"None of these women were the hero’s girlfriends. None of them were the designated damsels. None of them were weak or meek, and none of them were derivative versions of male characters (a trope that the X-Men has mostly avoided with the exceptions of X-23, Lady Mastermind and Polaris). Each woman had a different story to tell, and none of them could have stood in place of any of the others. Rogue was a wayward teen dealing with isolation and anger. Rachel was an abuse victim lashing out at the world. Dazzler was a former star perennially trying to recover her identity out of the spotlight. Psylocke sought to reconcile her inner toughness with her outer frailty."
— Andrew Wheeler’s dissection of Chris Claremont’s contributions to the female superhero is a must-read.