Cyclops Appreciation

[Summers]

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26 lol

[Avenger88]

Not enough love for pistol-wielding Cyclops imO!




That was so totally badass and yet creepy at the same time^^

I want Adult Cyclops to take up Frank Castle's place as the next Punisher.

[Anis]

I actually like Cap here, even though he's being an ass to Cyke. It's still kind of cute:

I think the boyish vulnerability thing still feels like an important part of who Cyke is too. Although I'm glad he doesn't swoon every time he uses his optic blasts any more because mean people would make fun of him if he kept doing that:

Although I did like the way Hank and Warren were always having to swoop in and rescue him. I miss him being the guy who got rescued from time to time instead of being General Cyclops or the one who has to go in and save the day. He was a great Dude in Distress character in the past. I love him being competent and saving the day as much as the next Scott Summers fan, but I also liked his inability to learn that wandering off to indulge in manpain and blasting things with his eyebeams because of his emo-levels always leads to him unleashing an eldritch abomination that will inevitably shred his clothing.

It's so interesting (and funny) to read about what kind of character Scott used to be. I like his character right now but to know how far he has come and how much he has changed makes the character even more fascinating. I'm glad I discovered the character at the very right time though. If I'd read X-MEN comics from the classic era I would've had a different favourite character and would've been one of the haters screaming in anger and frustration every time his character got the spotlight and their used-to-be-more-popular did not.

Appearance wise, with two versions of the character running around, one of them a teenage boy who they don't want to make look too childlike or else things get a little skeevy, especially if Tyke's going to have any romantic entanglements or get smacked around by bad guys, it gets difficult for an artist to show which Cyclops is which unless they're very good at their job or they exaggerate Cyke's age to show the clear difference between him and Tyke.

Yes I think that's the main reason they have to make the real Scott look older and more imposing.

Cyclops was always a character that tended to get dismissed and ridiculed for always being a boy scout and playing by the rules and not being the sexy roguish playboy type like Gambit or the maverick loner rule breaker like Wolverine. (The swooning and crying and epic level emo-moping in X-Factor may not have helped ward off the mockery either.) He was the stick up his ass, rulebook following teacher's pet who was widely considered to be 'the boring one'. I remember lots of conversations where people would wonder if Jean would notice if Scott was replaced by a wooden plank because he was about as exciting as one. So, I think some artists who loved him - and were guys, who I think do tend to associate being a badass with being physically imposing more than women do, possibly because we don't have that option so we tend to be more impressed by male heroes who don't bulge with muscles or raise their voices but can still carry the day - took umbrage and were like 'No, this guy is the best frickin' hero ever! He's a badass master tactician with a nuclear weapon in his head who could totally kick your ass! Look at him - he's awesome!' And sometimes we got big beefy Cyke as a consequence.

I agree Cyclops has no business getting physically as big as Captain America but I'm one of the guilty people who don't mind seeing him standing next to Steve and look like his equal in every way. The writers need more than good story arcs to get rid of his image of the X-FACTOR era (which sounds dreadful if you ask me) and the ass-kicking pictures of him help them achieve that goal faster.

Obviously, the whole point about comic book characters is that every artist brings something new to the table in the same way that every writer does and they all have their own interpretation and on an artistic purity of vision level all their interpretations are valid. I definitely get the **** yeah! of an image like that. My reaction just gets bogged down in quibbling about the psychological likelihood of Scott Summers' body ever having been shaped by him in that direction.

That's why I personally hate it when they give him thunder thighs or weightlifter neck muscles because they turn him into someone else character-wise IMO and make him less efficient and more about making an imposing impression - which I take issue with from a psychological perspective. I mean why would he have big bulging muscles? Cyke's not a himbo who lifts weights to build up empty muscle so he can preen in front of a mirror or go pick up one night stands at the gym. He's a guy who is naturally tall, skinny, and fine-boned but who has honed and shaped his body to maximum efficiency through his extraordinary self-discipline in obsessively practising mission scenarios in the Danger Room and turning his body into a tool that serves his needs - his needs being the needs of the mission and the wider mutant race.

He's turned himself into a gymnast and an athlete as well as a warrior, and made himself as flexible and strong as he possibly can get through diet and unremitting exercise - but muscle is heavy. No way IMO is he going to be carrying any more of it than he needs to achieve maximum strength and agility without any excess bulk inhibiting his flexibility or slowing him down. If you're the guy who is gonna be back-flipping out of the way of robot kill beams you don't need fifty pounds of drag factor that is serving no purpose, so every time I see a pic of Cyke where they overload him with muscle mass that isn't of any use to him it always makes me grind my teeth a little even if I can appreciate that what the artist is bringing to the presentation of Cyclops is coming from a place of approval and affection.

