I AM The X-Men - Cyclops Appreciation 2023

[whitecrown]

Cyclops asks to be killed in AvX #12 while Dark Phoenix, right before losing control again. The Uncanny X-Men tie in, I'm blanking on the exact issue number, also gives insight into his thought process.

Thank you, I'll need to check that again. That does change my perspective for the better.

[Gray Lensman]

I have to agree with the take on Children's Crusade, I can't even begin to reconcile Scott in that book with Scott in every other book written at the time. It looks more like a character assassination piece than a true story.

Likewise with his devolving in AvX, that was primarily the effects of the Phoenix in that story. The trouble with the Flaming Cosmic Turkey is that it has little consistency from story to story, and sometimes not even issue to issue. Only a few things remain true: it's connected to Jean Grey, it's disgustingly powerful, flaming bird manifestations, someone will say "fire and life incarnate", and either someone dies, or someone returns from the dead. Motivations, characterisation, how much control someone can possibly have, everything else changes. It would be like Jean's personality changing every story arc - first acting like her 60's self, then Emma, then Ororo, then Rogue, then Jubilee, and finally like Laura, but never the classic Jeam you fell in love with ever again. I see the Phoenix as being like that, whatever positive stuff it once brought is all gone, never to return.

But back to Scott in AvX, once he got the Phoenix shard, it's hard to know where he ends and the FCT begins. How much is something a normal Scott would be horrified at thinking, much less saying and acting on it. I doubt Emma in her normal state would rummage around in the heads of people she found disgusting (certainly not long enough to find their greatest meals), nor would she suggest burning down the planet. FCT means being OOC and writers saying you really aren't because screw proper character and story development. Add in the "Why does anyone else even need to be here?" power scale of the thing, and there shouldn't be any question as to why I want the thing to never return to Jean on a long term basis. It ruins anything it touches for more than a single story arc.

[Sutekh]

I just want to say... basing your opinion of Scott(seemingly for the most part) on Children's Crusade, which was widely-panned as being editorially-mandated garbage with almost every character involved being written incredibly out of character, doesn't make much sense.

I am a huge fan of the Young Avengers, and Scarlet Witch, as well, and I thought Children's Crusade read too much like wishful fanfic, attempting to wash away all sorts of stuff (Wanda that slept with Hawkeye was a Doombot! Wanda was possessed by a never-before-mentioned 'Life Force' as part of a plot by Doom! Just, wtf? Why not 'Wanda was influenced by Chthon, an elder god with primal powers who totally has possessed and influenced her in the past, and totally would mess with mutants in yet another attempt to move lots of power around and maybe break free of his prison?').

And yeah, several characters were written surprisingly out of character, IMO. Even Wolverine isn't *that* bloodthirsty that he'd suggest murdering Wiccan because he had powers *similar* to Wanda's 'reality manipulation' Bendis made-up-nonsense. And for Cyclops, and seemingly all the other X-folk other than Madrox and X-Factor to be right there on the howling-for-blood train was totally wrong for them. (In most cases. I could see some of the more cold-bloodedly tactical folk like Bishop and Cable at least quietly *thinking* about it, but not howling for blood like they're at the Roman coliseum.)

The whole event felt like a desperate 'author saving throw' to shove as much of the crap they'd been left with out of the airlock and freshen the air as possible, but the stench of Decimation (which made zero sense, Wanda randomly flipping out and developing entirely new cosmic reality-altering powers because *someone reminded her of something she'd already gotten over years ago?* Why on Earth was the High Evolutionary, who has already tried to de-mutant everyone on Earth *twice* get tapped for this Decimation role?) was just not that easy to get rid of, and the story, again, IMO, read like fanfic, just too tidy of a story, with too many people acting as OOC as necessary to move it along, for me to be able to enjoy as much as I wanted to.

