| Havok |
| Real Name: Alexander Summers Powers: Havok is a mutant with the superhuman ability to absorb ambient cosmic energy and release it as waves of intense heat -- creating plasma, a state of matter consisting of charged subatomic particles. Heat waves will emanate from Havok's body in all directions unless purposefully channeled, usually along the length of his arms. When one of these waves strikes an object, the sudden jump in temperature may cause it to shatter, explode or seemingly disintegrate. Should Havok direct his energy toward a human being at its lowest level, his target will suffer a severe headache, but will not burn up. Havok constantly absorbs cosmic radiation. When his power-storage enclaves reach capacity, excess energy is thereafter emitted in negligible quantities. Upon the total expenditure of his available reserves, Havok's body requires about 16 1/2 hours to recharge to peak level. The act of concentration involved in releasing his energy in anything other than an omnidirectional wave is physically exhausting for Havok if continued for an extended period of time. History: Alex Summers is the younger brother of Cyclops -- stalwart leader of the X-Men, an outlaw band of heroic mutant adventurers. Their father -- Major Christopher Summers, a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force -- was flying his family home from vacation aboard a vintage aircraft when a midair collision crippled the Summers' plane. Katherine Summers pushed her young sons to safety in the only available parachute. With Christopher and Katherine presumed dead, the boys were hospitalized for injuries they sustained during their landing, as their overburdened parachute had been unable to slow their decent sufficiently. Scott and Alex both suffered traumatic amnesia regarding the plane incident. Alex left the hospital after two weeks and was placed in an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska. Soon adopted, he had little or no contact with Scott until years later. Alex was unaware of Scott's developing powers, or his adventures as Cyclops, until after he had graduated from college. It was at that time that Alex first became aware of his own mutant talents. Archeology professor Ahmet Abdol, the mutant known as the Living Pharaoh, had discovered a psychic link between himself and Alex. While both possessed the latent mutant power to absorb and transform cosmic radiation, Alex's body stifled Abdol's ability to exercise his talent in an unknown manner. The Living Pharaoh abducted the youth to his laboratory in Egypt. There, Abdol discovered a means of screening Summers from ambient cosmic radiation, permitting his own body to attain its true potential. Abdol stood transformed into the Living Monolith, a massive mutant with vast cosmic power. The X-Men defeated the Monolith in combat when Alex's latent mutant powers surfaced under the stress of entombment within the mechanism designed to block him from cosmic radiation. Incapable of controlling the shock waves emanating from his body, Alex chose to remain in the Egyptian desert rather than accompany the X-Men back to America. Captured by a mutant-hunting Sentinel robot, Alex was brought to the headquarters of Larry Trask, son of the androids' inventor. Trask gave Alex the codename Havok and a costume with a chest display that would monitor the build-up of cosmic energy within his body. When the X-Men finally freed Trask's captive mutants, Alex accompanied Scott and his teammates back to civilization, where he began training to keep his energy in check. Eventually, Alex gained sufficient mastery over his powers to become a formidable opponent in battle. Havok later fell in love with Lorna Dane -- the green-haired, magnetically empowered mutant now known as Polaris. Both served for a time in the X-Men, but neither wished to lead the life of an adventurer. After discovering a mutual interest in geophysics, Alex and Lorna began conducting doctoral research in that subject in the Diablo mountain range in Arizona. However, they soon found themselves hunted by the Marauders, a squad of superhuman assassins assembled by the twisted geneticist known as Mr. Sinister. Placed under the mental thrall of the telempathic Malice, Polaris was compelled to attack the X-Men as leader of the Marauders. Having returned to the team, Alex was forced to fight his lover. Freed from Malice's control, Polaris joined Havok in the second version of X-Factor -- a newly formed, government-funded mutant strike force. Disillusioned with both the X-Men and X-Factor, Havok helped establish a team of mutant criminals called the Brotherhood. Later, it was revealed that Alex had infiltrated the group only to thwart its terrorist objectives. Havok was operating independently when an airplane explosion ripped him from his reality and deposited him on a dark, twisted Earth. His soul was transferred to an alternate-universe version of his body, and he found himself living a lie -- allied with a team of mutants who were sinister, parallel incarnations of his friends and family. In this strange, new world, Havok stood as a man alone ... a mutant alone. Mutant X. After plunging the planet into chaos during a catastrophic confrontation with a mutated Captain America, star-spangled Sentinel of Liberty, Alex sacrificed himself to preserve the fabric of all reality. In a cataclysmic battle with the dark force of nature known as the Goblin Queen, who had merged with the immensely powerful entity called the Beyonder, Havok tapped into a well of raw power never again to be unleashed in all the dimensions and destroyed his adversary. But the price of victory appeared to be death, as Alex's soul was cast adrift in the void. Whether he will be drawn back to his original plane of existence remains to be seen. |
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