But to me one of the interesting things about Cyke is that he's not naturally a big, impressive, confident hero who can stride into a room as if he has a right to be there. Scott Summers was a skinny, gawky, multiply abused kid who shuffled around with his head down, and obeyed Charles Xavier almost slavishly because he was the first decent male role model he'd had in his life since his father died and he always seemed to me to be just pathetically grateful to have some order and sanity in his life. For years after he was in a relatively stable environment and long after people had stopped experimenting on him (Xavier's occasional 'tests' excepted) he still suffered from lacerating self-doubt and an annoying tendency to blame himself for everything that happened. (His emo moping in X-Factor was epic level. Every time anything happened he'd default to OMG Everything EVER is ALL MY FAULT! Much as I love Cyke, if I'd been Jean I would have thwapped him halfway back to Alaska.) But I like the fact that Cyclops had to learn how to yell and curse because it doesn't come naturally to him, and then got told off for it by everyone - and quite right, too, I'm with Beast, Brand, and Wolvie on that one. I like that he's a quietly spoken guy who doesn't have much in the way of masculine ego, is happy to tell another guy he's stronger/faster/braver/handsomer/generally more awesome than he is, and doesn't mind if people disagree with him as long as they can hold it in until the crisis is over, and who is willing to admit he's wrong. He's not the foot stompy sweep everything off the desk, maverick asshat detective who has 24 hours to solve the crime. He's the introspective guy who gets on with things and gets it wrong a lot of the time and admits he's wrong and picks himself back up and goes straight back to trying to do the best he can. To me that doesn't really go with a massive, imposing physique. It goes with - guy who's been at the party for an hour before you even notice he's there, but when the fire alarms go off, he's somehow the one who gets everyone out alive.

So, I guess development is development, physical and emotional and psychological, but for me if they want to stick manboobs and weightlifter neck and giant thigh muscles on Cyke I need to know why he's changed his workout routine, because, logically, I'm not seeing a reason why he doesn't still need to be slim, strong, fast, and athletic, which means lean muscle and as bendy as he can get for when those Sentinel blasts start raining down on him and the people he loves. Everyone's mileage probably will - and should - vary on that one.

The picture in your post is a good example of the one that goes a bit too far. As much as I admire a good drawing showing off male in top physical shape I don't want to see a bunch of body-builders posing as superheroes either.

I have to say you've described Cyclops character very well. It's always a great read for someone like me who only like the character bases on what I've read post Whedon's run. A lot of what I've read from your post makes me understand where the haters are coming from as well.

I hope we're all in agreement, though, that, anyone who doesn't draw him with a fabulously taut ass is just plain wrong.

Ass and abs...

[DakenGirl]

Good post but the Schism is not going to be ending anytime soon. It's been made clear that the Schism will go on for some time and so will the drama.

I don't really think Schism impacts on the O5 much, if at all, really, other than giving them different schools to stay at, instead of just being stuck on Utopia. It's probably an asset from their perspective as they've now got to visit New York and the snowy wastes of Canada. In fact if a third faction could splinter off and open another trollishly-named mutant school near a sunny beach somewhere, I'm sure they'd be thrilled. Perhaps Magneto will reclaim Utopia and they can visit him in San Francisco?

I have to disagree on your opinion of him dying though. In my opinion, I just don't see any reason for Cyke remaining alive any longer than Wolverine. He might die trying to save Teen Jean's life, that might be the redemption and send-off that he always wanted. He will never ever be happy and content with his life since his wife died. The only way I see him being happy and content with hislife is if 616 Jean is resurrected and is with him again. Which will not happen.

Well, I don't see any necessity or even any reason for Wolverine to die. I don't see that it adds anything to the x-men verse, just a lot of pointless hype and probably dollars to Marvel's coffers. A dead character is just an opportunity wasted that writers weren't smart enough to capitalize on in my opinion. I think killing a character has become a lazy writing prop for people who can't be assed to come up with a better story and know they'll get an emotional impact with that one so don't try to do anything that's harder. Sometimes there is a story where it absolutely will not work, the plot wheels will not go round without Death of Character A - the Superior Spider-man book for instance - but it's used too often just to drum up interest and in the case of Wolverine I think it's being used as an alternative to just...writing him more consistently and coherently.

