A Comic Book Entry – She Will Rise Again

or, “Further Thoughts on Continuity” (Boom!)

But before I get to the actual musing, it occurs to me that I might have buried the lead in my last entry.  So here’s the lead – I have published a new collection of funny short stories called Paranormal is Relative.  It is currently only available through Smashwords because they are being slow to approve and distribute.  The price is absolutely free, so check it out.  The whole purpose of this blog is to shamelessly promote my writing, so this is what I am doing.  Please please please download my book!

Okay, moving on.

The title of this entry comes from Jean Grey’s headstone.  This is actually what is carved on it, and is appropriate for someone named after the Phoenix, which is a bird that rises from the dead.  This also shows astounding self-awareness on the part of the X-men to realize death is not as permanent as most of the world seems to think.  But this also was perhaps put into placate fans who were upset that a favorite character and half of a power couple was stuffed in the fridge due to the usual reasons women are stuffed in the fridge or executive meddling or both.  The line promises Jean Grey may come back again (and has since she died) and potentially even stay.

I have mixed feelings about this and it speaks to a larger issue I feel plagues the big two comic book companies right now.  I’ve already written about how the inmates are running the asylum, and I think part of the trouble stems from the idea that the universe is somehow broken.  And once fans get to the level they can directly affect they universe, they feel they need to fix what has been broken.  A resentful individual vowing to put right what once went wrong?  That’s either a superhero origin story, or a supervillain origin story.  Unfortunately, these fixes often leave the universe more muddled than before and risk alienating the fanbase.  The issue is that one person’s broken universe is another person’s paradigm.  I think the inmates think they’re superheroes, but I think the repeatedly broken fanbases indicate they’re supervillains (don’t tell me that’s not supervillainy; I’d say breaking a universe is the sort of supervillainy only Thanos and Darkseid regularly aspire to).

Often the fixes are soft retcons or full reboots.  Sometimes, though, the fixes are as simple as bringing a character back from the dead.  It seems to me the reappearance of both a Flash and a Green Lantern long after their demises was the decision of a writer or editor or perhaps a whole creative team that decided the demise of the original characters was something that needed to be fixed.  After all, when they were reading comics, their Flash was Barry Allen and their Green Lantern was Hal Jordan.  Bringing those characters back to life ignored about twenty years of comic history, and a whole legion of fans who had no idea who the hell Barry Allen or Hal Jordan were, but they did know who Wally West and Kyle Raynor were, and were upset and confused that suddenly their heroes were forced to take a backseat to these new (to them) characters.

I don’t think that’s a fair thing to do to the fans or the universe.  Believe me, the Marvel universe is plenty broken.  However, the way the inmates run the asylum tramples on the years of story built up between their being just a fan and their being part of the creative team.  Clearly the handling of character death and other world events had a great impact on the readership, or else the inmates wouldn’t feel so passionately about fixing a perceived wrong.  But they don’t seem to stop to think about how their “fixes” will affect the new fans who have learned to love new characters and are used to the new paradigm of the universe.

And yet I completely understand this impulse.  I really want to fix Spider-man’s marriage, and frankly reading newspaper Spider-man doesn’t cut it.  I want to bring Jean Grey back to life.  I want Cyclops to be a hero again.  I’m sure there are lots of people who agree with me, and some may even have the power to change the Marvel universe in the future.  But at that point there will be a lot of fans who have never seen Peter Parker in a decent relationship, who have no idea who Jean Grey is, and have never known Cyclops as a hero.  Who would I be serving by changing all these things as arbitrarily as they were changed to begin with?  The universe is shared and as such changes should be made with the larger universe in mind, not just a selfish desire to fix what is perceived as broken.  This isn’t Quantum Leap.

Uncle Ben was right – with great power comes great responsibility.  The people who run the comic book universes have great power to change it, but do they do so responsibly?  Ultimately the responsibility of the creative team is to the current fandom and not to their own selfish desire to fix the universe.  Of course, current fandom does cover a lot of people who are familiar with a lot of paradigms (the amalgam principle), so responsibility doesn’t mean “keep it exactly the same” or “put it back the way I want.”  It means accepting the paradigm and exploring new stories in a way that respects the current paradigm but also moves the universe in an organic fashion to a new paradigm instead of forcing the universe to a new paradigm through editorial mandates.

