Cyclops/Scott Summers Appreciation 2024

[whitecrown]

I don't think they did him wrong either, but I think they didn't really try to reconcile with him. I'm not going to give Scott **** for his brother, his brother was a grown ass man by the time they met again. Scott had a whole team to worry about. Alex had his own hangups as well over Scott.

One thing I don't understand, every other single character gets the benefit of the doubt and the writers are to blame for said character change, but Scott is always the one who has to take the brunt of it.

I can't remember if it was this thread or the Alex thread but a few months back, someone pointed out how in X-Tinction Agenda, when Scott is beating up on Alex rather violently to jog his memory, he makes remarks that he used to do this to Alex when they were kids as well (pictured below). That really colored my feelings on how Scott wasn't as good a brother as I thought he was. I never thought Scott was a bully, especially physically, which makes me think that the bullying he got in the orphanage was maybe comeuppance for how he treated Alex.

I think the reason Scott gets called out when other characters don't is because when other characters are written badly, it's usually just a couple of issues. It's easier to gloss that over as bad writing and move on like it didn't happen. With Scott, the bad writing and character assassination lasted for years, basically a whole decade. And all the flaws of the X-Men franchise fell on him because he was the face of the X-Men and mutantkind. Like the saying goes about how a leader is responsible for everything good and bad and they have to take the blame for everything. That's what happened to Scott as well. In contrast, now he's not the face of the franchise anymore in this Krakoa era so characters like Moira and Beast are getting the flack instead.

With Scott, there's also the past history of how fans were already disillusioned by him leaving Maddie and those X-Factor years so there's an established pattern with him that's hard to break out of. There are some, like Claremont, who can never forgive him for that. It's a bit like Hank Pym and how he's never been able to salvage his reputation after that one panel of the infamous slap despite being a classic 60s legacy character and founding Avenger. His character is tainted goods now and can never live up beyond that slap even if other Avengers have objectively done way worse since then. Hank is still the poster child for worst Avenger or abuser and Scott gets stigmatized similarly.

[whitecrown]

It's not Bryan Singer. Brian Peck is part of the recent allegations against people involved in Nickelodeon productions featuring child actors.
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity...rt-many-times/

Ohhh okay. I thought the original reference was towards Bryan Singer because I knew James Marsden was friends with him. I didn't realize he was friends with another unsavory Brian and that this one is connected to the Nickelodeon stuff coming out recently. Thanks for confirming.

[Neocide]

I can't remember if it was this thread or the Alex thread but a few months back, someone pointed out how in X-Tinction Agenda, when Scott is beating up on Alex rather violently to jog his memory, he makes remarks that he used to do this to Alex when they were kids as well (pictured below). That really colored my feelings on how Scott wasn't as good a brother as I thought he was. I never thought Scott was a bully, especially physically, which makes me think that the bullying he got in the orphanage was maybe comeuppance for how he treated Alex.

I think the reason Scott gets called out when other characters don't is because when other characters are written badly, it's usually just a couple of issues. It's easier to gloss that over as bad writing and move on like it didn't happen. With Scott, the bad writing and character assassination lasted for years, basically a whole decade. And all the flaws of the X-Men franchise fell on him because he was the face of the X-Men and mutantkind. Like the saying goes about how a leader is responsible for everything good and bad and they have to take the blame for everything. That's what happened to Scott as well. In contrast, now he's not the face of the franchise anymore in this Krakoa era so characters like Moira and Beast are getting the flack instead.

With Scott, there's also the past history of how fans were already disillusioned by him leaving Maddie and those X-Factor years so there's an established pattern with him that's hard to break out of. There are some, like Claremont, who can never forgive him for that. It's a bit like Hank Pym and how he's never been able to salvage his reputation after that one panel of the infamous slap despite being a classic 60s legacy character and founding Avenger. His character is tainted goods now and can never live up beyond that slap even if other Avengers have objectively done way worse since then. Hank is still the poster child for worst Avenger or abuser and Scott gets stigmatized similarly.

I'm guessing you don't have an older/younger sibling. I am the baby with two older sisters who didn't physically beat me up but they sure were mean. They aren't anymore but that's nothing new tbh, that's just siblings.

Also thing is these are fictional characters, being that angry at a character that a writer decided to keep them on a certain path but claiming another shouldn't because it didn't last as long imo isn't fair. Nor is blaming him over and over for past disgressions. He's the only one who keeps getting dragged for past mistakes.

