Alexander Summers is the younger of the two sons of Christopher Summers, a United States Air Force Major and test pilot, and his wife Katherine Anne. The family were flying back from a vacation in their vintage airplane when they crashed into a scout ship of the intergalactic Shi'ar Empire, setting the wooden plane ablaze. Their mother pushed the brothers out of the burning plane with the only available parachute, allowing them to escape capture by the aliens. The two boys were hospitalized for injuries they sustained during their landing. Alex left the hospital after two weeks and was placed in an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska that was secretly run by the master geneticist Mister Sinister. Alex was soon adopted by the Blanding family, who had lost their son Todd. However, the family were still traumatized by their loss, and treated Alex as if he were Todd. (Unknown to Alex, his brother Scott would become the hero Cyclops and join the X-Men.)