What DID Cyclops do? Theories and Spculation

[Ambaryerno]

That's a gaping plot hole.

It's not EVEN a plot hole.

A plot hole is an event that happens without a logical reason. We don't even HAVE the event to know whether or not there WAS a logical reason behind it. All we know is the end results of the event, so we CAN'T establish that it's a plot hole. In fact the time skip is a cheap way to AVOID a plot hole.

As I've brought up before as a point of comparison: Ignoring the fact that Rachel was the One True Phoenix and had mastery of it for YEARS is a plot hole in AvX, because the entire conflict is built on the concept that the Phoenix is coming to earth, no one can control it, and the X-Men and Avengers come to blows over how to deal with it (the plot hole being that Rachel CAN control it, and the leaders on both sides in the event would KNOW that). If instead there was an eight-month time skip where ALL we're told is that the Avengers and X-Men came into conflict over the Phoenix Force, leading to Cyclops becoming Dark Phoenix, it would NOT be a plot hole because we don't have the context. All we know is that X happened with Y consequences, but none of the details that would create a plot hole.

[AcesX1X]

sorry i'm late to this party, but is anyone truly disturbed at the severe lack of evidence concerning "evil" cyclops that is running rampant in the x-books?

we have a very bad case of "tell-don't-show" and x-men in each book screaming about how much of a super villain he is, how awful and terrible he is. but the audience (ourselves the readers) has nothing to go on except hearsay. we have no evidence.

i have to wonder if this is not marvel's ploy to get the fandom on the opposite side of cyclops. the constant, repetition of these supposed awful, horrible, monstrous things he has done seems like a subtle training for the fandom. so that when cyclops does make his reappearance, the audience is already against him and ready to lynch him.

if you remember back during avx, audiences got to witness first-hand the actions and deeds of cyclops. and we were allowed to make a judgment for ourselves whether what he did was wrong or not.....if you paid attention to the books themselves, the narrative was that cyclops was wrong...yet fans were standing up behind him at every turn.

is this marvel's response? fans won't betray him, so we'll take him off the board and tell everyone how evil he has become. and when we bring him back, they will hate him so much that they will have no choice but to betray him.

[Ambaryerno]

sorry i'm late to this party, but is anyone truly disturbed at the severe lack of evidence concerning "evil" cyclops that is running rampant in the x-books?

we have a very bad case of "tell-don't-show" and x-men in each book screaming about how much of a super villain he is, how awful and terrible he is. but the audience (ourselves the readers) has nothing to go on except hearsay. we have no evidence.

i have to wonder if this is not marvel's ploy to get the fandom on the opposite side of cyclops. the constant, repetition of these supposed awful, horrible, monstrous things he has done seems like a subtle training for the fandom. so that when cyclops does make his reappearance, the audience is already against him and ready to lynch him.

if you remember back during avx, audiences got to witness first-hand the actions and deeds of cyclops. and we were allowed to make a judgment for ourselves whether what he did was wrong or not.....if you paid attention to the books themselves, the narrative was that cyclops was wrong...yet fans were standing up behind him at every turn.

is this marvel's response? fans won't betray him, so we'll take him off the board and tell everyone how evil he has become. and when we bring him back, they will hate him so much that they will have no choice but to betray him.

In which case Marvel has STILL failed spectacularly, as all it's doing right now is annoying the hell out of people with the lack of context.

[Darkgreed]

sorry i'm late to this party, but is anyone truly disturbed at the severe lack of evidence concerning "evil" cyclops that is running rampant in the x-books?

we have a very bad case of "tell-don't-show" and x-men in each book screaming about how much of a super villain he is, how awful and terrible he is. but the audience (ourselves the readers) has nothing to go on except hearsay. we have no evidence.

i have to wonder if this is not marvel's ploy to get the fandom on the opposite side of cyclops. the constant, repetition of these supposed awful, horrible, monstrous things he has done seems like a subtle training for the fandom. so that when cyclops does make his reappearance, the audience is already against him and ready to lynch him.

if you remember back during avx, audiences got to witness first-hand the actions and deeds of cyclops. and we were allowed to make a judgment for ourselves whether what he did was wrong or not.....if you paid attention to the books themselves, the narrative was that cyclops was wrong...yet fans were standing up behind him at every turn.