There are assorted stories where I just refuse to blame the character for bad writing putting ugly out-of-character words in their mouths. I don't blame Cyclops for the stuff he said in Children's Crusade (which sounded almost word for word like something Stryker or the Church of Humanity or Orchis would say about *all* mutants, like Wanda still was at the time), any more than I blame Wanda for doing something she couldn't actually do, for reasons which made zero sense (since she already knew and got over the thing that she randomly flipped out about *years ago*).

[Wiccan]

I haven't read it yet, but from what I've heard the Cyclops vs Captain Marvel issue seems to actually be a good showing for Scott, by playing into a certain quality of him spoilers:

(his strategic thinking in battle)

end of spoilers.

[Kal-El Summers]

Umm, I don't remember that criticism. In fact, I remember X-Fans here cheering on Cyclops and his actions to "burn the witch where she stands." That was a very popular sentiment here in the X-Books section for years. There was a thread a while back about how X-Fans seem to have forgiven the Avengers and Wanda and there's no bad blood anymore. I posted in there about how I was disgusted at how X-Fans were suddenly pretending all was well when for years, they went on hate rants about Wanda, Steve, Tony, Carol, Logan, Hank, etc. You could practically see the foam churning at their mouths and there would be new threads created everyday complaining about one of these Avengers. And that's not even considering all the random threads that were being polluted with arbitrary hate towards the Avengers.

X-fans hating on the Avengers doesn't mean that Children's Crusade wasn't trash.

So I definitely don't remember any complaints about the characters being OOC from X-Fans. And even on the Avengers side, I recall no negativity especially since Wanda fans had waited for years for her to be brought back. She's another example of a character who desperately needed to be salvaged after years of abuse and misuse. The story was quite praised by Wanda fans and considered long overdue.

Almost every Wanda fan I've seen on this board(or rather the old board) *hated* CC. Sure, there was the one or two who didn't, but by and large, fans on both sides called it terrible.

Cyclops' characterization during that time wasn't just limited to Children's Crusade. He was written like that in AvX as well. One story was not the reason why I was disgusted at Cyclops' writing, because it was consistent with what I had seen at that point for almost a decade.

No, they were not consistent with how he was written at the time. I almost want to ask if you were actually reading Uncanny back then.

I brought up in a prior post on this page about why I hold Scott's actions as Phoenix possessed as different from holding Jean, Wanda, or Warren accountable when they were possessed. Those three were constantly fighting to regain control, whereas Scott never fought against it. I don't recall any moment like this with Scott.

Can't recall what they refuse to show. They never showed any member of the Phoenix 5's inner thoughts regarding how the fire turkey was affecting them. Hell, Gillen's Uncanny tie-ins were about the only time we got any sort of look at Scott's inner thoughts up to the moment he took the full power into himself.

[JB]

I haven't read it yet, but from what I've heard the Cyclops vs Captain Marvel issue seems to actually be a good showing for Scott, by playing into a certain quality of him spoilers:

(his strategic thinking in battle)

end of spoilers.

Yeah it's pretty good and a nice showing for Scott indeed, spoilers:

even if he "won" which isn't a great thing in the contest.

end of spoilers

[xiyon]

Thank you, I'll need to check that again. That does change my perspective for the better.

Blame Phoenix Coke. I forgot which writer / editor said it, but basically they treated the Phoenix like a drug. Like, you get high on Phoenix or some BS like that. Again, Avengers office hijacking an X-Men centric event to promote, well, the Avengers :x

All that said, for a dude that professed to not liking Cyke, Gillen did a helluva job making gold out of the mud he had to work with. Gillen's tie-ins (and prelude arc) were among the best of AvX. As was Consequences.

I have to agree with the take on Children's Crusade, I can't even begin to reconcile Scott in that book with Scott in every other book written at the time. It looks more like a character assassination piece than a true story.

Taken by itself, CC was prolly the worst showing of Cyke and the X-Men. But again, editorially-mandated BS. I think the closest in-universe explanation for how OOC Cyke was portrayed was that the events came immediately after Second Coming-- but even then, not exactly consistent with how Cyke was portrayed at the time. All that said, I felt the Avengers-line was a mess (in start contrast to the MCU's success) and lacking direction, in stark contrast to the X-Line at the time.

