Summers, his wife Katherine Anne, and two sons Scott and Alex, lived in Alaska. One day Summers was taking the family for a flight in their airplane, when it came under attack by an alien Shi'ar spaceship. As the plane went down in flames, Summers strapped the boys into a parachute and ejected them from the plane. Before the plane crashed, Summers and his wife were captured by the spaceship and taken away from Earth.

Summers was sent to the slave mines, but the Shi'ar Emperor D'Ken was smitten with his wife and held her in his personal court. She was later killed in front of Summers' eyes by D'Ken himself, for the Emperor's own amusement. Summers eventually escaped the mines and hooked up with a group of aliens rebelling against the Shi'ar. The group formed the Starjammers, a constant thorn in D'ken's side, and Summers took the name Corsair.

Years later, Corsair and the Starjammers met his son Scott, now the mutant hero Cyclops and leader of the X-Men, in the final battle against D'ken. Though at first ignorant of each other's identities, they eventually learned the truth and were reconciled. While Corsair has visited earth several times since, he now considers his life in the stars with the Starjammers to be his home, and has remained there.

At one point, Scott was killed by Apocalypse, only to be resurrected after some months. After Scott's revival, Corsair apologized to his son for not checking up on him during his time with the Starjammers. Corsair's felt that since he could not keep the plane from crashing and that he could not save his own wife, he felt that Scott and Alex were in better hands in the care of the various homes that his two sons stayed at rather than with him. This apology clearly sunk in: prior to House of M, Cyclops' student team of X-Men was called the Corsairs.