Why I Like Rachel

Or how this page got started in the first place.

Well, if you want to get technical, I suppose how this page got started was because of a post of the Wizardworld msgboards. I mentioned my love for Rachel (no, I don't love her that way, for those perverts out there!) and said this:

'Rachel Summers.

One of my all-time favorites. Due to her link to the Phoenix Force, she is argueably the most powerful X-Man, period, past, present, or future. This girl went toe-to-toe with both Galactus and the Beyonder! True she didn't win either time, but hey!

Rachel is a tragic character in the greatest sense; she lost her world, her family, her life, not once, but twice. She sacrificed everything for her teammates, her friends, and ultimately her family.

Rachel Summers. You will be missed. One day, I shall make a website for you -- it's the least I can do.'

And so, with those fateful words, Risen was born.

To go back even further, I'd have to take you back to the first time I ever saw Rachel. I was at a friends house, and I picked up one of her Excalibur comics. I opened it up, and there was this beautiful red-haired woman, engulfed in flame, flying across a page like a streak of white-hot lightning.

She was so wonderful; a fugitive from a doomed world. An X-Man who never quite fit in, despite being part of their blood. A slave pocessing power that could destroy planets and repel any threat. A kind and loving friend, who in battle was as great and terrible as her namesake.

Then she was gone.

They took her away, sent her to the future to save her brother. It seems to be poor Rachel's fate to be a time-child, never quite belonging in one time or space.

But as they say, a Phoenix always rises....

And this page will be here, burning for her return like a flaming beacon.

By Nichol