So will Jean Grey rise again?  I hope so, but I hope the resurrection is done in a way that doesn’t alienate the fans who don’t know who this character is.  Otherwise, that just sets the stage for fans to become resentful that their paradigm has been abruptly shifted for no good reason.  That’s just a way to continue this vicious cycle.  The only way to stop that cycle is to respect continuity and respect the fans.

A Comic Book Entry – Cyclops is Magneto, and That is a Problem

Or, “The Dark Ages II: Running the Asylum”

Or, “Yes, another comic book rant because that’s what my Muse says I write and who am I to argue?”

TvTropes has a good article on their wiki about the Dark Ages of Comics, although there is some ambiguity about the Dark Ages ended, or if it even ended.  My supposition is that the Dark Ages has not ended, and that comics are in the sequel to the Dark Ages with the bonus trope of Running the Asylum.  This, I think, is not necessarily a good thing.  Fans grow up and of course they would want to get into the business and enough time has passed virtually all comic books are actually fan fiction.  But more than that, the people running the business are fans too and sometimes when the fate of their beloved childhood characters are in their hands, they can’t resist reshaping the world they way they always wanted.  And for some reason, they wanted it darker, so darker it is.

First, I would like to state that I don’t actually think the Dark Ages of Comics was a bad thing to happen to the media.  The general readership had matured because society was changing, and the two accepted metrics of maturity in a mainstream media, sex and violence (whether or not those are good metrics is a different discussion), had become more pervasive and more normal.  In the late ’80s, comics started to incorporate more sex and violence and in the early ’90s went all out.  Again, this was not a bad thing.  As the trope page states, both good and bad things came from this dark period and the media was forever changed.  Also, sales went up for a bit and that’s always good for businesses.  But I think the continued Darkening and Edgening is not so good.

Soft retcons make it easy to run the asylum and DC in particular has gone gangbusters on the reboot bandwagon since about 2000, which is when some people say the Dark Ages ended.  I disagree that’s when the Dark Ages ended because that’s when Marvel introduced the Ultimates Universe which gave every single character a huge heapin’ helpin’ of Darker and Edgier.  Case in point, the poor abused Cyclops.  I may have mentioned in the 616 universe he was practically orphaned at a young age and ended up in an orphanage run by this guy and later forced to engage in bank robberies.  Apparently, being raised in an orphanage run by this guy(!) just wasn’t dark enough and so it was heavily hinted at if not outright stated that part of his stay with the criminals involved underage prostitution.  DC case in point – In the New 52, Barry Allen’s happy origin of ascended fanboy has been replaced by archnemesis framing his father for the murder of his mother thus giving him incentive to fight crime.  I won’t even go into the many and frequent retcons of Cassandra Cain (a Batgirl); who may or may not exist anymore.

I also think it’s pretty telling that DC chose to keep Jason Todd in the New 52 even though he had a short run as Robin in which he was so unlikeable the fans voted to kill him and was only brought back to life to torment Batman.  Basically, they kept a psychopath with a complicated backstory that they would have to work into their very compressed timeline and I can only think they did this because they felt they really needed another gritty anti-hero in their cast of characters.  I should also point out as far as running the asylum goes, many of the head honchos that ran Marvel during the ’90s have migrated to DC, so in some ways DC is literally the sequel to the Dark Ages I.  Marvel wasn’t necessarily much better in their treatment of the Ultimates where even Captain America, that paragon of virtue, was a borderline chauvistic jerk and the Hulk was actually a cannibal.  Henry Pym actually managed to be a worse husband.  Do not ask about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.  Also, Reed Richards in the Ulti-verse essentially turned into Dr. Doom.