is this marvel's response? fans won't betray him, so we'll take him off the board and tell everyone how evil he has become. and when we bring him back, they will hate him so much that they will have no choice but to betray him.

that seems to be the case, but they are going to be shocked when we don't turn on Cyclops. All i see is bad story telling by good writers. Why do we need a fall guy when we know who did it, why they did it and they only did it to save lives. Not realizing that this will also destroy a race. But they are doing bad things to Black Bolt already, the took away his kingdom, his wife and kid, most of his powers. not much to do to the with the guy now, so they pick on Cyclops. which i find funny seeing that he was talking about peace the last time we saw him. but i guess no one talked to Bendis on how he was leaving the X-Men.

[MarvelMaster616]

sorry i'm late to this party, but is anyone truly disturbed at the severe lack of evidence concerning "evil" cyclops that is running rampant in the x-books?

we have a very bad case of "tell-don't-show" and x-men in each book screaming about how much of a super villain he is, how awful and terrible he is. but the audience (ourselves the readers) has nothing to go on except hearsay. we have no evidence.

i have to wonder if this is not marvel's ploy to get the fandom on the opposite side of cyclops. the constant, repetition of these supposed awful, horrible, monstrous things he has done seems like a subtle training for the fandom. so that when cyclops does make his reappearance, the audience is already against him and ready to lynch him.

if you remember back during avx, audiences got to witness first-hand the actions and deeds of cyclops. and we were allowed to make a judgment for ourselves whether what he did was wrong or not.....if you paid attention to the books themselves, the narrative was that cyclops was wrong...yet fans were standing up behind him at every turn.

is this marvel's response? fans won't betray him, so we'll take him off the board and tell everyone how evil he has become. and when we bring him back, they will hate him so much that they will have no choice but to betray him.

You make an interesting comparison with AvX. And I agree, the lack of actual details to Cyclops' "evil" is pretty distressing. We literally have nothing to go on but the ramblings of characters like O5 Cyclops in All-New X-men #2. In that issue, he spent a good two pages belaboring how evil and insidious his older self became. He gave the impression that Cyclops is now somehow a genocidal maniac who laughs on the graves of dead children. He says all this when we have no idea what actually happened. It makes every word he says feel hallow and flat.

The whole "tell-don't-show" approach you mentioned is making it very hard for the X-books to carry any real weight. It's not that Cyclops went "evil," as we've been led to believe. It's that all this crap happened off-panel. The end of Uncanny X-men #600 gave no hints whatsoever that he was doing down this road. In fact, the latter parts of Bendis' run showed that adult Cyclops was making progress in redeeming himself after what happened with Xavier. Now, all that progress has effectively been nullified and it happened off-panel. That's what makes the story so jarring and chaotic. It's like some elaborate PR campaign meant to completely discredit anything Cyclops did in the past or will do in the future. Except in this instance, Cyclops has no chance to justify himself because he got killed off.

I do think that, as much as Marvel attempted to paint him as the bad guy in AvX, he did come out vindicated in the end. He was right about the Phoenix Force. He was right about Hope Summers. And when you factor in the events of X-Sanction, he had a very good reason to not cooperate with the Avengers. Maybe this is Marvel's way of making sure that Cyclops is the bad guy no matter what. But if the only way they could do it was have it happen off-panel, then that's just lazy on their part.

I don't know how much of this is an agenda against Cyclops and the X-men as a whole. However, I do think Marvel is trying to play the long game here and they'll eventually reveal more details about what happened in the 8-month gap. It might be the case that everything the X-men thought happened was not the truth or an outright deception. The 4chan rumor that came out last month hinted that Cyclops was manipulated by Kid Omega, someone who doesn't have a history of exercising restraint. Given that same rumor accurately predicted the location of X-Haven, I think it's entirely possible that the mystery surrounding Cyclops' fate is part of a larger story. I want to believe that Marvel can make that story awesome. However, I don't trust their recent handling of the X-men. The latter part of Bendis' run just got too chaotic and disorganized. And I don't think anything they've done since then have made it better. That could still change. The X-books aren't damaged beyond repair by a long shot. But it's an uphill battle to say the least.