[xiyon]

I am a huge fan of the Young Avengers, and Scarlet Witch, as well, and I thought Children's Crusade read too much like wishful fanfic, attempting to wash away all sorts of stuff (Wanda that slept with Hawkeye was a Doombot! Wanda was possessed by a never-before-mentioned 'Life Force' as part of a plot by Doom! Just, wtf? Why not 'Wanda was influenced by Chthon, an elder god with primal powers who totally has possessed and influenced her in the past, and totally would mess with mutants in yet another attempt to move lots of power around and maybe break free of his prison?').

And yeah, several characters were written surprisingly out of character, IMO. Even Wolverine isn't *that* bloodthirsty that he'd suggest murdering Wiccan because he had powers *similar* to Wanda's 'reality manipulation' Bendis made-up-nonsense. And for Cyclops, and seemingly all the other X-folk other than Madrox and X-Factor to be right there on the howling-for-blood train was totally wrong for them. (In most cases. I could see some of the more cold-bloodedly tactical folk like Bishop and Cable at least quietly *thinking* about it, but not howling for blood like they're at the Roman coliseum.)

The whole event felt like a desperate 'author saving throw' to shove as much of the crap they'd been left with out of the airlock and freshen the air as possible, but the stench of Decimation (which made zero sense, Wanda randomly flipping out and developing entirely new cosmic reality-altering powers because *someone reminded her of something she'd already gotten over years ago?* Why on Earth was the High Evolutionary, who has already tried to de-mutant everyone on Earth *twice* get tapped for this Decimation role?) was just not that easy to get rid of, and the story, again, IMO, read like fanfic, just too tidy of a story, with too many people acting as OOC as necessary to move it along, for me to be able to enjoy as much as I wanted to.

There are assorted stories where I just refuse to blame the character for bad writing putting ugly out-of-character words in their mouths. I don't blame Cyclops for the stuff he said in Children's Crusade (which sounded almost word for word like something Stryker or the Church of Humanity or Orchis would say about *all* mutants, like Wanda still was at the time), any more than I blame Wanda for doing something she couldn't actually do, for reasons which made zero sense (since she already knew and got over the thing that she randomly flipped out about *years ago*).

As a Wanda fan-- or at least, a fan of Wanda from X-Men Evolution, W&TXM, and anywhere Wanda appeared with Kurt and Nocturne-- I did enjoy Disassembled and House of X while detesting CC. I agree-- it felt too much like a fanfic trying avoid having Wanda come to terms with going crazy with grief (something peeps can totally understand) by having... Doom plot the whole thing and declare it like a bad Saturday morning villain wtf? And the Wanda whitewashing (or whatever the term is) just got worse with AvX, imho. I get it, the writers were trying to be cute by bookending House of M with AvX, but Wanda (and the Avenger's place in that fiasco) felt unearned up to that point.

[R+R]

No, that's not me trolling at all. I find it very odd how Beast's fandom has been so distraught by the last few years of his character assassination and are just waiting for someone to restore him back to normal, but some Cyclops fans actually revel in that dark period of his becoming a tyrant and still cling to those years of character assassination like that was the real Cyclops and the character who existed from 1963-2001 was somehow the fraud. The discrepancy between the two amazes me but it seems Beast fans are less concerned with how "cool" or "edgy" their favorite character comes across as. They just want him treated like a human being with some modicum of decency and respect, the way he used to be. Before Beast gets saved with a retcon, I'm still waiting for the day some writer saves Cyclops with a retcon that he was never Magneto 2.0 but some Skrull imposter, Sinister clone, or Apocalypse infused abomination.

Huh... Cyclops wasn't a tyrant.

The difference between Cyclops and Beast is that Beast is a hypocrite and has done truly horrible things such as being responsible for the genocide of Terra Verde, the OG 5, the genocides with the Illuminati, he was silent about Hydra... While Cyclops was saving mutantkind and humanity multiple times, including saving humanity from a genocide by the Evolutionaries twice.