I know Darker and Edgier isn’t necessarily a new trend.  Batman is one of the original superheroes.  Nightwing/Robin (Dick Grayson) showed up in the 1950s, I believe.  Outside of the Bat-family, poor, poor Speedy/Arsenal (Roy Harper) went through hell and back again and he was introduced n the 1940s (the famous heroin addiction was in the 1970s).  The Punisher was first introduced in the 1970s.  But I think since the Dark Age of Comics, this trend has become more pronounced.  Barbara Gordon was paralyzed in 1988 and the darkening hasn’t really let up.  Around that same time, Black Canary was brutally assaulted and lost (temporarily) her sonic powers and was rendered unable to have children.  Also by this time, the Punisher had three comic books (although they all were cancelled in the mid-1990s).  As the trope page tagline says, “In 1993 Superman died and Venom had his own comic book.”  That’s pretty telling.

But in Running the Asylum, even originally stand-up good guy types are slowly getting turned into Wolverine.  See Barry Allen above.  Welcome back, Barry!  And Cyclops.  Poor, poor Cyclops.  Once the Marvel poster Boy Scout and now basically the new Magneto (even though there is still the old Magneto running around too).  Hell, Cyclops’ wife and poster Good Girl got a bridge dropped on her so his new girlfriend could also be an anti-hero (as well as an Ice Queen).  Are there no nice guys left?  Spider-man’s marriage was confiscated because the editor running the asylum hated that marriage and has been thoroughly transformed into a whiny loser (yes, I know, he was always whiny, but now he’s around 30 and just as shiftless as he was as a teenage which puts another layer on the loser cake).  Superboy’s origin was retconned to make him a clone mix of Superman and Lex Luthor’s DNA to up the angst factor up to 11.  Bart Allen (the formerly fun Impulse) has been erased from existence as far as I can tell.  Black Canary in the New 52 appears to run a group of renegades instead of being associated with the Bat-family.  And because Wolverine is so popular, he ended up with two children running around who both have horrible dark and mysterious pasts, and his son (last I knew) wanted to kill him.  And good guys like Nightcrawler and Banshee are pretty well dead while the quirky, chipper Starfire is transformed into a soulless alien sex-machine.

I think somewhere in the Dark Ages writers got used to writing anti-heroes.  I don’t know if the creative teams forgot how to write true heroes or just decided that was totally boring and they liked blood and violence and sex much better.  Or perhaps they think that’s what fans want.  Or maybe that’s what fans want and I’m just weird.  Or because Batman.  I’m not opposed to anti-heroes as narrative devices.  I’m not opposed to dark and mysterious backstories and characters as long as that’s not the only kind of backstory and character.  But at some point the anti-hero became the main type of hero.  At some point the JLA became more like the Authority.  At some point everyone ended up with a dark past.  At some point the ascended fanboy was retconned from existence.  At some point Cyclops became Magneto.

A Comic Book Entry – Saving Cyclops

I have been highly critical of the character assassination to Cyclops over the past few years.  Here is a quick run-down of bad things that have happened (not in order):
– Espousing the same “mutants are the next evolutionary step” mantra that Magneto was pushing in the early days of the X-men; Cyclops sees no irony in this and Magneto even says to him, “You sound like me.”
– After the “House of M,” kicking every de-powered mutant out of the mansion, despite the fact few if any of them had anywhere else to go.  These weren’t just strangers the X-men had just picked up (although his actions would not be forgiveable even then), but included people like Iceman, whom Cyclops has literally known since they were teenagers
– Trying to form a team of teenagers to send on covert missions to stop anti-mutant groups by any means necessary including murder
– Ticking off Wolverine so bad he got a “what the hell, hero” speech from the furry psychopath, who then took most of the students and started his own school
– Ticking off Beast so bad he got a “what the hell, hero” speech from the furry academic, who left the X-men in disgust
– Alienating his own brother with his increased Magneto-like leanings
– Becoming so Magneto-like that in a recent comic, Storm calls Wolverine the “heir to Xavier’s dream”
– Hooking up with Emma Frost, the woman that tried to destroy Jean Grey the first time they ever met and who did her best to destroy his marriage before Jean’s untimely death (see “Cyclops is Bella Swan“), only three days after Jean is buried and on Jean’s grave
– Finding out his father died and doing absolutely nothing including not attending the funeral
– Watching Emma angrily tell Rachel Summers/Grey that she was just a child who should never have been born, the same Rachel Summers/Grey that Cyclops fully accepted as his daughter and who was a bridesmaid at his wedding to Jean Grey and not saying a single word to stand up for his daughter
– Trying to manipulate Hope Summers into becoming a martyr for mutantkind because she’s connected to the Phoenix Force despite knowing how dangerous the Phoenix Force is and knowing that Hope was pretty much scared out of her mind about the possibility of hosting the Phoenix Force