In which case Marvel has STILL failed spectacularly, as all it's doing right now is annoying the hell out of people with the lack of context.

On this, we both agree.

[VilotorioFabiano]

sorry i'm late to this party, but is anyone truly disturbed at the severe lack of evidence concerning "evil" cyclops that is running rampant in the x-books?

we have a very bad case of "tell-don't-show" and x-men in each book screaming about how much of a super villain he is, how awful and terrible he is. but the audience (ourselves the readers) has nothing to go on except hearsay. we have no evidence.

i have to wonder if this is not marvel's ploy to get the fandom on the opposite side of cyclops. the constant, repetition of these supposed awful, horrible, monstrous things he has done seems like a subtle training for the fandom. so that when cyclops does make his reappearance, the audience is already against him and ready to lynch him.

if you remember back during avx, audiences got to witness first-hand the actions and deeds of cyclops. and we were allowed to make a judgment for ourselves whether what he did was wrong or not.....if you paid attention to the books themselves, the narrative was that cyclops was wrong...yet fans were standing up behind him at every turn.

is this marvel's response? fans won't betray him, so we'll take him off the board and tell everyone how evil he has become. and when we bring him back, they will hate him so much that they will have no choice but to betray him.

I totally disagree. I think the show and tell of how evil he is, is only to throw the audience off for when he shows up alive to save the day. We haven't witnessed what he did because it would reveal he's A)not dead and B)not evil, which eliminates a lot of the suspense and buzz about the current comics. The characters currently think he's dead and evil because Cyclops wanted it that way. He most likely took the fall for something he didn't do and faked/went along with his "death" which allowed a huge target off his back while he puts his new plan in action.

I seriously think you guys are falling for all this in the same manner the Jon Snow and Glenn Rhee fans went crazy when those characters were "killed" off.

[dragonmp93]

I totally disagree. I think the show and tell of how evil he is, is only to throw the audience off for when he shows up alive to save the day. We haven't witnessed what he did because it would reveal he's A)not dead and B)not evil, which eliminates a lot of the suspense and buzz about the current comics. The characters currently think he's dead and evil because Cyclops wanted it that way. He most likely took the fall for something he didn't do and faked/went along with his "death" which allowed a huge target off his back while he puts his new plan in action.

I seriously think you guys are falling for all this in the same manner the Jon Snow and Glenn Rhee fans went crazy when those characters were "killed" off.

Well, given Marvel's treatment of the X-men, and that when they tried to turn Cyclops evil on-panel during AvX, the whole thing backfired; so i dont think that it's going to happen something like that any time soon.

[ciscostudent561]

man that boy ent did nuthin
man ya'll jus love arguin i swear
the writers just made everyone have an illogic reaction
i mean cmon last time i checked Xavier was a near villian

i dont lie doe
11 pages of this man ya must love to hear ya selves talk

[Gortam]

Well, I just read the 11 pages of this thread. And there are a lot of good hipotesis in here. But sadly i think those ideas are actually better than what is actually going to happen with scott. Bottom line to me is just that the Marvel Universe become on behalf of marketing movies against the X-men, and pro Inhumans. And once they decided to do that, the rest are excuses built around that already taken idea.

The actual Mutant context seems harsh, nor real (within its own fantasy), rigid... not well knitted together. Like it was forced upon writers. Worst of it its not interesting at all. Old ideas, but worst handled than before.

Sometimes have the impression that not even writers or marvel know what to do with Cyclops is serious.
Does not make sense make an attack months after gathering the largest mutant mob of history in the capital with a message of peace and then play a crazy terrorist but do not doubt anything by writers these days.

I agree cyclops has been very bad written lately. Have you read him on SW? WTF? Stupid line after stupid line of dialogue (mutant supremacy... i had a revolution going...). That particular line left me in awe. In Uncanny X-Men scott talks about that revolution and how it was a desperate attempt, that it was a hollow threat. Si he was not only bad written, he was also inconsistent with the last UXM books. Awful.