[Darth_Caedus]

Scott has never been in the same position as Hank. He's too popular to ever be treated like Hank was. He's always there in the books and more so than often has a prominent role. It's just that many still want him to be the badass rightclops of the 2000s-2010s but Marvel has made it clear that they want a more classic version the character. He became a family man again, got a change to raise Nathan and Rachel and co-lead the X-Men alongside Jean. But its the premise of the entire Krakoan era that sounded off to me. He and Jean should never have been ok with Apocalypse and Sinister being on the council.

[whitecrown]

I never really saw Scott and Logan as particularly friends, but Logan's bitterness was almost gone by 1980 and he definitely had a grudging respect towards Scott. He even started calling him by his nick name Slim. Logan respecting Jean and Scotts relationship happened way before Morrison. Logan and Jean were pretty much over with during the 90's. Logan did not attend the wedding due to what happened with Magneto, but he left them a letter of congratulations and admiration. Logan had come a long way, and it was refreshing. I can kind of see them as friends during that period. So he really took the highroad a second time rather than the first during Morrison only because it was brought back by Joe Casey in 'Uncanny' where Jean and Logan kiss. I hate that they brought back the triangle. It's just so worn out and annoying. I never believed in Logans love for Jean. To me it's just lust. And for Jean it was the excitement and that still wasn't enough to end her love for Scott. Also, I hate how Mariko was tossed aside for Jean. He was very much over her when he first met Mariko. He wasn't even shown to grieve over Jean. But Scott left the team because of her death. Albeit temporarily. Also, when Jean returned and that opening page where Logan kisses Jean after she wipes her mouth in disgust and tells wolverine she's basically no one's babe in not so many words after he tells Cyclops he has his own redhead Maddie already. Logan is not a charmer, lol. I don't hate Logan though, but I can't get behind his thing for Jean because it always seemed forced. I do prefer Scott/Jean, but that said I have been rethinking Scott and Jean (that doesn't mean I want her with Logan). But they do keep screwing up Scott and Jean so maybe it's best to let this ship sail if they want to keep up the triangle. They just can't stop screwing up Scott and Jean.

Here's the scene that brought it back. I remember at the time I wasn't the only one groaning at this when this first came out, and on these forums. Many fans did not want the triangle back but Scemma pretty much ruined Scott and Jean later. I blame the writers.

Yes, Logan was respecting Scott and Jean's marriage as far back as the 90s. I referenced Morrison's run as the last time that happened but it was just once in many instances when Logan had already done that. A lot of people see Logan not attending Scott and Jean's wedding, and not knowing the context, they assume it's because he couldn't bear to see them married when it was really just because of Fatal Attraction. And even in Claremont's original run, after Logan meets Mariko and thinks Jean is dead from the volcano attack against Magneto, Logan even reflects on how he doesn't love Jean anymore. Mariko is the woman for him. Even in TDPS, Logan reflects on how he loved this woman with the emphasis being on past tense.


The love triangle was somewhat revived by Claremont from the Classic X-Men backstories but even then, those stories were set in the past and didn't really affect the present (even if Claremont would have broken up Scott and Jean and paired her with Logan like he did in X-Men Forever had he stayed on through the 90s and gone ahead with his Dark Wolverine Saga). The love triangle ceased to exist until TAS which was a new continuity and then the movies. UXM 394, which featured the Logan/Jean kiss on the cover and in the interior, was published directly after the success of the first movie. The comics definitely took a lot of direction from the movies so you can see that the movies are what really inspired the return of the love triangle and trickled down to the comics and shows like WATXM. And that's why for the general public, Wolverine and Jean have become the main couple (which seems to be carried on over to the upcoming Wolverine video game). In the Hulu show, The Act, the main character is wearing a red wig when she attends a comic-con. She meets a Wolverine fan dressed up as him and he tells her that she looks like Jean Grey with the red hair and since she doesn't know who Jean and Wolverine are, he explains that Jean is Wolverine's love and they're a couple. I thought that was very telling of how the movies have influenced public perception.

Alan Davis had an interesting anecdote though which seems to suggest that even in the late 90s, Marvel was still hung up on Logan/Jean as a pairing because they felt it was more popular and would raise sales.