What happened to the Boy Scout, to the first leader of the X-men, and the original heir to Xavier’s dream of a world where humans and mutants could live in peace?  How did it all go so very, very wrong?  That’s probably the wrong question at this point.  The correct question, in my mind, is, “Can Cyclops be saved?”  I think he can, but I’m sure it won’t happen due to current Executive Meddling.  But if I were Tyrant-in-Chief, I’d call the X-men writers into my office and I get this thing worked out.  I’d probably give it six issues as a final story arc and here’s how it would go down.

Step 1 – the lame “A vs X” storyline is concluded with Phoenix still being a god and Hope no longer being with the X-men.  Either she’ll be dead, or realize she doesn’t need to be manipulated by the X-men, as outlined above, and will give Cyclops the “what the hell, hero” speech for trying to use her for his own ends and then go stay with Wolverine at the new school.

Step 2 – Storm finally gives Cyclops the “what the hell, hero” speech concerning the above-mentioned egregious examples of anti-hero behavior (kicking the de-powered mutants out, embracing Magneto’s ideals, using children for murder missions, etc.).  She takes over the leadership of the X-men team and goes to Westchester to work with Wolverine.  This also presents an opportunity for Storm’s character to get a little saving, because let’s be honest, she should have given him the “what the hell, hero” speech already.

Step 3a – The New Mutants, upon hearing of Storm’s departure, make a stop at Utopia to talk about the consequences.  Cyclops speaks disdainfully of Storm’s nerve in telling him that he’s lost his way and makes plans to increase the attacks against anti-mutant targets.
Step 3b – This prompts Dani to meet in private with the New Mutants and express her worries that Cyclops has perhaps gone insane.  This is not an unfounded fear given that he was in fact host to Apocalypse for a while, amongst other bad things that have happened to him (like everything).
Step 3c – Nate Grey, who is interested in Dani and also knows Cyclops was his biological father in his own timeline, and who doesn’t always have a good sense of boundaries, goes poking around in Cyclops’ head to find out if he is indeed gone insane.  He finds out instead that Cyclops has been subject to a lifetime of telepathic manipulation with both good and ill intentions, the most recent of which has left Cyclops in the thrall of Emma Frost.

Let me pause a moment.  I’m not looking to blame Emma Frost for the disingration of everything Cyclops is.  I am looking for an in-continuity reason to explain some of his more recent egregious transgressions against his professed moral code.  Out of continuity, there are lots of reasons Cyclops has ended up this way including a string of writers who are trying to re-make him as Darkier and Edgier, or who blalantly favor Wolverine as the paragon mutant to the exclusion of all others, or who don’t understand the need for a Boy Scout in the narrative, or otherwise just don’t know what to do with the character.  My solution, as outlined here, would simply continue the arc the writers have set up for Cyclops, with all of the consequences they may or may not have intended in the years of assassinating his character.  However, I am endeavoring to outline a situation that works within the continuity so that the end result does not look like a writer trying to shoe-horn an ending that does not fit (i.e., further character assassination).  This leads me back to Emma Frost.
Emma Frost was introduced as trying to destroy Jean Grey and by extension the X-men way back in the Dark Phoenix Saga.  Many villains have cited Cyclops and Jean Grey as the “heart of the X-men” and many plots focus on them.  Emma’s actions when she joined the team indicated (to me anyway) she was still trying to destroy the team through destroying Cyclops and/or Jean Grey.  She’s also made it clear that she hates Jean Grey for myriad reasons mostly stemming from jealousy and deep-seated insecurity.  She engaged in a psychic affair with Cyclops and almost certainly knew she’d eventually get caught.  Her purpose was to cause as much damage as possible to their marriage.  Emma Frost is also a very talented psychic and very talented with mundane emotional manipulation.  That’s pretty much what she did as a villain.  Given that pretty much nothing about her personality or attitude has changed since her alignment switch to “good,” it makes sense to me that she’s still actually a villain.