Even Worse, the last UXM books before SW were about Cyclops redeeming himself, hating himself and trying expiate about Xavier´s death. And now again, he becomes an even worst villain. So in summary: I feel bad about myself and I´ll make it up, I know im a good guy (and Marvel make us read about his Catharsis almost over an year or more > then > Wait, I think I need to be bad again! Sorry I made you believe over 12 issues or more how bad I felt about being a bad guy, I need to kill some Inhumans now and be hated again. Really? WTF? Is this a consistent story?

The Inhumans are pretty cool, their books are more interesting than the X-Books nowadays, which is a shame.
The X-Books have this great Inhuman X-Men conflict and they're not even using it, instead they're vague references and limbo. A waste of Cyclops' "death" if you ask me.

How? They are regurgitating plots from prior X-books. Besides Blackbolt, Crystal and Medusa they bore me. A society dedicated to its own superiority is something that is intrinsically boring. Honestly I am tired of flashbacks about the past. They have enough on their plates to do right now that have nothing to do with Cyclops. His story will be told at some point but right now, I am just glad the X-men are focused on the present.

Exactly. I mean, not about the Inhumans being boring, I like them. I like them when they had Inhuman stories. Not now. Where for some reason they are the X-Men with a different name. There's nothing new here, nothing interesting. This are X-Men stories now happening to the Inhumans.

So the Inhumans... are not reading like inhumans books. And the X-Men... they are basically in the trash of the Marvel Universe now (though not as bad as FF thankfully).

I think Cyclops had a advanced plan to have in place against the Inhumans in case something happened. I think that before his "attack" on the Inhumans he got some allies to accomplish certain goals.He send Beast to study and learn as much about the Inhumans as possible.
Sabretooth was one of the mutants at his D.C. rally.Sabretooth could be his agent in X-force to make sure they target mutant threats and do not go of the hinges. He is still inverted and may want to not go back to his blood thirsty ways while he has the chance. Frenzy could be a envoy to express the plight of mutants to inhumans and have some side with X-men and or mutants in a upcoming conflict.Cyke is a strategist and would not try to Roscoe Jenkins the Inhumans.

That´s brillant and I hope that´s the case. But I dont think so.

At some point, parts of that hole will be filled in. However, it doesn't change the fact that so much of the setup in the current X-books was forced and contrived. Look at the final pages of Uncanny X-men #600. Then look at the first few pages of Extraordinary X-men #1. The transition is beyond jarring. And if a story has to go to great lengths to cover those kinds of gaps, then it's an inherently flawed story. Just my opinion.

Mine as well. There´s a reason EXM is rating so low in every comic review.

Well, besides all said before, the problem with this GAP of 8 months to me, is that, what happened in that gap to me (maybe not everyone), is more important and interesting that what is happening now to the X-Men. What I trying to say is that "THE GAP" outshines current mutant stories, it makes you difficult to want to become interested in them because you have on the back of your mind all you read and all you cared about mutants before the awful SW.

[JustAnotherFan]

Who cares at this point, the dude's apparently dead already and no matter what his actions turn out to have been it's probably just as contrived and forced and nonsensical as all the X-Men stories nowadays are. No matter what type of story writers tell it won't bridge events from the end of Bendis run to the SW to the present any more.

[Sasuke Uchiha]

Scott did it, Scott drank all the kool-aid.

[somacula]

Cyclops defied marvel, the avengers and the mouse, and no amount of offscreen insulting and lame attempts at character assassination will make us forget Scott legacy!
His legend as the x man that stood on his feet against marvel in universe and in a meta level will live on! And now I know how Jean Grey fans feel

[AJpyro]

Cyclops defied marvel, the avengers and the mouse, and no amount of offscreen insulting and lame attempts at character assassination will make us forget Scott legacy!
His legend as the x man that stood on his feet against marvel in universe and in a meta level will live on! And now I know how Jean Grey fans feel

Be wary where you say that. They have us beat by a decade.

Scott did it, Scott drank all the kool-aid.

But it was grape flavored!

[somacula]

Be wary where you say that. They have us beat by a decade.

And we have the namor fans beat by a month, BTW does the F4 got any fans left?

But it was grape flavored!

He didn't drank the kool aid; he drank all the inhumans orange juice, after brushing his teeth, and he liked it!

[Godzilla2099]

At this point I don't think Marvel even knows what Cyclops did.

Thing is, there are plenty of ways to put him on the sidelines than crap on his character.