[R+R]

But the way Scott doggedly pursued Wanda, refused to give her a chance to help out or even listen to her and was only determined to "burn the witch where she stands" was incredibly off-putting. He wasn't interested in helping mutantkind then, he only wanted vengeance. Which is fine for a character like Wolverine but if you're the moral leader of the X-Men and have appointed yourself the head of all mutantkind, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. I'm still of the belief that Scott wanted Wanda dead because he feared that if she could actually reverse M-Day, he would lose all the emergency powers he had cultivated from taking advantage of the fact that this dying species had grouped around him. That narrative would completely change if Wanda restored mutantkind and he would no longer be the mutant leader or savior.

The Avengers and Magneto took custody of Wanda before Cyclops actually did anything. Was Cyclops really going to kill her right after she turned herself in? We do not know. It doesn't seem to make sense to me that Scott wanted to kill Wanda when she presented the solution to the effects of M-Day and he was doing anything to save mutants.

Wiccan makes it seem like Cyclops accepted Magneto onto his team easily when we know that FractionClops didn't trust Magneto until he rescued Kitty.

The difference between Jean and Wanda is that Jean's problem was the Phoenix and Wanda's problem was herself until Doom revealed that he was responsible.

[R+R]

Wasn't it Cyclops who directly compared himself to Magneto in the pic below that their only difference was Cyclops was winning?

"i'm nothing like you."

Kieron Gillen gave an interview about his Uncanny X-Men in which he described the Cyclops and Magneto comparisons very well.

Kieron Gillen: People say Cyclops is acting out of character, but these are people who haven’t been reading X-Men for the past five years, because the actual slow drift into the guy he is now has been delineated really well across that time.

http://www.multiversitycomics.com/in...war-interview/

"He’s sounding like Magneto, but is he acting like Magneto? That’s the difference, between appearances and actions, and I think you would know if Scott would ever cross aline. When Scott crosses that line, you will know it. Sure, at the moment he’s talking like Magneto, and acting like something a little bit different. If you believe everything Scott says, you’re missing that very careful double Gambit. If he was genuinely like Magneto, he wouldn’t have Storm onthe team. He has explicitly said that he’s fully aware he’s playing a dangerous game, which is why he has Storm along; he doesn’t want to be Magneto, and he’s aware that that’s a fundamental risk.
That’s one of the fundamental question marks of the run, though; has Scott gone too far?"

Just have to disagree with ya White crown. Scott's time in Utopia was amazing and some of his best writing.

Morally gray Cyclops is my favorite version of the character and this era proved why Cyclops is the great leader of the X-Men. He was no longer just a boy scout who needed Xavier and he became more interesting.

[R+R]

Cyclops asks to be killed in AvX #12 while Dark Phoenix, right before losing control again.

Exactly.

[R+R]

An interesting interview with Jonathan Hickman answering questions about AvX #6 written by him.

The interviewer tries to make Scott seem cruel and dictator, but Hickman just denies(lol):

"I don't think Cyclops feels that he's being cruel or spiteful."

"She's(Hope) a kid. Kids are dumb, and Scott has the wisdom to know that the world needs to be a better."

https://www.cbr.com/avx-commentary-t...onus-features/

Cyclops was definitely not being written as a cruel dictator here.

[xiyon]

Huh... Cyclops wasn't a tyrant.

The difference between Cyclops and Beast is that Beast is a hypocrite and has done truly horrible things such as being responsible for the genocide of Terra Verde, the OG 5, the genocides with the Illuminati, he was silent about Hydra... While Cyclops was saving mutantkind and humanity multiple times, including saving humanity from a genocide by the Evolutionaries twice.

Whenever I think of how editorial really screwed themselves trying to screw-over Cyke in the past decade, I find myself going back to this dude's twitter page:

https://twitter.com/RedClops123/stat...48602768486402

Man's chronicled Cyke's entire development--- including how the X-Men now are more fascist / supremacists than Utopia!Clops-detractors/haters ever imagined Cyke was. Like, a lot of the things Cyke's been wrongfully accused of before, the Krakoan-era was doing now-- but now peeps are cheering 'cause it's not Cyke being radical.

