Havok

For information about the software program, see Havok (software).

Havok (Alexander "Alex" Summers) is a comic book superhero in the Marvel Comics universe, and a member of the X-Men. Created by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, he first appeared in X-Men #54 (1969).

Character history

When Alex was a boy growing up in Alaska, his father, Christopher Summers, took the family for a flight in their airplane. It came under attack by an alien Shi'ar spaceship. As the plane caught fire and was crashing, his parents fastened Alex and his older brother, Scott into a parachute and pushed them off the plane, in hopes that they would survive.

The Summers boys were put in an orphanage and Alex was soon adopted, though his brother Scott remained there for much of his childhood. Alex went on to earn a degree in geophysics.

As a young man, Scott—now the hero Cyclops and the leader of the X-Men—located Alex, and they discovered that Alex was also a mutant. Unable to fully control his powers, Alex was captured by the villain the Living Pharaoh, who shared the same energy-absorption abilities. Locking Alex in a shielded cell, the Pharaoh was able to absorb additional energy to become the Living Monolith. After the Monolith was defeated by the X-Men and Alex was freed, the Monolith returned to normal.

Alex was then captured by Larry Trask and his Sentinels, who were bent on controlling or eradicating all mutants. Trask fashioned a costume for Alex to control his powers, and Alex took the name Havok. Trask—who turned out to be a mutant himself—and the Sentinels were defeated by the X-Men, and Havok joined the team for a time. During this time he fell in love with his teammate Polaris.

Havok and Polaris were occasional members and allies of the X-Men for years. During one of their adventures, Polaris was possessed by the mutant Marauder Malice, ending the romantic relationship for a time.

During this period, Havok became involved with Madelyne Pryor. Both of them had been rejected by their previous lovers (Her then-husband Cyclops had left her for Jean Grey).

Madelyne was manipulated by goblins and became the Goblin Queen. She attempted to use Havok to help take over the Earth and convert it into a demonic realm. Havok eventually came to his senses, and Madelyne killed herself after discovering she was a clone of Jean Grey.

Havok befriended Wolverine in the late 1980s and they shared some adventures together in the Havok and Wolverine miniseries.

Havok and Polaris eventually reunited and became the leaders of the government-sponsored X-Factor for a time. However, Havok eventually had a nervous breakdown, apparently thanks to the Dark Beast, and he left X-Factor to lead a short-lived Brotherhood of Mutants.

He returned to X-Factor, but when the team fell apart, the explosion of an experimental device cast Havok into an parallel world where he was the leader of a drastically altered version of the X-Men and was married to Madelyne Pryor, with whom he had a son named Scotty. In the comic book Mutant X, Havok's adventures in this other reality were chronicled, leading to a disastrous adventure which left most superhumans on that world dead, but Havok was able to save the world itself before being cast back into his home reality.

Havok's body was found back in the original universe in a comatose state. The X-Men were able to restore his psyche. He was caught in a love triangle between the mentally unstable Polaris and the X-Men's staff nurse, Annie. Polaris asked Havok to marry her, and he agreed, but he left her at the altar. Polaris snapped and tried to hill him. She did not return to normal until some psychic therapy. The relationship between Polaris and Havok is friendly again, but Havok has shown no romantic feelings toward her. Instead, he pursued a romance with the staff nurse, Annie, but she left because of worries that the mansion was too dangerous for her son.

Powers and abilities

Havok is a mutant possessing the power to absorb ambient cosmic energy, process it, and shoot or emanate it from his body as energy, radiation, plasma, or heat. This results in control over an extremely powerful sort of destructive force. He is immune to most forms of radiation and heat. At times he is not entirely able to control this ability, which sometimes makes him a danger to those around him unless he wears a special costume to assist him. Havok is immune to his own powers, and to those of his brother Scott (Cyclops).

Havok is well-educated in the field of geophysical science, and has been trained in martial arts by Wolverine.