Scott Summers rules

Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, is awesome. There I said it. I know, and I have known since I was a kid reading X-Books in the 80s, that being a Cyclops fan didn’t get many people on your side. That’s never stopped me though.

Let me tell you why I think he’s so damned good, as a character.

So many people, and maybe you’re one of them!, think he’s boring, or stiff, just a dull nerd who is never cool. I won’t pretend that a bunch of adaptations of the comics have gone out of their way to portray him that way, as much as they can. Because, to them, Wolverine is the cool kid and they have a friend/hate thing going on so if A is cool then his “opposite” must be lame.

It’s over simplified math, though.

Scott Summers is someone who was raised to be a soldier, and never wanted to be. He just wanted a normal, quiet, life. And yet a lot of his childhood, and certainly everything since, has been built around being The Leader, being Responsible for the actual lives of people around him – his loved ones most of all, in a very literal sense.

Most people break under that sort of strain. Not to say Scott never broke! He has, and that actually makes him a better character. It shows that the strain can crush you. But Scott gets back up. He makes mistakes, some bigger than others (we’re not ignoring the whole Maddie situation all right it’s fucked up), but he also pushes to re-center himself every time.

Scott became the person he needed to be for the people around him, despite the cost to himself. He shut doors on his own being, just so he could try a bit harder to protect his loved ones, as well as strangers, by putting his life on the line for them constantly.

So does he sometimes come across as “stiff” or “un-fun”? Of course. Who wouldn’t? But when you’re basically Captain America for Mutantkind, you’re going to shoulder a fuckton more than anyone else near you and you need to be stiff at times to not snap under the weight.

Scott worked, and worked, and became an amazing leader, a top-notch strategist, an excellent marksman and able solider as well as a spectacular general all for the sake of mutantkind.

Along the way did he occasionally take it to a degree that many might say was “too serious”? Can you actually blame him?

Imagine, seriously imagine, you were trained to be the fulcrum on which freedom of your people rested, since you were 13 years old. How much fun would you be at parties, every day? How often would you go “Fuck yeah let’s go to the water park”?

You would sit in a dark room and cry all day.

Scott only gives in and does that maybe once a month. That’s how good he is at this shit.

Seriously though the fact that this dude is standing at all, much less able to function in any way approaching a normal person, is amazing. And I can hear you going “Yeah but I wanna read about the cool characters not the horrendous weight of crushing responsibility and how it shaped someone who really just wanted to work in radio*.”

And that’s ok. Go do that. I am not saying you are wrong in any way for liking who and what you like. I am just explaining why I like this dude.

*(Scott had a job  in radio way way back in the day and I maintain it was, and still is, his most dreamt of job if he could ever stop being The Guy)

So yeah. The once reluctant leader now having done it so long he isn’t reluctant at all. He throws himself at it, because he knows how good he is (but worries he’s wrong) and knows that if he doesn’t then people could die. And he won’t let that happen, if at all possible.

That is, frankly, a kick-ass type of character. He has regrets, he makes mistakes, he worries he isn’t ever going to be enough because no one can be enough and maybe he shouldn’t even be giving his whole life to it, and above all he stands up and gets the job done because he has taken it as his job, and he won’t leave it unfinished.

Scott Summers is cool as hell.