Step 4a – Nate, in an act of compassion, tells Cyclops that he’s been psychically manipulated his entire life, which is absolutely plausible if you look at his back story, and that being merged with Apocalypse for a while only exacerbated the damage and weaknesses.  Nate apologizes for one more act of psychic manipulation, and then using his god-like talent renders Cyclops immune to any and all psychic manipulation.  Ever.  Even a telepath trying to talk to him in his mind will not be able to get through.  When god-mutants put psi-blocks in one’s mind, they do not break.
Step 4b – Although the manipulation is known and stopped, this does not magically cure Cyclops (remember when Magma found out Empath had been using his powers on her, it did not stop her from loving him).  The mental scars also remain.  Nate consults with Dani, and Dani takes the New Mutants team and goes to Westchester to join Storm and Wolverine with a renewed purpose.  She may or may not give Cyclops a “what the hell, hero” speech herself.

Step 5 – Cyclop is left with Magneto, Emma Frost, and the Cuckoos.  He scrambles to recruit a new team to continue his increasingly militant mission.  Emma is confused Cyclops is immune to her psychic powers, but continues her mundane emotional manipulation.  Cyclops turns to various people he used to work with, to find all of them unwilling to join him.

Step 6 – Cyclops finally has an epiphany.  All the “what the hell, hero” moments he’s participated in in the past few years replay in his mind (and are shown in flashback panels) – see the list that starts this rant.  All the “what the hell, hero” speeches that he’s been delivered in the past few years replay in his mind (and are shown in flashback panels) – his own brother Havoc, Wolverine, Beast, and Storm.  He considers all the people who have been in his head over the years, for good or ill – Mister Sinister, Apocalypse, Professor Xavier, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost.  He realizes that he is now alone in the world – his father is dead, his wife is dead, and everyone he ever cared about left him because of his increasingly militant mission.  He realizes he has indeed lost his way.

Step 7 – In an effort to be responsible for his mistakes, Cyclops confronts Emma regarding her manipulation.  She attempts to divert responsibility by telling him Nate was confused, or that other people just don’t like her and want to break them up, and otherwise lay the blame on someone else.  Cyclops is unmoved by her tactics and asks her why she wanted to destroy the X-men.  She gets angry and tries to defend her actions.  He is unmoved and expresses doubts she cares for him at all except as a prize to symbolize her victory over Jean Grey.  At the end of the comic, he is seen literally walking to the sunset to find his path in life while Emma tells herself he’ll be back with rather ambigious internal monologue that could indicate a) she has been cognizant of the manipulation all along and is indeed smug in her perceived victory over Jean Grey and doesn’t want Cyclops to leave because it nulls her victory or b) she honestly didn’t realize what she was doing was wrong because it never occurred to her someone could love her except via manipulation because she doesn’t really know how love works (I’d leave that up to how the writers later want to pick up her story).

Fin – And that’s the end of that comic book of X-men.  Magneto, Emma Frost, and the Cuckoos are integrated into other stories and Cyclops is nowhere to be found or heard of.  Whether he’s dead or just on walkabout is not something to worry about for a few years.  He may come back with a renewed purpose and renewed character of a Boy Scout, or he’ll simply be gone.  I’m afraid not too many fans will miss him as he is now, but at least there will be a chance for some redemption in the future.

A Comic Book Entry – Cyclops is Bella Swan

I can’t promise that statement will make total sense by the time you’ve finished reading, but I’ll say there’s a high likelihood it will at least make more sense.

