates with the Abnett/Lanning space-stuff going on at the time. He and his team (including his sorta-niece Rachel, Polaris, Korvus, Ch'od & Raza) form a new breed of Starjammers after his father Corsair (who's long-since been revealed to be a Space Pirate) is killed by Vulcan (because Alex now has a half-brother who's insane). He's a minor supporting character during that stuff, but the leader of his own X-Book, but ultimately he never matters to the overall plot and disappears, with Black Bolt killing Vulcan instead. He farts around for a bit, briefly taking part in the
X-Factor Investigations book.
The Uncanny Avengers:
-An odd choice, Alex is chosen to be the field leader of the "Avengers Unity Squad", formed by Captain America of Mutants and Avengers alike, meant to bridge the gap between the two after the
A (vs) X fiasco. Here, he gets a Jon Casady-drawn costume that's a bit like his '60s one, and becomes a spokesman for the group, giving a long quote in front of the press about how he doesn't like the term "Mutant", refuses labels, and wishes to be seen as a PERSON and not what minority he is. In a fascinating bit, this is treated like a great statement in
Uncanny, but Brian Michael Bendis took issue with it in ANOTHER book, and had Kitty Pryde give a rebuttal about how oppressed people need to see these labels as forms of strength. The fact that both points were reasonably well-argued and made sense, yet were contradictory, was a fun bit.
-UNFORTUNATELY, Rick Remember, who wrote this series, kind of lost the plot after a point. He ended up involving TIME TRAVEL and alternate realities, which is just a recipe for disaster, and then made the poor writing decision of arbitrarily deciding that HAVOK and THE WASP were a couple that was definitely "Meant To Be", and of course skipped all that "courting" nonsense with a time-skip, which had the result of the fans not buying into it AT ALL (contrast couples like Scott/Jean, Peter/MJ, or Vision/Wanda, which worked because
we could see them meet, slowly fall in love, and get together), no matter how obsessive they were about being in love with each other. They had a daughter named Katie, but she is lost to the timestream during a fight with Kang the Conqueror- Immortus gives them a gift, however, pointing out the exact right moment of conception to create a NEW Katie in the modern time-stream, because that's the same, I guess.
-Unfortunately for Rick's True #1 Couple, Havok is badly maimed in battle, then turns evil during
AXIS, and then DOESN'T actually turn back to good at story's end, managing to miss the re-inversion of everyone's alignments. And with that, Havok/Wasp disappears from existence. He hasn't been seen since the end of
X-Men (vs) Inhumans, where he discovered the truth about Emma Frost lying about the death of Cyclops.
Havok as a Whole:
-This guy's really a mess. If there's one thing in comics that you DON'T want to be, it's a guy in X-Limbo who ALSO has to be utilized in plots as a matter of course because of who he's related to. Because Havok is the brother of one of the most important Mutants alive, HAVOK also needs to be used. But as very few X-writers ever want to touch him, he gets screwed around with a lot. So he'll get weird things like not being on the X-Men for ten years during Claremont's peak, but then getting to sniff the squad for a few years. Then he'll lead Peter David's team of rejects, but when star in his OWN BOOK... but one set in an Alternate Reality, so it doesn't "matter". Then there's the Chuck Austen mess that really just held the character in stasis for a while, then he wasted time in space doing basically nothing that actually MATTERED, and then he gets hooked into ANOTHER writer's "One True Relationship" with The Wasp... but then he turns evil and
stays that way, unlike every other character in that story, because reasons, I guess.
Havok's Powers:
-Havok is a very powerful Blaster with some good Immunities, and a fairly decent leader-type as well, making him a good all-around kind of guy for any team. He's not as good as Cyclops or Storm, but he's tolerable. He's nearly a PL 11 in sheer intensity of powers (a VERY powerful Burst Cosmic Blast in addition to extreme raw power- equivalent to Cyclops in that regard, but with Bursts). Otherwise he's your typical X-dude, fairly strong & athletic, with a good smattering of Skills he rarely uses, centred around a massive power-set.