Cyclops aka Scott Summers not only one of the original X-Men, but also one of Marvel’s
most prominent characters.
Whether you love him or hate him, Cyclops is a staple in the X-Men’s history, typically
acting as the leader of Charles Xavier’s group of mutant heroes.
So today, we’re taking a closer look at Scott and counting down our picks of the top
10 Cyclops Surprising Facts.
10 The first X-Man Scott, who was orphaned after his parents
died in a plane crash, was the first of the X-Men recruited by Charles Xavier, and was
hand picked to led his X-Men.
He’s highly considered to be the very first X-Man of the group, and was originally called
Slim Summers up until the third issue, in which his name was changed to Scott.
So, why slim?
Because of his thin body frame.
9 Publication History When we were first introduced to Cyclops in
X-Men #1 in 1963, the character was already leading Professor Xavier’s X-Men, with his
origin story first being published in Uncanny X-Men #38, which was then later refined in
Uncanny X-Men #144 and #156.
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Lee has stated that Cyclops is one of his favourite
X-Men, stating that “I love tortured heroes - and he was tortured because he couldn’t
control his powers”.
8 Psychic Affair During the battle between Xavier and his evil
twin sister Cassandra Nova, Cyclops gets tormented quiet a bit.
Nova puts his mind in a black bug room that feeds off of his insecurities, disabling him,
resulting in him being quite unstable even after Nova is defeated.
Meanwhile, Jean Grey’s connection to the Phoenix force is deepening, causing her and
Scott to drift.
Scott begins to undergo psychic therapy sessions with Emma Frost to help him overcome the trauma,
but those sessions turned into an affair.
While they didn’t have any physical contact, the affair was sexual in nature, and revolved
around fantasies with Jean.
7 His Death Scott recently died and then came back, and
died again.
As is the nature with comics, my friends.
So how did this go down?
During Secret Wars, Doctor Doom snapped his neck after Scott attempted to use the power
of the Phoenix to defeat him.
Then, during Death of X, he’s killed by Terrigen Mists, causing him to suffocate.
Emma, having witnessed the terrible death, kept his death secret and used a telepathic
projection of him, and had him mastermind a plot to render the terrigen clouds harmless,
ultimately changing the public’s perspective of him from terrorist to hero.
This projection was later killed by Black Bolt.
Only Emma and Havoc knew the truth behind his death, but it was later exposed by a young
version of Scott in Inhumans vs X-Men number 6.
6 His Brothers Scott has two brothers, both of which are
mutants who have energy based powers, and who all have their own signature energy colour.
The first, and more popular, is Alex aka Havok.
Havok can project and absorb energy from almost any part of his body, and his colour is blue.The
second is Gabriel aka Vulcan - his powers are energy absorption and manipulation, and
are stronger than his brothers.
His colour?
Yellow.
To complicate things, the trio of brothers react differently to one another powers, with
Gabriel being immune to both his brothers, Scott and Alex are immune to one another,
and Alex immune to Gabriel but Scott is not immune to Gabriel.
So Scott kind of gets the short end of the stick there, eh?
5 Cable Speaking of family, let’s take a look at
one of his offspring.
Cable, aka Nathan Summers, is a mutant from a possible future timeline, and is the son
of Scott and Madeline Pryor, aka Jean Grey’s clone.
He was transported to the future by Scott when he was only an infant, and eventually
returned to the past once he had become a warrior.
It wasn’t until after he got his own title in 1993 that it was confirmed he was Nathan
Summers.
4 The Starjammers While Scott’s initial origin story has been
refined over the years, it’s pretty much remained canon that he and his brother Alex
were orphans after his parents death in that plane crash.
But his father received some embellishing during Chris Claremont’s run with the X-Men
when Dave Cockrum convinced the writer to include characters he had created called the
Starjammers in the X-Men comics.
This led to one of the group, Cosair, being Scott’s father.
The Starjammers are space pirates who made their debut in 1977’s Uncanny X-Men #107,
with his origin story picking up after Scott and Alex were thrown out of the plane with
the family’s only parachute - Cosair, or rather Christopher back in those days - was
teleported up into an alien spaceship with his wife, was made a slave, tried to escape,
got his wife murdered because of it, was sent to a mining camp, broke out with some others
who then all formed into a group of space pirates.
They’d eventually make their way to earth and help the X-Men from time to time.
3 Spatial Awareness One of the abilities that Cyclops possess
is an uncanny spatial awareness, in which his ability to observe objects and their geometry
that are around him has a detailed precision.
He’s able to calculate the trajectory of his optic blasts prior to shooting based on
this, allowing him to be exact with his target.
While this may not be a fool proof ability, he’s shown on many occasions how effective
it can be, including predicting the position of both Quicksilver and Northstar on separate
occasions in Uncanny X-Men 45 and 121, while the two were moving at superhuman speeds,
accurately hitting them with his blasts.
2 De-powered During Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing
X-Men that began in 2004, Cyclops lost his powers entirely.
Many fans had mixed feelings about this, which occurred after a psychic intervention by Emma
Frost in which Cyclops faced his self-inflicted traumatic past.
Whedon stated in an interview with Wizard magazine that “with no powers, he’s going
to be the best that he’s ever been.”
He went on to say that “He was defined by Jean so much, and I just think that this guy
is so interesting in his struggle against mediocrity.”
The arc resulted in a more confident and outspoken Cyclops, which would influence his actions
in later stories after the birth of Hope Summers, in which he began to become increasingly unstable
with his own self.
1 Good or Evil debate Despite Scott starting off as the archetype
all american hero, his character has come into question in recent years, concerning
his moral ambiguity and whether he’s good or evil.
While the lead up to this question contains a long journey through several story arcs,
we’ll try to summarize this as best we can.
The breaking point though was during the Avengers vs Xmen arc, Scott, under the influence of
the Phoenix Force, decides he’s going to play god, Charkles Xavier isn’t down with
this, the two fight, and Scott kills him.
Both characters within the marvel universe AND fans were divided as to whether or not
this was the ‘right’ thing to do.
There we have it friends!
How do you feel about Cyclops?
Let us know whether you love him, hate him or don’t really care about him in those
comments below.
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I’ve been Kelly Paoli and this is top 10 nerd.
I’ll catch you all in the next one.