First, I’d like a word here to remark on some of the comments on the Marvel Wiki regarding the relationship between Cyclops and Jean Grey.  Yes, I could respond directly but then I’d have to sign up and deal with people who are objectively wrong in their views.  Or I could post my snarkage to my blog without the high risk of a flame war.  Really, not a hard choice.  Anyway, the upshot of these comments was that Jean was a cheating whore with Wolverine and Cyclops is so much better off with Emma Frost.  To which I say – [Expletive!]  These people are wrong.  Flat out, completely, and incontrovertibly wrong.  Briefly, here’s why:

1) I will grant that Jean and Wolverine’s flirtatious relationship went on much too long.  As adults, they should have worked out their feelings and made a decision and stuck to it instead of stringing along a thing that would never work.  That said, I’m pretty sure Jean never actually had an affair with Wolverine of any length, nor actually had sex with him.  An intense make-out session, maybe.  This does not, to me, qualify Jean for the designation of “cheating whore” although it does qualify her for the designation of “irresponsible.”

2) Cyclops did damn near have a psychic affair with Psylocke somewhere in the mid 90s. This was not just a few encounters either.  Granted, part of this is the fault of the writers that thought it was a great idea to put Cyclops and Psylocke on one team and Jean and Wolverine on the other.  But, in that instance, Cyclops acted much more on his straying urges than Jean ever did and as far as I could tell, no psychic manipulation was involved.

3) Cyclops was actually having a psychic affair with Emma Frost.  There’s no question of that.  It was made very explicit he was cheating on his wife.  Although I will grant in this instance he may not have had much of a choice given Emma’s mastery of manipulation and telepathy (that’s totally her thing; see below).

4) Emma Frost is an objectively terrible person on every level.
a) As a reminder, her introduction in the comics was during the Dark Phoenix Saga (or at least her important introduction; she may have shown up before then; I really don’t know) as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club.  She was working with Jason Wyngard (Mastermind) to psychically and psychological brain-wash Jean into becoming the Black Queen.  That was how the White Queen was introduced – as trying to destroy Jean Grey.
b) Also as a reminder, Xavier told Cyclops to talk to Emma for help with his marriage problems (something I will rant on again).  Cyclops went to Emma for help and she took advantage of that by further destroying his marriage because she hates Jean Grey.
c) Apologetic retconning back stories aside, she has never really reformed from her villain days.  She was manipulative and cruel and selfish as the White Queen and she still is.  The only way Marvel could have made her personality more obvious would have been to name her Bitchy McManipulator.  She is the female equivalent of a douche-bag (note to self – find or coin word for female douche-bag).

Actually, this does segue into the title of this rant.  I tried to get away from the unfortunate pop-culture phenomenon that is “Twilight” and somehow ended up watching three movies.  I also documented my attempt to read (or at least listen to) the books and how that ended up with failure as my brain shorted out on the sheer ridiculous angst of it.  To say these books have also generated a lot of criticism is to say that Bella is a little whiny.  One criticism I have heard is that Bella has essentially no role in the story except to be fought over by two powerful men.  She doesn’t really assert herself when Edward’s being stalker-ish and over-protective; she doesn’t really assert herself when Jacob’s being stalker-ish and over-protective either.  Both men treat her like she’s some fragile flower incapable of taking care of herself (which she kind of is) and neither seem to trust her with her decisions.  She tells Jacob she’s chosen Edward and Jacob’s response is basically, “You’ll get over it,” and Edward’s response is basically, “I’ll have to watch over you all the time to make sure that’s true.”   The central drama of the story is that choice between Team Edward and Team Jacob and Bella’s personality, attitudes, opinions, basically everything outside of that choice are irrelevant to her character or character development.  She is little more than a prize to be won than a person to be in a relationship with.

Now, consider the literary lobotomy done on Cyclops in the past few years, especially in regards to his love life.  Does he get a say in his marriage?  Once, maybe, but not lately.  We find out as Jean tries to talk to Xavier about Emma’s unsubtle attempts to break up her marriage that Xavier loved Jean, but since he couldn’t have her (being an old man and her being a teenager), he arranged for her and the boy he considered a son (Cyclops) to be together.  So that basically retconned all of their past and plainly stated Cyclops had no choice but to love Jean Grey.  Because when the world’s most powerful telepath says, “You will…,” it happens.  Of course, given that Jean was the only girl in a group of four boys, Xavier could have also let nature take its course (but that’s also the writers’ fault for forgetting the man is supposed to have a degree or two or three in psychiatry).

