Cyclops (Marvel Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Cyclops first appeared in The X-Men number 1, cover-dated September 1963. He was the first student chosen by Professor X to lead a team of mutant heroes. Stan Lee, who created the character with artist Jack Kirby, called Cyclops one of his two favorite X-Men. The reason Lee gave was direct: he loved tortured heroes. Cyclops was tortured because he could not control his power.

  That power is his eyes. Without ruby-quartz lenses, Scott Summers cannot look at anything without releasing beams of energy strong enough to punch a hole through a mountain. Those beams fire the moment his eyes open, involuntarily, every time.

  Over six decades, Scott Summers began as the model of traditional heroic virtue and became one of the most morally contested characters in American comics. What that transformation required of him, and what it cost, is what this documentary examines.

• 2. The Xavier Legacy

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  Scholar Douglas Wolk called Cyclops "the closest thing early X-Men has to a central protagonist." Wolk also characterized him as a "subdued, repressed young man." That description touches something essential about the character Xavier shaped.

  Xavier viewed Scott as one of his most prized pupils. Their dynamic carried father-and-son qualities from the start. Ben Saunders has observed that the direction of the X-Men will often pivot on the question of Xavier's absence or presence. The emotional impact of those comings and goings falls most heavily on Cyclops.

  In X-Men number 7, Xavier briefly leaves the team and places Scott in command. It was the first of many such handoffs.

  Chris Claremont became the primary writer of the series with issue 94 in August 1975 and continued for sixteen years. He described Scott Summers as resembling a very young Henry Fonda. Very Nebraska, Claremont said, very Middle America, but with surprising sidelines to his personality. That image positioned Cyclops as a counterweight to antiheroes like Wolverine, who embodied the post-Vietnam skepticism of authority.

  Roy Thomas, who wrote the X-Men in the mid-1960s, devoted extended attention to what he called a "melodramatic unrequited romance" between Scott and Jean Grey. Critics have noted that among the original X-Men, Cyclops represented the most traditional normative American identity: white, male, heterosexual, and mostly able-bodied. That subplot continued developing for decades under a succession of writers.

• 3. Seeing Red

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  The 1983 Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe described Cyclops's eyes as containing inter-dimensional apertures. Through those apertures, energies from another dimension enter this world as optic blasts. That explanation was revised in the 1986 Deluxe Edition of the same reference.

  The beams deliver massive concussive force but produce no heat and no recoil. Earlier accounts had explained them as the product of Cyclops's body metabolizing sunlight and ambient energy. The 1986 edition superseded that earlier theory.

  Ruby quartz, the translucent mineral in the visor, resonates with a psionic field that Cyclops's mind projects. That field makes his body immune to the force of his own blasts. Adjustable apertures in the visor allow the beams to fire at variable levels of intensity. That provides Cyclops some control over what is otherwise involuntary.

  That same psionic immunity extends, by a mechanism the stories have never fully explained, to his brother Alex Summers, known as Havok. Havok emits waves of energy that heat the air into plasma. Neither brother can harm the other with his own power. Scott has also absorbed a lightning bolt from Storm, though the act caused him great pain.

  Cyclops is also an expert pilot of fixed-wing aircraft, a skill the stories attribute to his father, Corsair. Later accounts traced the involuntary quality of the blasts to childhood trauma, suggesting a psychological origin for the power's failure to switch off.

• 4. Three Women

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  Scott Summers kissed Jean Grey for the first time in X-Men number 98, when she initiated it. The two had been circling each other since the earliest issues, edged with competition and anxiety. Wolverine's arrival added another layer of complication to that dynamic.

  When Jean died at the conclusion of The Dark Phoenix Saga in 1980, Scott withdrew from the central team. In Uncanny X-Men number 168, published in April 1983, he met Madelyne Pryor. She was physically identical to Jean Grey in ways that went unexplained for years. He married her. They had a son named Nathan.

  Chris Claremont had long described a tension between the leadership responsibilities of Cyclops and the personal desires of Scott Summers. He had intended this arc as a genuine ending for Scott: a resolution of that tension. He described it as a metaphor: "We all grow up. We all move on." Those plans did not survive the editorial decision to reveal that Jean was still alive. When Jean reappeared, Scott abandoned Madelyne and Nathan to rejoin the original X-Men under the name X-Factor.

  X-Factor writer Louise Simonson later described Madelyne plainly: she had been "a substitute for Jean." Madelyne was eventually revealed to be a clone of Jean Grey, created by Mister Sinister. She became the villain known as the Goblin Queen and killed herself. Claremont expressed dismay at this outcome, saying that Jean's resurrection had tarnished Scott's persona as a hero and "decent human being."

  Jean and Scott married in X-Men volume 2 number 30, published in March 1994. Apocalypse later possessed Scott's body, leaving the relationship strained. Scott turned to Emma Frost for what began as psychic therapy. The arrangement became a psychic affair. When Jean confronted him, Scott maintained that they had shared "only thoughts" and had done nothing wrong. Jean disagreed.

  Jean died in New X-Men number 150, in February 2004. A future version of her, resurrected in an apocalyptic timeline, used the Phoenix Force to reach back in time. She pushed Scott past his guilt and toward Emma, and the two reopened the Xavier Institute as co-headmasters.

