Rachel Summers/Grey Appreciation 2019

[phoenixzero23]

Brain dead hound for the most part, now she's a brainwashed pawn.

So pretty much her entire character for the last two years.

#StopHoundingRachelGrey

This is so wrong

[Askani's Flame]

This is so wrong

Yet so right. I think Brisson is going to kill her off in X-Force. And given that the whole franchise is being ending and getting a cohesive starting point she may be resurrected through Hickman (like OMCable, Berto, Rahne, etc), but who knows. Rachel's characterization has become a dumpster fire that each new writer adds new trash to keep the flame going.

[phoenixzero23]

I don't think she is dying. I really want to be optimist about this and think that Rachel will get rescued at the end of x-force.

[Askani's Flame]

I don't think she is dying. I really want to be optimist about this and think that Rachel will get rescued at the end of x-force.

I have been in the past, especially when Brisson said he had plans for her in Extermination and after that he was interested in exploring the relationship between Nate-Rachel-Stryfe. All we have seen from those interviews was that Rachel has had no voice since issue 2 of Extermination, that she was once again mind controlled (and somehow far worse than ever before because she has been able to break the conditioning herself before), made to be more of a slave in that she can't form normal sentences (again something she could do int he past, and clearly the other hounds from Extermination and X-Force could do), trafficked across temporal lines to her clone brother, and now mentally raped AGAIN to serve as a plot point for a villain. I think her character is already dying from writers, nevermind a nonsensical plan for her in this book.

[Tunasammiches]

Yay check out what’s new on Marvel Unlimited! I remember when I first bought this issue, I was missing Rachel because Lodbell had written her out of Excalibur (does anyone else remember when he said “we have plans for Rachel Summers”....and then we found out those plans were to write her out of Excalibur, turn her into Mother Askari and kill her off of old age in the same mini series, and place her in limbo for years until they picked her up again in the Cable series? I feel like I’m experiencing deja vu. Anyways, when this issue came out, I was excited to see Rachel again and to see her being written as part of the x-men DNA instead of just being written off and forgotten as some tertiary character like she is nowadays. I miss Rachel Summers. And with the X-line relaunching who knows if we’ll ever get the Rachel is all miss back some day.

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[RachelGrey]

Yay check out what’s new on Marvel Unlimited! I remember when I first bought this issue, I was missing Rachel because Lodbell had written her out of Excalibur (does anyone else remember when he said “we have plans for Rachel Summers”....and then we found out those plans were to write her out of Excalibur, turn her into Mother Askari and kill her off of old age in the same mini series, and place her in limbo for years until they picked her up again in the Cable series? I feel like I’m experiencing deja vu. Anyways, when this issue came out, I was excited to see Rachel again and to see her being written as part of the x-men DNA instead of just being written off and forgotten as some tertiary character like she is nowadays. I miss Rachel Summers. And with the X-line relaunching who knows if we’ll ever get the Rachel is all miss back some day.

A3D24687-422F-4918-95A5-2BAA2C60DCA6.jpg

I wouldn't mind if she returned as Mother Askani as a regular character in either Cable or the X-Force book (or both) where she is guiding them and giving them missions. I know it kind of makes her a little like the AI system in Exiles, but it would provide a new direction for her character where she goes all in on being Mother Askani again. They could have Rachel and Blaquesmith acting as mission control for Cable and X-Force, with Blaquesmith teaching her everything he originally learned from her when she was Mother Askani previously. Technically she doesn't even have to be working in the future, she could decide to work with Blaquesmith to create the Askani order in the present times.

[CRaymond]

I *DO* enjoy the fact that this thread DOES NOT DIE despite the clear disregard the X-Men writing staff seems to have for the character.

And while I assumed the overwhelming tendency for Rachel to be mind-controlled was a new phenomenon, my Excalibur volume 1 trade arrived, and in the first few stories, Rachel is possessed by a demon in Inferno and the Crazy Gang's Executioner. Is there a running tally of all the people who've controlled her? Elias Bogan, Ahab, even the Hauk'ka.