So now Cyclops is caught between Team Jean and Team Emma, although for reasons stated above I have no idea why anyone would be on Team Emma (then again, I thought Edward and Jacob were obnoxious too).  But in all this fighting, where is Cyclops?  Being manipulated by telepath and master manipulator Emma and going right along with an affair that is destroying the last vestiges of his troubled marriage with little to no awareness of it.  I will grant that Cyclops may not have been able to resist the psychic affair because his mental defenses just aren’t that good.  Then Jean catches on and kills Emma, has second thoughts, and resurrects her. Why do that?  Because Jean knows she’s dying and has some vision of the future where an emotionally devestated Cyclops fails to save the world and she decides the way to prevent this is to psychically manipulate him into dating Emma Frost, that woman she hated so much (and rightfully so) she ripped her apart on an atomic level (clearly the Editor in Chief, if not actually on the side of Team Emma, was firmly against the side of Team Jean).

I hope the parallels are obvious now.  There’s tension between Jean and Emma (rightfully so; see their history above), and Cyclops is caught in the middle, but he is irrelevant to that drama.  He is merely the plot point that drives the drama, which is been Jean Grey and Emma Frost, forward.  In the end, the motivation for both women isn’t even about being with Cyclops.  Emma’s motivation from beginning to end was to hurt Jean Grey, and then the opportunity to do so by wrecking Jean/Cyclops’ marriage almost literally falls in her lap (as does Cyclops…).  She’s a villain; she wasn’t going to pass that up but does she actually care about Cyclops?  I’m going to go with ‘no’ since aside from having sex with him, she treats him like everyone else, which is to say she treats him like garbage.  He was a prize to be won away from her hated rival, Jean.  Like Jacob/Edward and Bella, Emma didn’t trust Cyclops to make the decision she wanted for him, so she was forcing it.

Jean’s motivation in the end also wasn’t about Cyclops; it was about saving the future as she saw it.  I’m sure she wanted him to be happy, but like Jacob/Edward and Bella, she just didn’t trust Cyclops to make the decision she wanted for him, so she forced it.  She basically gave Cyclops to Emma as though he was just a possession with no will of his own.  What Cyclops might or might not have wanted in a relationship, or who he wanted a relationship with, was irrelevant.  His own decisions were never taken into consideration except how they weren’t what either Jean or Emma wanted.  Now Cyclops is living with a decision two powerful women made for him and he’s gotten essentially no say in the matter.

Here’s the weird thing, though.  The role of a female character as little more than a plot point for a man is sadly not new or uncommon.  It is pretty unusual, I think, to see a male character receive the same treatment.  However, I don’t view that as progress in the cause of gender equality.  Bella Swan is a lost cause.  The books are written and the movies soon to be out and over with.  But Cyclops may have a chance at salvation (although to be fair, his relationship with Emma may be one of the least poor character developments that have been made in the past few years).  How about someone be on the side of Team Cyclops for once?

A Comic Book Entry – Cyclops is not Wolverine, and That’s Not a Problem

I feel bad for Cyclops. It’s hard to be the upstanding, righteous, Boy Scout character. Just ask Captain America, who is pretty much not allowed to be anything else. In the movies, it was even worse. You don’t even need to see the movies; just look at the movie posters. For the poster for X-men, Cyclops is at the top in the front, and Wolverine is at the bottom. By the movie poster for X-men 3, Cyclops is second from the back and Wolverine is standing in the front. That’s pretty much sums up the relationship of Cyclops to Wolverine since Wolverine was introduced way back when.

I understand the problem, as it’s something of a reflection of what our society values. Bad Boys are always more interesting than Boy Scouts. Women are attracted to Bad Boys, and guys want to be Bad Boys. Who’s more popular, Luke Skywalker or Han Solo? Exactly. So poor Cyclops was at a huge disadvantage when Wolverine was introduced. Then Wolverine makes the moves on Jean, who reciprocates because of the rule of Bad Boys, and much drama ensued. Of course, in real life, such relationships seldom work out. Jeff Foxworthy had a bit about this phenomena. He was commenting about how these women’s magazines had articles about “How to Win a Bad Man,” “How to Make a Bad Man into a Good Man,” and so on. His punchline was that when a woman actually married a bad man, she ended up on an episode of “Cops” with the bad man being dragged out of the trailer and her yelling, “You lock him up this time!” He is, of course, quite right.