As to Cyke 'never being happy and content with his life since his wife died'. He wasn't really happy and content when she was alive, which was no reflection on Jean or their relationship, but just because happy and content isn't really the default mode for the X-Men. Rotten things happen to them all the time and although their love for one another gets them through it, it doesn't really stop those things being rotten or having an impact. And he definitely has shown signs of being as carefree and relaxed as he is capable of being since Jean's death at various times, particularly when he was with Emma whom he clearly did love very much, so it's not as if he's just been a grief-stricken widower for years, he managed to sustain another relationship for a good long time. I think he's very upset by Xavier's death and he was clearly suicidal directly after it, but he's seen for himself that if he's not around or if he is around but he's too miserable to fight back, that mutants die. I even if he were a lot unhappier than he is or if Jean's death had happened far more recently than it did, that he would still not want to go out in a blaze of glory. He's the one person who knows how horrible a thing it is for the people who are left when someone has no choice but to do that.

So that is why I think Adult Cyke's story ends with him giving up his life so that Teen Jeen can live. And then Tyke takes his place and hopefuly gets together with Jeen and all is right in the X-verse again...

I admire your faith in Tyke/Jeen being the answer to all the X-Men's problems. Scott/Jean (original version) was certainly a very unusually well-explored relationship and does represent a sort of golden era for a lot of people for the X-Men, so I do sympathize wholeheartedly with your feelings. I like Jean/Scott as a ship, and I think there was a time in their lives when life felt unbearable for them without the other one, but I do personally think they were past that at the time that Jean died. I think they did - and always would - love each other, and their marriage was probably eminently fixable, but I do think they were no longer as all-consumingly in love with one another as they had been, not just because of outside stresses, but because people grow up and sometimes they grow apart, and sometimes they have a few bumpy years and then remember what it was they loved about the person in the first place. But sometimes a relationship can just be a comfortable habit people have gotten into. We'll never know what Scott/Jean would have been, we only know that it ended with her death and that she felt the right thing for him was to be with another strong, female telepath, or perhaps the right thing was for him very specifically to be with Emma Frost.

I think Jean could come back and - I'm sure she would always have great fondness for Cyke and feel the affection for him that one does for people with whom one has shared meaningful life experiences - make a life that was entirely separate from any romantic life with him. In fact I couldn't really picture her coming back and just hooking up with him again. I think it would feel like they were just clinging to what they knew because it was safe and comfortable and, quite apart from being lovers, they usually got along pretty well. I think Jean is too passionate a woman to want to just drift. I suspect, like a lot of women who married young and had a lot of pressures put on them, she might like to try some time romantically unattached and focus on another things. From her perspective, after all, husbands probably seem like quite hard work, in constant need as they are of being rescued from bad guys. She might want to put her feet up for a while and just shake-up the UN or something.

It might be weird for them both to be alive in the world and not be together but it's weird for divorced people to get used to someone who used to have a binding covenant with them now having one with someone else. People adjust. I really don't think Jean should inevitably have to be with Cyke and I don't think his life has been empty without her. I think it's been tinged with grief, and rightly so, but anyone over a certain age has that experience. A lot of people suffer shattering losses but just because there are people in their lives who are dead who they would much rather were still alive it doesn't mean that life has no more light or meaning for them. Once you get over a certain age, unfortunately, grief and loss is part of life's package, and if you're a mutant even more so.

I think the X-Men's romantic entanglements have always tended towards the adolescent and melodramatic, and it's why the new wave of kids coming along are necessary, but when you get over a certain age you just really want to slap Romeo and Juliet for having no patience of sense of proportion. I think both Cyke and Jean - should she return - have both endured too many different setbacks and disappointments and traumas and losses not to have basically grown up past the point where they are all 'If I can't be with you, I just WANT TO DIE!' It's fine for teenagers. Everything is operating at maximum intensity for teenagers. They don't necessarily have a sense of proportion about where there suffering comes on any rational scale. Not getting a date for the prom can seem like the end of the world, never mind someone who was arguably the love of their life dying, but by the time you're in your twenties, there's a lot more rationality at work. I think both Jean and Cyclops are past their emo Twilight years. Tyke and Jeen might still be young enough to think that if they just love each other, everything will be all right, but adult Cyclops knows perfectly well that life is a lot more complicated than that and that Jean is not the missing equation to render his life perfect again, any more than he could now ever be the solution to all her problems if she came back from the dead.