"This was drawn as a joke that I faxed into editorial during the period I was plotting the X-books. I hadn’t sought the writing assignment and only ever intended to fill the role while a new regular writer was found. So I approached the job in a purely professional way as a “short term problem solver” rather than forging a long term plan of my own. There were always lists of characters, events and themes which had to be included in the two main X-books to spin off into the other X-titles. I enjoyed the challenge of pulling the disparate demands together in a, hopefully, cohesive and entertaining story, but there was one “request” that baffled me—a cover image with Wolverine and Jean Grey kissing. My question was always why, what is the story behind it? The answer was always the same, it’s what the fans want and it’s gonna be big—and it will boost sales! I sent my sketch as an alternative that would certainly boost sales."

[Refrax5]

Honestly, I was on the Avengers' side. I had little personal connection to most of them but I found them more sympathetic than the X-Men who were completely unrecognizable to me by that point. Someone needed to do the job of reminding the X-Men what they once were and the Avengers did that. When Storm pointed out that pretty much 99% of the team were villains, that should have been a wake-up call. I was very disappointed that she didn't side with the Avengers because her remaining with the X-Men felt OOC and even in-universe they seemed to acknowledge that. The way every character from that era had to be trashed to become edgy and cool got old fast especially with how many character assassinations they committed with Xavier.

The Avengers came across as ignorant, jackbooted thugs taking a teenage girl into custody against her will because they thought they knew better than the mutants. They came to their land with helicarriers and an army making demands of people they had no authority over. Tony Stark being an idiot is what caused the Phoenix Five, not anything Cyclops did. You're blaming the victims and assuming any authority figure with a badge is a good guy.

It's not about "cool and edgy." Its that Scott was willing to do the right thing, even when the authorities and the always self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrite that is Steve Rogers is basically just your bargain basement authoritarian and you think of him as a boy scout.

Being a hero and a good person has nothing to do with being a law-abiding suck up. The X-Men were always outlaws.

And Wolverine and Cap both have killed way more people than Cyclops. How is Cyclops the dark and edgy one when he rarely resorted to killing and Logan is a mass murderer?

For Xavier's greatest success story, I can't help but notice that Logan is still a deeply unhappy person, prone to violent rages and slaughtering his enemies.

You have a very strange view of morality. Mass murdering rage monsters are boy scouts as long as they pal around with Captain America, huh? Cyclops is bad because he freed wrongly imprisoned mutants and protected them from corrupt authorities? That's what the X-Men always did.

Calling the trauma Scott endured as a kid his comeuppance for something he did as a child is really gross.

[Darth_Caedus]

I don't think the general audience sees Jean as Logan's love interest. We've had so many media featuring Jean and Scott as a couple and even in the later movies there was no love triangle at all. The Wolverine video game ends with Jean not loving Logan, dude has killed her parents and it all happens before she's even joined the X-Men or met Scott. You're being too hard on Cyke that's for sure

[Kal-El Summers]

I can't remember if it was this thread or the Alex thread but a few months back, someone pointed out how in X-Tinction Agenda, when Scott is beating up on Alex rather violently to jog his memory, he makes remarks that he used to do this to Alex when they were kids as well (pictured below). That really colored my feelings on how Scott wasn't as good a brother as I thought he was. I never thought Scott was a bully, especially physically, which makes me think that the bullying he got in the orphanage was maybe comeuppance for how he treated Alex.

I think the reason Scott gets called out when other characters don't is because when other characters are written badly, it's usually just a couple of issues. It's easier to gloss that over as bad writing and move on like it didn't happen. With Scott, the bad writing and character assassination lasted for years, basically a whole decade. And all the flaws of the X-Men franchise fell on him because he was the face of the X-Men and mutantkind. Like the saying goes about how a leader is responsible for everything good and bad and they have to take the blame for everything. That's what happened to Scott as well. In contrast, now he's not the face of the franchise anymore in this Krakoa era so characters like Moira and Beast are getting the flack instead.

With Scott, there's also the past history of how fans were already disillusioned by him leaving Maddie and those X-Factor years so there's an established pattern with him that's hard to break out of. There are some, like Claremont, who can never forgive him for that. It's a bit like Hank Pym and how he's never been able to salvage his reputation after that one panel of the infamous slap despite being a classic 60s legacy character and founding Avenger. His character is tainted goods now and can never live up beyond that slap even if other Avengers have objectively done way worse since then. Hank is still the poster child for worst Avenger or abuser and Scott gets stigmatized similarly.

Just because *you* didn't like everything that happened post-House of M doesn't make Scott's character evolution from that time period "bad writing" or "character assassination."