[RachelGrey]

I *DO* enjoy the fact that this thread DOES NOT DIE despite the clear disregard the X-Men writing staff seems to have for the character.

And while I assumed the overwhelming tendency for Rachel to be mind-controlled was a new phenomenon, my Excalibur volume 1 trade arrived, and in the first few stories, Rachel is possessed by a demon in Inferno and the Crazy Gang's Executioner. Is there a running tally of all the people who've controlled her? Elias Bogan, Ahab, even the Hauk'ka.

I think it depends on the writer. I know when they did the Phoenix miniseries they made Rachel into a far stronger character, at least when it came to her willpower. She was pretty reckless in that series though, she realized that the Phoenix force would resurrect her if she died so she started risking her life fairly often against Apocalypse's Acolytes. Mind you that's how she defeated them too, because she went all in against them and threw everything she had at them.

I remember too when Rachel, Havok, and Polaris were trapped on that space station and Rogue and Magneto had to rescue them, she wasn't mind controlled by the psychic alien, but she was so hard for him to control that he ended up trying to keep her in a coma until he could figure out how she was resisting him. He completely turned Havok and Polaris into his puppets though. Rogue resisted him simply because Rogue has always been resistant to telepathic control.

[Panic]

Unfortunately it dates back to Claremont:

...but it has been taken to ludicrous extremes - heroes are supposed to learn and improve, Rachel isn't doing that. I think it's lazy writing.

[juan678]

[Askani's Flame]

I *DO* enjoy the fact that this thread DOES NOT DIE despite the clear disregard the X-Men writing staff seems to have for the character.

And while I assumed the overwhelming tendency for Rachel to be mind-controlled was a new phenomenon, my Excalibur volume 1 trade arrived, and in the first few stories, Rachel is possessed by a demon in Inferno and the Crazy Gang's Executioner. Is there a running tally of all the people who've controlled her? Elias Bogan, Ahab, even the Hauk'ka.

We appreciate your support. We are literally like a Phoenix, as we are not letting this thread or her die so easily.

And yes, she was subject to mind control during her pre-Necrom Excalibur days. As Claremont (and the Davis) explained that because her mind was still filled with hound and Mojo programming efforts it made it easier than most to subjugate her. But once she died during her battle with Necrom, the Phoenix healed her mind and expelled all the programming from Ahab and Mojo. Of course, that all got thrown out the window the second she came back into the comics from being Mother Askani. First Weinberg had her quasi-used in Cable, then Claremont had her fully mind-controlled in Xtreme, and finally Yost reset her mind to being hound programmable in Emperor Vulcan. From there the onslaught of mind control stories re-emerged.

[Tunasammiches]

Are any Rachel fans here especially excited about the upcoming HoX/PoX relaunch or does it more concern you about what’s in store for Rachel’s future as a character?

[RachelGrey]

Are any Rachel fans here especially excited about the upcoming HoX/PoX relaunch or does it more concern you about what’s in store for Rachel’s future as a character?

I think they are going to kill her off in X-Force and she only appears in flashbacks in HoX/PoX and won't be a recurring character at all after her flashback scenes. Everything in X-Force seems to be leading to Rachel's death at the hands of either Stryfe, or her brother Cable.

[phoenixzero23]

Are any Rachel fans here especially excited about the upcoming HoX/PoX relaunch or does it more concern you about what’s in store for Rachel’s future as a character?

To be honest i expect Hickman's stuff to be focused on Xavier and Magneto, maybe Jean, Scott, Moira and Emma. Everybody else will probably tertiary.

[Vaishakh]

Are any Rachel fans here especially excited about the upcoming HoX/PoX relaunch or does it more concern you about what’s in store for Rachel’s future as a character?

I really doubt Hickman cares about Rachel which is not necessarily a bad thing. I would rather her be taken on by someone who actually likes her.