Darn, this conversation is really making me miss Adult Jean, but I can't see ANXM working as well as a narrative if she is around, simply because Jeen, as the one with the greatest potential to cause good or harm, really does need to be slightly anchorless. With her adult self around, a huge part of her angst would be removed. I'm looking forward to seeing if we are going to see Xorna again, if she is or isn't dead, as she seemed, and what impact the visit from the Evil Future Brotherhood is going to have on her and the others.

[DakenGirl]

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26 lol

Such a great Cyclops moment! Great scan!

[anthony_lynch15]

A few funny Cyclops pics for my first post:-

[Summers]

Has Stan Lee, Or any writers for that matter? Ever said where they have drawn influence for Scotts character in the books. Are certain parts of his personality reflectant on family, friends, other famous characters from media?

[DakenGirl]

How good to see you back, anthony! I've missed your posts. Did you feel like you were wandering around a bombsite when you saw what they'd done to the old place?

Those cartoons are all really cute. I haven't seen any of them before. I love EmoClops.

[Anis]

But that's just not Scott, that would be like him chilling in a beach, he just doesn't do that, that would be torture for him

You mean he wouldn't like being happy and free? Not ever? I know it isn't in his character right now but 20 years ago nobody would think he could go from a goody two shoes to become a badass mutant terrorist either.

X-men Worlds apart, a mini centered in Storm and Scott after Storm's marriage

A mini with Strom and Cyclops both getting featured? Another book I have to buy then. Lucky I don't have to feed my family otherwise they'd have to eat comic books for supper.

Well, he did have Apocalypse possessing his body, but at least he didn't have all of his "friends" thinking that he was still him, I'm gonna be quite disappointed if he doesn't quit the Avengers after what they did to him, and I really hope that he finally tells MJ that he is Spider-man and they get back together, because if they don't I'm gonna be quite annoyed, Scott-Jean and Peter-MJ are my favorite couples from comics (with Logan-Storm in the third place). Is funny that Peter at some point does the same that Scott does with pain, only that Scott hides it behind his duty and being serious, and Peter hides it with jokes, Iceman does the same but he doesn't have nearly as much pain as they do, I hope that now we can see Peter showing some angst or at least cracking his mask of jokes and letting some of the pain out, I don't like that he came directly from the mind-kidnapp and he became all happy again, mostly after his life being ruined and now MJ wanting to be away from him, Otto blew up his life, I hope that at least he punch an enemy too hard or that he breaks a wall to blow some steam, the way Scott did in UXM 18 by shooting a blast to nowhere (which btw became my desktop background)

I'm yet to get into Spider-man comics for real but I'm about to jump in. I hope they don't let Peter move on with his life easily after what has happened to him. Maybe it's a good thing I wasn't a Spider-man fan before because if I did I probably had to kill someone after OMD.

You are not alone in that, they were the best couple in comics and they will be again (I don't know why my profile pic doesn't appear but it's an image of them)

That's good to hear. There're too much "Jean deserves a better man than Scott" line of comments for my liking.

[OpticDreams]

Cyke can be so scary ahaha. "You can't mess with my mind Lady. I already lost it." Astonishing was so good.

Btw May 7th will be a good day. Cyke #1 and No more humans.

[Anis]

Agree with you and maxi and the points you've been making. Particularly taken with that point.
She died just after he had been unfaithful to her telepathically - even if he wasn't too clear that was what he was doing - and they never got a chance to resolve things before she died in his arms, and then, for the best of motives, Jean changed his mind so that he started dating Emma when he would not otherwise have done so/was able to date Emma because the guilt that would have prevented him was removed (it's still 50/50 on what was intended) and consequently lost the respect of several other people, including his own daughter, Beast, and Wolvie. It's why I would like that telepathic push from beyond the grave from Jean to come out, now that he and Emma aren't dating, hopefully in a way that doesn't invalidate their relationship or their feelings for each other, but that does explain why he moved on from Jean so swiftly, and that it was not just with her consent but at her express direction. I think it might give Hank and Wolverine an excuse to dial back the anger towards him and possibly lead to a better relationship between him and Rachel. (Hell, I'd settle for any relationship between him and Rachel at this point! Wait, do I have to change that to 'heck' now?)

That's one of my most frustrating parts in X-history. Why the hell DIDN'T Jean at least let some people that close to them both (like Hank and Logan) know of her plan to save mutant-kind when she put S and E together? She must have known people wouldn't take Scott moving on with Emma very likely but she still let him live with it. Poor Scott and Emma have to live all those years with people seeing them in poor light for betraying Jeans when in fact she's the architect behind it all. Would the truth ever come out?