Quite frankly, it's rather annoying that you're here using your subjective opinions like they're actual facts. There's nothing wrong with differing viewpoints in a discussion, but extremely bad faith arguments like what you've been using honestly grates on my nerves.

[whitecrown]

I'm guessing you don't have an older/younger sibling. I am the baby with two older sisters who didn't physically beat me up but they sure were mean. They aren't anymore but that's nothing new tbh, that's just siblings.

Also thing is these are fictional characters, being that angry at a character that a writer decided to keep them on a certain path but claiming another shouldn't because it didn't last as long imo isn't fair. Nor is blaming him over and over for past disgressions. He's the only one who keeps getting dragged for past mistakes.

I'm the oldest sibling with two younger sisters. Being mean is one thing but physical violence is never called for. I can understand horsing around but Scott's comments seemed to suggest he was taking advantage of his age and beating Alex up for the sake of it. It's never been brought up again thankfully so I think it's one of those things that's been glossed over like Scott calling someone a "camel jockey." But I think it does frame Alex's POV and why they've never been close.

I wasn't saying it's fair but trying to explain why I think Scott gets flack when other characters don't. Like I said, I think it's because certain characters get stigmatized the way Hank Pym did and Scott got that treatment as well. I've seen many X-Men fans treat Wanda the same way. During the dark age, I remember X-Fans were brutal with Steve, Tony, Carol, Wanda, etc. with these characters being ripped to shreds here. I used to feel embarrassed for being an X-Men fan because there was so much bad blood.

[whitecrown]

The Avengers came across as ignorant, jackbooted thugs taking a teenage girl into custody because they thought they knew better than the mutants.

It's not about "cool and edgy." Its that Scott was willing to do the right thing, even when the authorities and the always self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrite that is Steve Rogers is basically just a racist cop in that story.

Being a hero and a good person has nothing to do with being a law-abiding suck up.

And Wolverine and Cap both have killed way more people than Cyclops. How is Cyclops the dark and edgy one when he rarely resorted to killing and Logan is a mass murderer?

But isn't that what the X-Men did to Wanda in Children's Crusade? That's why I don't get the hysterical reactions to the Avengers' actions because X-Men fans were fine with what the X-Men tried to do to Wanda. Shouldn't it be tit for tat?

We'll just have to agree to disagree because I disagree with how you characterized Steve as a racist cop. Scott claiming that Wanda being a mutant and thus her fate should be decided by the X-Men feels more "racist" than Steve wanting to take Hope into custody so they could stop the Phoenix. Ideally both teams should have worked together but there was too much mistrust and bad writing as was par for the course in this era.

Logan was a murderer but he changed over the years which is why Claremont characterized him as Xavier's biggest success. Scott had the opposite trajectory.

[Neocide]

They had Wanda play up that though in uncanny avengers where she was basically all "boo hoo mutants get over it" and the sibling stuff, you gotta remember this stuff was written in the 80's 70's etc where things like bullying and light racism wasn't a big deal.

Now I'm not excusing it (being a black man I definitely won't) but the writers thought nothing of this type of stuff

[Darth_Caedus]

But isn't that what the X-Men did to Wanda in Children's Crusade? That's why I don't get the hysterical reactions to the Avengers' actions because X-Men fans were fine with what the X-Men tried to do to Wanda. Shouldn't it be tit for tat?

We'll just have to agree to disagree because I disagree with how you characterized Steve as a racist cop. Scott claiming that Wanda being a mutant and thus her fate should be decided by the X-Men feels more "racist" than Steve wanting to take Hope into custody so they could stop the Phoenix. Ideally both teams should have worked together but there was too much mistrust and bad writing as was par for the course in this era.

Logan was a murderer but he changed over the years which is why Claremont characterized him as Xavier's biggest success. Scott had the opposite trajectory.

Xavier is a villain and has been a shady character for the past 20 years. Scott adopted a philosophy combining both Erik and Charles's views. The X-Men of the 2000s were not the same as they were in the 90s, they had to be more extreme or else they would have ended up dead.

[From The Shadows]

Yes, Logan was respecting Scott and Jean's marriage as far back as the 90s. I referenced Morrison's run as the last time that happened but it was just once in many instances when Logan had already done that. A lot of people see Logan not attending Scott and Jean's wedding, and not knowing the context, they assume it's because he couldn't bear to see them married when it was really just because of Fatal Attraction. And even in Claremont's original run, after Logan meets Mariko and thinks Jean is dead from the volcano attack against Magneto, Logan even reflects on how he doesn't love Jean anymore. Mariko is the woman for him. Even in TDPS, Logan reflects on how he loved this woman with the emphasis being on past tense.