Kinda insane, tbh, but hey--- it's really only wrong when Cyclops does it XD

[Arthas]

It wasn't just his stance on Schism that put me off the character by then. It was everything that led up to it before as well. I think it's interesting that even in-universe, characters reflect on how unlikable Scott has become. In The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire, Lorna and Alex reflect on how they miss Jean and how they liked Scott a lot more when she was alive as well. This was the first contemporary X-Men comic I started to read when I got into the X-Men so this has always stuck with me, even though at that point I had little familiarity with why Scott had become so unlikable in the years before. I've spoken a lot more about this in the Jean thread, but the way Scott doggedly pursued Wanda, refused to give her a chance to help out or even listen to her and was only determined to "burn the witch where she stands" was incredibly off-putting. He wasn't interested in helping mutantkind then, he only wanted vengeance. Which is fine for a character like Wolverine but if you're the moral leader of the X-Men and have appointed yourself the head of all mutantkind, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. I'm still of the belief that Scott wanted Wanda dead because he feared that if she could actually reverse M-Day, he would lose all the emergency powers he had cultivated from taking advantage of the fact that this dying species had grouped around him. That narrative would completely change if Wanda restored mutantkind and he would no longer be the mutant leader or savior.

Let's just say I disagree. Especially because the same thing would have applied for Hope / Phoenix and that did not happen. Not to mention Cyclops never forced people to stay Utopia. Cyclops sent out the call for mutants to come to San Francisco and then raised Utopia when stuff happened but he never said stay here or else. He just said if they came there, then the X-men would protect them.

The way I saw it, Wolverine's stance was teaching the kids how to use their powers so they could become productive members of society and reintegrate with the public. If some of them grew up and decided they wanted to be X-Men, that was fine too but it wasn't compulsory nor was that the purpose of the school. The school was designed to help these kids control their abilities so they wouldn't be a danger to themselves or others, not to train them to be child soldiers. They weren't being trained to be X-Men. They weren't being sent out on missions to do with the adults did. But as mutants, their very existence meant they were always likely to be put in harm's way so they needed to learn how to defend themselves. This was very similar to what Xavier envisioned for the New Mutants. That team was created with the idea that these kids wouldn't be X-Men but would only learn to control their powers. They weren't supposed to go out on missions and encounter danger, but of course danger always found them. And we see that even when Magneto is headmaster, he's actively grounding them or keeping them confined to the mansion to keep them out of danger. The New Mutants were the ones sneaking out on missions as the junior X-Men and their actions got Cypher killed despite Magneto's best attempts to prevent exactly something like that happening.

Thing is this was basically Scott's stance.

Scott did not really send Kids out on missions.

He just made sure they were prepared when the Missions / Danger / Attacker came to them.

For an example consider what happened with Idie and that museum that kicked off Schism.

It was NOT a combat mission. X-Adults were there making an appearence. Some X-Kids were there as well.

Bad guys attacked, X-Adults were disabled, only Idie (an X-Kid) was present and there were Hostages with a ticking time bomb.

No teleporters around, no way for the other X-Men to intervene in time. Cyke tells Idie to make her choice.

She does and saves the Hostages but (I believe?) she kills the attackers.

Keep in mind Scott did not send her there on a mission. The mission came to her. (Which is par of the course for mutant kids).

Same thing happened a bit later.

A Sentinal decided to attack Utopia. Again Cyke did not send or initiate this.

The X-Kids were willing and wanted to defend their home. Wolverine DEMANDED and was willing to FORCE the X-Kids not to fight but blowing their home up instead.

To re-iterate my point: You claimed that "But as mutants, their very existence meant they were always likely to be put in harm's way so they needed to learn how to defend themselves. "

That was what Cyclops was actually doing.