Nesting Cuckoos

In the Marvel universe, there are a group of young girls known as "The Stepford Cuckoos" who have done some of the most that any mutants  have done to seek individuality. The girls are the five clones of the powerful psychic Emma Frost AKA The White Queen. All five have psychic powers that are at the strongest when they connected through their hive mine. Due to the horrible situation the Cuckoos were thrust into as spies, they have no time to develop their personalities. Most of their character development is devoted to them understanding what it means to be a person.

The girls are drawn and are treated as though they are the generic rich, mean girls in high school by all the rest of the Xavior School students.They are never really given a chance to show who they are or who they can be as people. The girls only know what they have to do and who they were modeled after as an idea of their personality. They only act tough and mean in the comics simply because they feel that is how Emma would act or that is how she told them to act when she gained control of them. One of sisters, named Sophie, is the first of them to attempt to show some sign of individuality by actually liking a boy. Sadly this action leads to her death, and her sister Esme would later fall to the same fate for the same reason.

Every story after the death of the first two has the remaining three attempting to do the right thing and find out who they are as characters. The three become key figures in certain storylines and stand out as major characters who can decide for themselves what their lives will be put towards. Still, as teenagers, they do not make the best decisions in the beginning, but slowly begin to realize who they are as people and that they can be sisters and not just clones. Originally, all three had long blonde hair to consistently remind themselves and others that they are part of the same collective. When you see them in recent stories they have all cut and dyed their hair into some different style to represent their individuality, but remain together as sisters.

I found it necessary to talk about these girls because when you meet them and watch them through the series of comics they evolve past this generic "one off" science experiment into characters. I felt as though when I saw them I was meant to hate them and think they thought themselves above everyone and that there was nothing deeper to them. However, seeing characters grow past such expectations in any story makes them worth the read.