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.

And somewhere in there, Jean and Scott travel to the future and have a hand in raising Cable, too.

It's all very confusing.

Doesn't the original take not have "Jean" just Jean? So no cocoons?

True, but so did the version that actually got printed—until Jean popped up in that issue of Fantastic Four many years later. I assume that the reveal about our Jean would hold true for Rachel's as well, since the two timelines supposedly diverged in X-Men #137.

I think I need a rundown of all the Jean Grey iterations (including clones and Phoenix force fakes) and their current status?

I'm afraid the original is still in a cocoon. Or is that only in the alternafuture timeline?

That'd be (I think) the Days of Future past alternate future that Rachel vacated to come back in time. Our Jean that just died (yeah, right!) was supposedly the genuine article. Though I suppose there's a conga line of Jean Grey clones out there somewhere that the Phoenix could be playing shell games with.

Though I suppose there's a conga line of Jean Grey clones out there somewhere that the Phoenix could be playing shell games with.

Now I've got a mental image of a whole bunch of Famke Janssen's doing the conga. As these things go, it's not unpleasant.

Does anyone know, when Maddy killed her almost-real self, which reality alterna!Maddy (as opposed to psionicmanifestation!Maddy) came from?

Jean comes back to life

Scott leaves Maddy and Nate for Jean

Actually having read those recently, Scott and Maddy's marriage is going through difficulties, mostly due to Scott still wanting to be an X-Man and Maddy wanting him to live a normal life with his family. Scott learns Jean's alive and travels to see her. While there, the original X-Men try to persuade him to work with them in X-Factor. (They believe the X-Men have betrayed Xavier's dream by allying themselves with Magneto.) Scott waffles. He wants to be with his friends (and Jean) making a difference again, but he also has a family to look after. He works some cases with X-Factor. When he tries to call home, the line has been disconnected. When he tries to locate Maddy, all traces of her existance seem to have vanished. (The Marauders attacked, attempting to kill Maddy and kidnap Nathan. They are successful in the latter. Mr. Sinister meanwhile works to remove all records of Madelyne Pryor.)

Maddy comes to the X-Men to get him back

I think it's more like the inadvertantly run into her. While she's hospitalized from the original Marauder attack, maybe?

In any case, there's no contact between X-Factor and the X-Men. Each team thinks the other has betrayed Xavier. Scott is still unable to locate Nathan and Maddy. Then one night the X-Men, along with Maddy, "die" on national TV.

Then we get the really lame Goblin Queen storyline. Yay.

Not sure where in all this Scott and Jean get back together as I've only read X-Factor issues that were referenced directly in the Uncanny X-Men comics so far.

Didn't realize Cable was Nathan Summers. He's an even dumber character to me, now.

And the last he saw of his kids they were jumping out of a plane with only one parachute between them.

Doesn't his father lead the Starjammers (?) They've seen a lot of each other.

They've seen a lot of each other.

They have now. But Corsair was absent for childhood, adolescence, and the start of Scott's superheroing.

Abso-freakin-lutely true. I was just trying to say it wasn't the last he'd seen of his kids.

Do you suppose the odds of having a superhero lifestyle are proportionately larger if your parents are kidnapped by aliens?