X-Men: Which of Cyclops’ Children is Most Powerful?

The Summers offspring are afrighteningly powerful brood. It’s easy to forget that Cyclops has been around since 1963, and was a part of the first class of X-Men created by the legendary team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Nearly sixty years in comics and an entire multiverse at the character’s disposal have made the X-Men’s de facto leader quite the Marvel Comics patriarch, though not all of his children were created equal, and few were conceived naturally.

Counting alternate realities, time travel, and cloning, Scott Summers has a huge number of children, but given that he’s one of the Marvel Universe’s most successful superheroes – and that he tends to couple up with world-shakingly powerful women – it’s fair to ask: which of Cyclops’ children is most powerful?

In terms of comics chronology, Nathan Summers, more popularly known as Cable, was the first ofScott’s kids. The time-traveling mutant mercenary was born to Scott and his first wife Madelyne Pryor, who was later revealed to be a clone of Jean Grey engineered by Mr. Sinister. As an infant, Cable was infected by a techno-organic virus and brought to the future where he could be treated. Cable inherited a whole slew of psionic abilities from his mother’s side, including telepathy and telekinesis, while his cybernetic parts enhance all of his physical abilities. The tricky thing about Cable is that his power levels have varied greatly over the decades. For a period of time, Cable had to focus his powers on keeping the techno-organic virus from killing him. He’s also lost and regained his mutant abilities more than once, now preferring to rely on conventional weaponry, which is part of the reason why he shouldn’t be considered the most powerful of Cyclops’ children.

Following Cable was Rachel Grey-Summers, a mutant powerhouse who goes by many aliases, among them Phoenix, Hound, Marvel Girl, and Prestige. Unlike her other siblings and half-siblings, Rachel is the biological daughter of Scott Summers and his first love Jean Grey. She was born in a dystopian future timeline and traveled backwards in time to the present. She inherited her mother’s enormous telepathic and telekinetic abilities, as well as a connection to the mighty Phoenix Force. However, the Phoenix is a historically fickle cosmic entity, and a being that should generally be considered separate to its hosts (a list soon to include Captain America.)

There are other contenders who are technically Cyclops’ progeny but have spent less time with him in the main timeline. Stryfe is a clone of Cable raised in the far future by Apocalypse. He shares the same powers as Cable and was also physically augmented by Apocalypse and raised to be a cruel tyrant. Then there’s the alternate future timeline in which Cyclops and Emma Frost have a whole bunch of children, the most powerful of whom appears to be Ruby Summers, the only one of Scott’s children to inherit his optic blasts, as well as a nigh-invulnerable gemstone form like her mother.

But the most powerful of Cyclops’s offspring is Nathaniel “Nate” Grey, known in the comics as X-Man. Nate was genetically engineered by Mr. Sinister from the DNA of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, and intended to be the most powerful psionic mutant ever created. Like many of his siblings, he inherited all of his mother’s telepathic and telekinetic powers, and has worked with the X-Men as a hero. At full strength, Nate possesses god-like powers that match the Phoenix Force itself, capable of destroying and creating entire worlds. While Cyclops has a tendency to produce powerful children (hence Sinister’s constant interest) X-Man is a near godlike entity, and definitively the strongest of the scattered brood.

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