• 5. The Price of Command

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  Joss Whedon, who wrote the Astonishing X-Men series beginning in July 2004, described Cyclops as having been "the team washout in terms of popularity." Whedon's diagnosis was that what held Cyclops back was Cyclops himself: "He's been lying to everyone, including himself, about who he is." Whedon temporarily stripped away Scott's powers, forcing him to lead by skill and presence alone. The result, in Whedon's phrase, was "an unabashed tough guy."

  In the House of M storyline of 2005, the Scarlet Witch used her powers to reduce the global mutant population to only 198 individuals. That event, called M-Day, made Cyclops desperate to protect those who remained. In April 2008, he revived X-Force as a covert strike team, separate from the main X-Men.

  In X-Men: Schism in 2011, written by Jason Aaron, Cyclops and Wolverine had a severe disagreement. At issue was the use of teenage mutants in combat against the Hellfire Club. The dispute split the X-Men in two. Cyclops led his faction as an Extinction Team, a roster that included Emma Frost, Magneto, Storm, Magik, Hope Summers, Colossus, and Danger.

  In Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012, the Phoenix Force returned to Earth. It divided among a group of X-Men who came to be called the Phoenix Five: Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus, and Namor among them. The Five attempted to use their power to benefit humanity. Professor X was among those who believed the power too great. As the others were subdued, the full force concentrated in Cyclops alone. He killed Professor X.

  Writer Kieron Gillen depicted Cyclops as suicidal in the five-part epilogue, AvX: Consequences. Cyclops was imprisoned. He escaped, assembled a new faction, and established the New Charles Xavier School for the Gifted at the former Weapon X facility in Canada. Xavier's will, read in the aftermath, identified him as a surrogate son.

• 6. Strange Inheritance

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  A Shi'ar spacecraft attacked Scott Summers's family plane over Alaska when he was a boy. His parents placed Scott and his younger brother Alex into the only parachute; they did not survive. Scott struck his head on landing and fell into a coma. After a period in state care and a brief, unsuccessful attempt to manage his abilities on his own, Charles Xavier found him.

  His father was Corsair, leader of a rebel alien crew called the Starjammers. Writers Dave Cockrum and Chris Claremont developed that connection when the Starjammers first appeared in X-Men number 107 in October 1977. Jean Grey learned of Corsair's true identity before Scott did and kept it from him for years.

  Scott's brother Alex became an X-Man alongside him. A third brother, Vulcan, was unknown to Scott for decades. X-Men: Deadly Genesis number 1, published in January 2006, introduced him as a third Summers brother. He had been enslaved by the Shi'ar after the same family attack and raised in secret by Moira MacTaggert.

  Rachel Summers, Scott's daughter from the alternate timeline of Days of Future Past, was introduced in Uncanny X-Men number 141 in January 1981. She joined the main X-Men in a storyline concluding in issue 199. In the 1994 miniseries The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, Scott and Jean traveled to the future to raise Nathan. They spent twelve years there before returning to the present. Nathan had grown up to become Cable, a mercenary. In the X-Cutioner's Song storyline of 1992 and 1993, Scott and Jean discovered that Cable was Nathan, having lived in that future timeline. Cable's clone, Stryfe, was also active in those years.

  Hope Summers, the first mutant born after M-Day, was introduced in X-Men number 205 in January 2008. Orphaned as an infant, she was adopted by Cable, making her Scott's adopted granddaughter across a tangle of timelines. The timeline also produced Nate Grey, a younger version of Cable from yet another alternate future.

• 7. Captain Commander

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  In March 2019, Marvel announced that writer Jonathan Hickman would relaunch the entire X-Men line. The project began with two series: House of X and Powers of X, illustrated by Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva. The central premise was the Krakoan Age: the world's mutants relocating to a living island called Krakoa and founding a sovereign nation there. Xavier, Magneto, and a character named Moira X co-founded the new state together.

  Cyclops was given the rank of Captain Commander. Jordan D. White, the X-Men senior editor, described his role directly: "He is the rock that their island nation is built upon." White added that Cyclops is "the head of the X-Men in any Super-Hero activity which is essentially the military of Krakoa." Cyclops might not rule Krakoa, White said, but he leads it.

  The Krakoan Age ran from 2019 through 2024. By that point Scott Summers had served as field leader, revolutionary, escaped convict, and a man who had killed his own mentor. On Krakoa he was the Captain Commander.

• 8. Screen and Rankings

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  James Marsden first portrayed Cyclops in X-Men, the 20th Century Fox film released in 2000. He reprised the role in X2 in 2003, X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, and X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014. Tim Pocock played a younger version in X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009. Tye Sheridan took the role in X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016 and Dark Phoenix in 2019. He appeared in a cameo in Deadpool 2 in 2018.

  In animation, Cyclops appeared in X-Men: The Animated Series from 1992 through 1997. The revival series X-Men '97 began in 2024. He also appeared in X-Men: Evolution from 2000 through 2003 and in Wolverine and the X-Men in 2009.

  IGN named Cyclops first in its 2006 list of the top 25 X-Men, and Newsarama ranked him third among X-Men members in 2022. In wider polls he placed lower: IGN ranked him 39th among comic book heroes in 2011. The A.V. Club placed him 72nd in its 2022 ranking of the hundred best Marvel characters. Wizard Magazine's 2008 ranking of the 200 greatest comic book characters placed him 106th.

  Marsden is set to return as Cyclops in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Doomsday, scheduled for 2026.