But comics are not real life, so the extra drama is generally seen as a good thing. From a writing standpoint, when dealing with a group dynamic, it’s good to have the Boy Scout and the Bad Boy. One can be played off the other in situations, as in the best writing Cyclops and Wolverine were. Wolverine wanted to break the rules and do things his way even if that way was morally ambiguous or worse, and Cyclops wanted to play by the rules and do things the right way. The X-men, of course, are not the only example of this. How many fights did Captain America get into with Hawkeye? How many times did Superman and Batman clash over the best way to handle a situation? But the set up of Boy Scout versus Bad Boy is all fine and good. But unfortunately popular opinion favors the Bad Boy to the exclusion of the Boy Scout. However, popular opinion doesn’t seem to realize that if the Boy Scout is no longer there, than the Bad Boy loses some character as well. It’s hard to rebel if there’s no authority to rebel against. It’s hard to break the rules if there are no rules to begin with.

Despite this, my feeling is that the writers and/or fans and/or Boardroom level and/or a combination of all of the above got annoyed that Cyclops was not Wolverine, especially in the last fifteen years. Instead of embracing this as a necessary dramatic component of writing a group comic, efforts were made to make Cyclops into more of a Bad Boy. I am very unkeen on this whole process and consider a lot of the writing more character assassination than character development and it’s gone way too far. Some characters lend themselves better to being made darker and edgier than others, and Cyclops is not one of them.

To be fair, in the past Cyclops has had some shining moments of douche-baggery and somehow managed to regain Boy Scout status, although it involved the new writers essentially saying, “Please ignore this thing that happened because we are.” The most outstanding moment of inexcusable actions was when the original X-Factor comic was started. Cyclops was married at the time and just had a baby. On the mere rumor that Jean Grey might possibly be alive he left his wife and baby saying that he was going to “see about a friend,” not about his ex-girlfriend. When he came back to check on them, the house had been burnt to the ground by the Marauders, who practically left a calling card. So, what did our Boy Scout do? He went back to X-Factor, told them his family was dead, and that was that. He didn’t check the house for bodies. He didn’t go after the Marauders. And when the X-men told him that his family survived, not only did he not go back to Madelyne and his baby son, but he didn’t even tell Jean. Frankly, after all that, I can’t blame Madelyne for trying to kill him during the Inferno. Also, I will admit Jean doesn’t look very good through all that because she didn’t kick him in the junk right then and there for being a total douche-bag. Wolverine was disgusted by his actions. When the Bad Boy is digusted by how morally depraved the Boy Scout is acting, that should say something, damn it. X-men writers, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I’ll just say after that I skipped more than a few X-men and X-factor comics.

I have an idea as to how to save the character, and I do think it would work, but I don’t think anyone is truly invested in doing so because Cyclops is not Wolverine. This process of trying to turn Cyclops into Wolverine has advanced to the point that Cyclops and Wolverine have practically switched roles. Wolverine is running a school for mutants, and Cyclops organized a team to take out mutant-haters by any means necessary, including killing them. What the hell happened? The defining moment of douche-baggery in recent comics is, to me, and the moment I decided that the X-men were dead to me, and the moment I decided to not renew my subscription, was the issue after the whole “House of M” storyline when Cyclops threw all the non-mutants out of the mansion. That’s right, he threw them out, even though many of them had no place else to go. He threw out Robert Drake (Iceman), a person he had known since they were teenagers, a person he’s been on a team with since the X-men were born, a person who is in many ways more of his little brother than his actual little brother Alex. And he just threw him out without a second thought. I should note too that awfulness of this incident was compounded by the fact Wolverine didn’t punch Cyclops out for turning out Jubilee, or that Beast, who also has known Bobby since forever, just let Cyclops do this awful, awful thing.

What the hell, hero? Seriously, what the hell? If only the people involved had just let Cyclops be a Boy Scout and made their peace with that, the writing would have been so much better, and I might still have a subscription.