The Summers family tree reads like a Stephen Hawkings essay.

Well, spell it out for me. Who's who and when does Jean resurrect?

To be fair, that happens with a lot of children who lose their parents very early.

Dude, Scott could lose his dad in a mall today and sulk for weeks. Don't tell me he wouldn't.

The Summers family tree reads like a Stephen Hawkings essay.

Especially when you get to the bit where the aging Rachel raises her younger brother.

Or something.

And Cable fits in how?

(I hate Cable almost as much as I hate J---a R-----s.)

First stab at tree:

• Scott & Jean get together
• Jean "dies"
• The Phoenix Force assumes her form, goes nuts, dies
• Scott meets, marries, and impregnates her Sinister-grown clone
• Nathan is born
• Jean comes back to life
• Scott leaves Maddy and Nate for Jean
• Nate is kidnapped
• Maddy comes to the X-Men to get him back

Somewhere in there is:

• Rachel (kid of Scott and Jean) comes back from the future
• Rachel is traumatised by there being a son before her
• Rachel makes it so her future doesn't happen

Rachel also gets thrown way into the future along with a rescued Nate, who she raises, and then he comes back into our present and becomes Cable.

Jean sees a future in which her existence causes Beast to go Dark, so she commits suicide by Magneto.

Please to edit.

First stab at tree:

Huh, makes the Master's bloodline look downright linear in progression. I mean, I knew some of that, but by no means all.

I may have skimmed bits of the Cable stuff, because I dislike him too. And there's some residual Rachel bitterness, because she used to rock so hard, and they wasted her. But she's back now -- she was being used as a psychic battery or something by a baddie, and Kitty rescued her.

Although Jean wasn't actually Dark Phoenix, the Phoenix force hovers over and in both her and Rachel -- not sure if Cable's got any.

Wow. Suddenly, the Bats look like a model of healthy, funtional interpersonal relationships.

If I understand correctly, Jean absorbed her mainline connection to the Phoenix from Maddy via the Wrath of Khan-style suicide mindmeld the latter shared with her at the end of Inferno.

Rachel also gets thrown way into the future along with a rescued Nate, who she raises, and then he comes back into our present and becomes Cable.

Cable is the son of Scott and Maddy (who is the evil-raised clone of Jean?)? And raised by his half-sister (genetically full sister since Maddy's a clone) from an alternative future. Huh. See what happens when you don't look at comics for a decade. So, didn't Cable and Storm have a thing? If they'd married then Scott would be her father-in-law. Is Maddy gone now?

Oh, yeah, and Sinister cloned Jean to make Maddy so she could be the Goblyn Queen who also apparently dies (along with other X folk) and then goes ballistic and tries to kill everyone. She may also sleep with Scott's brother at this time.

Madelyne also comes back as a psychic projection of Cable's, becomes independent of him, goes evil, goes good, ages when Cable weakens, and was killed by another version of herself.

Or something.