I don't actually think that redemption-through-death is a good story 99% of the time anyway. I think it's that thing writers do to make an impact that might be achieved a better way without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. People talk about the Dark Phoenix Saga, rightly, because it was shocking and tragic and memorable, but at the end of the day, when the dust settled, it meant the X-Men didn't have a Jean Grey any more, and all the stories that could have been told that included her and would have been enhanced by her presence, didn't get told. Cyke hasn't done anything for which he needs a death-by-redemption story and I don't really see what difference Tyke's presence in the current timeline 616 makes.

That's a very good point. Why would Scott need a redemption? He's almost single-handly held mutants together after M-Day and saved mutantkind from extinction by protecting Hope at all cost until the day she could accept the Phoenix power. If anything, those who've awed him their life and CHOOSE to turn their back on him deserve the redemption. He's already been through so much trying to save people, he doesn't need to die to save anyone to prove himself a hero.

What Bendis seems to be doing is showing the roads not taken. What if Jean Grey got her powers earlier, what if she knew what fate held for her, what person would she be then? One who didn't marry Scott Summers? (Or did?) One that became irrevocably damaged and deadly? One who could only artificially contain the power within her because it was too overwhelming? Or one who didn't have to suffer the way our Jean did, who didn't destroy the M'Bari and didn't have to die?

It's the same with Tyke. We know what happened to the Scott Summers who was raised by Charles Xavier to be the leader of the X-Men. We know how that worked out for him, at least up until the point. Tyke, for better or worse, has been snatched away from Xavier's guardianship. Instead of having an entirely patriarchal influence, he's had the sororal den-mothering of Kitty, and now appears to be going to get a standard nuclear family dynamic from his actual father and his stepmother. Given how much we are generally the product of both nature and nurture and given that the nurturing Tyke has been receiving and will be receiving is going to be markedly different from Cyke's, the interest surely lies, not in having Tyke replace Cyke, but seeing the ways in which he does or doesn't diverge from him.

Yes. It's a 'what if' story within the real reality which make it more meaningful than the other 'what if' stories in alternative universe/timeline.

Xavier's big problem with Teenage Cyke was to teach him how to control his potentially lethal blasts. He made control the priority because going 'oh well, never mind, son, sometimes a guy just needs to cut loose' when dealing with an angsty hormonal teenager with a nuclear weapon in his head was going to lead to roofs blasted off, possibly dead people, angry mobs, and the inevitable eldritch abominations. He couldn't afford not to be a disciplinarian because the thing he had to din into Cyke was that he Must. Not. Lose. Control. Ever. And it was Cyke's big fear, that he would lose control of his blasts and people he loved would die, and he did hurt the others accidentally several times, and destroy property and nearly kill people, and it was a big, big, part of who he was. Somehow I can't see CONTROL being Corsair's keystone word to parenting. He seems much more the type to just wing it and tell Tyke to loosen up and learn to have some fun and stop being such a tightass.

And the fact that Tyke doesn't need to be too careful in space. He can lose control of his power a few times with only a few asteroids getting blasted off.

[Avenger88]

That's one of my most frustrating parts in X-history. Why the hell DIDN'T Jean at least let some people that close to them both (like Hank and Logan) know of her plan to save mutant-kind when she put S and E together? She must have known people wouldn't take Scott moving on with Emma very likely but she still let him live with it. Poor Scott and Emma have to live all those years with people seeing them in poor light for betraying Jeans when in fact she's the architect behind it all. Would the truth ever come out?

Well that's simply because had Jean cleared that right then and there, there would be no drama, and therefore would be no Schism in the future. The Schism actually started way back at the time of Jean's Death at the hands of Xorn. It just reached boiling point and resulted in the divide a lot later on, when Cyclops created X-Force ( he did the right thing BTW ).

[Godzilla2099]

Angry Birds

[Daymare]

A possessed Cyclops kills Xavier, I get there is anger but they have memorialized Xavier as a saint. Xavier was Onslaught, basically kills the Avengers, has shown he has wiped their minds and manipulated his students since their teen years, covered up a group of X-men's death, had a sentient being on lockdown to train his students...and more, yet he was always forgiven and always their "Father" . Cyclops is their "brother" and was the only one to call Xavier on his bs, yet he is the forever dead to them sinner.
Seems whack to me. Especially since Cyclops has shown remorse. Xavier only ever defended his own actions.

[FluffyCyclopsRLZ]

If it's any consolation, Wolverine's X-Men don't really know what to do with themselves now that Cyke isn't around. It's kinda cute.