The Sad Fates Of Marvel Super Heroes’ Children

Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor (clone of Jean Grey)

Traumatic events: Mother was an insane clone, contracted a techno-organic virus and was forced to live in the future for his own safety

Status: Alive, and the super hero known as Cable, but paradoxically older than his dad

This is kind of the best case scenario in this group, and even it’s not exactly ideal. For starters, Nathan was the product of a scheme by Mr. Sinister to have a Summers child to call his own. Sinister created the Jean Grey clone knowing that Scott wouldn’t be able to resist her, and he proved correct.

Nate ended up getting kidnapped by the evil mastermind and subjected to some unknown experiments, while his mom became the Goblin Queen and helped bring about the Inferno event. After his mom was defeated (and died in the process), his dad and stepmom did something that no doubt should have resulted in the super-powered Child Services department getting a call or two, making him a de facto baby member of X-Force. Good thing he could project a telekinetic force bubble around himself!

This is comics, though, so it was only a matter of time before another bad guy set his sights on Nate. Apocalypse ended up getting his mitts on the boy and infecting him with a techno-organic virus, forcing Scott and Jean to send him to the future to grow up. In a twist that could only happen in comics, he not only was raised in the future by his own sister, he also existed in the present as his older self who had come back from the future. Also, the adult Nathan was drawn quite often by Rob Liefeld in his early days as Cable; you decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.

So yes, we got Cable out of this deal, but it’s not like he got to experience a normal childhood or anything. And forget that father-son relationship, because it’s been flipped upside-down.