The love triangle was somewhat revived by Claremont from the Classic X-Men backstories but even then, those stories were set in the past and didn't really affect the present (even if Claremont would have broken up Scott and Jean and paired her with Logan like he did in X-Men Forever had he stayed on through the 90s and gone ahead with his Dark Wolverine Saga). The love triangle ceased to exist until TAS which was a new continuity and then the movies. UXM 394, which featured the Logan/Jean kiss on the cover and in the interior, was published directly after the success of the first movie. The comics definitely took a lot of direction from the movies so you can see that the movies are what really inspired the return of the love triangle and trickled down to the comics and shows like WATXM. And that's why for the general public, Wolverine and Jean have become the main couple (which seems to be carried on over to the upcoming Wolverine video game). In the Hulu show, The Act, the main character is wearing a red wig when she attends a comic-con. She meets a Wolverine fan dressed up as him and he tells her that she looks like Jean Grey with the red hair and since she doesn't know who Jean and Wolverine are, he explains that Jean is Wolverine's love and they're a couple. I thought that was very telling of how the movies have influenced public perception.

Alan Davis had an interesting anecdote though which seems to suggest that even in the late 90s, Marvel was still hung up on Logan/Jean as a pairing because they felt it was more popular and would raise sales.

"This was drawn as a joke that I faxed into editorial during the period I was plotting the X-books. I hadn’t sought the writing assignment and only ever intended to fill the role while a new regular writer was found. So I approached the job in a purely professional way as a “short term problem solver” rather than forging a long term plan of my own. There were always lists of characters, events and themes which had to be included in the two main X-books to spin off into the other X-titles. I enjoyed the challenge of pulling the disparate demands together in a, hopefully, cohesive and entertaining story, but there was one “request” that baffled me—a cover image with Wolverine and Jean Grey kissing. My question was always why, what is the story behind it? The answer was always the same, it’s what the fans want and it’s gonna be big—and it will boost sales! I sent my sketch as an alternative that would certainly boost sales."

I didn't mean to imply you. I was just chiming in. But, yeah. Logan had definitely moved on from Jean and and fell in love with Mariko. I do remember the back-up story in 'Classic.' CC was fleshing out the whole Logan/Jean thing from the early ANAD days. I didn't like it personally. CC wrote Logan as predatory in my eyes. She said no, please to him and he still would not listen to her, I think CC was going for seductive, but it came off as creepy to me. I think the pairing was definitely more popular with movie fans than comic fans at the time. Fans were still rooting for Scott and Jeans marriage if I remember clearly. Even though there were still people still holding onto the Maddy/Scott mess. But Jean/Logan pairing seemed to gain traction with newer comic fans.

[whitecrown]

I don't think the general audience sees Jean as Logan's love interest. We've had so many media featuring Jean and Scott as a couple and even in the later movies there was no love triangle at all. The Wolverine video game ends with Jean not loving Logan, dude has killed her parents and it all happens before she's even joined the X-Men or met Scott. You're being too hard on Cyke that's for sure

I think the movies tend to color most general audiences' reactions on what these characters are like. In the X-Men's case, it's both the movies and the 90s show that set the standards and the love triangle has been emphasized in both. The show was pretty good about being respectful to Jott in a way the movies were not and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine has become the model for the character. The same way that most casuals will be shocked to learn that Wolverine is really supposed to be short. Yes, there are other forms of X-Men media like Evolution (which I think has the best Jott portrayal from the shows) but those have never had the same impact that the 90s show and movies did.
My point about the video game is that for the bulk of it, Logan and Jean will be a couple. Yes, they break up at the end but only at the end, and for people playing this game, they'll see it as reinforcement that Logan and Jean are a couple. The fact that Jean knows Logan here before she's ever even met Scott will make him seem like a moot point until whenever the actual X-Men video game comes out. ASM ends with Peter and Gwen breaking up but for the bulk of the movie, they were obviously an item and so people will still view them as a couple even if the last scene doesn't feature them walking away together. Same with the first Spider-Man with Peter and MJ. It's stuff like this which influences reactions from the general public which is why the leaked video game had so much backlash for making Logan and Jean a couple. It seems to suggest to me that Marvel has not learned from the movies after all.

[Darth_Caedus]

And the Avnegers were a bunch of assholes in the 2000s anyway it's not like Scott was the only one who was edgy