[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #46 - October 2007 [spoilers]

[Saxon Brenton]

On Friday 16 Nov Tom Russell replied:
> On Nov 14, 10:57 pm, Saxon Brenton <saxonbren... at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday 15 Nov 2007 Martin replied:

>>      Looking over the sexually suggestive shenanigans in _Coherent 
>> Super Stories_ #10, _Superfreaks Season 3_ #3, and my own _Legion 
>> of Net.Heroes Vol.2_ #23, I believe that I shall arbitrarily 
>> declare October 2007 to be... Smutober!
>
> I *knew* I should have posted KINKY ROMANCE # 1 last month. :-P

<facepalms>  There was obviously more smutty stuff about that I knew 
wot of.

>>> Hmm.  I suppose I could have killed Jean off, had her cloned and 
>>> have Scott fall in love with the clone only to have Jean come back 
>>> and fight her clone.  Except it was dumb when Marvel did it.
>>
>> To be fair Marvel had painted themselves into a corner with the 
>> way Cyclops had abandoned his wife and child in order to get the 
>> high concept of the first X-Factor series to work.
>
> Hasn't Cyclops always been a jerk, though?  Even the original 
> Maddie Pryor storyline had him acting like a complete goober-- I'm 
> thinking of Scott asking her shortly before the wedding if she was, 
> in fact, Jean Grey come back from the dead-- a question that is 
> insulting to say the least.  And-- keep in mind I'm not an X-fan, 
> so I could get the facts wrong here-- but when he discovers his 
> father is alive, he's kind of an ass there too.  Granted, I 
> understand it all-- father issues, dead girlfriend issues-- but 
> I'm amazed at how often people have said it was out-of-character 
> for Scott Summers to leave his wife and child, or the recent affair 
> with the White Queen.  Because I think it's totally in character 
> for Scott Summers to be a selfish prick.
 
I basically agree with what Tarq and Martin have said, but I'll try 
to summarise it from my point of view. 
 
Cyclops has always been rather withdrawn and brooding.  (And thanks 
to the wonders of backhistory we can probably ascribe this to 
unresolved trauma from being messed with in Mr Sinister's orphanage, 
but that's by-the-by.)  Apart from being a naturally intorverted 
personality with worse-than-average social skills, he also got to 
brood about the burdens of leadership, etc.  Put this all together 
and, yes, he can all-too-often act like a prick.
 
But selfish prick?  Hmm.  Well, for any comic character with a long 
enough publishing history there are probably examples that support 
both sides of the argument.  But for me the line between whether his 
being a prick is in-character or out-of-character is whether it *is*
SELFISH.  For me Cyclops as a character has a lot of leeway to get 
away with an awful lot if he's doing something for the 'greater good'.
The asking-Maddie-Pryo-if-she's-Pheonix-returned is a good example: 
it's incredibly insensitive on a personal level, but it's also the 
type of hard question for the good of the team/the world that Cyclops 
hasn't/shouldn't be afraid to ask (and then angst about later when he 
realises he's stuffed up).
 
But the abandoning-his-wife-to-rejoing-his-old-teammates-including-
his-resurrected-exgirlfriend was AFAICT pure selfishness.  He had 
given up his responsibilities as of team leader of the X-Men to Storm 
and clearly had family responsibilities to his wife and son.  One 
could argue that his disappointment at losing the team leadership 
was clouding his judgement at this point: but to me that only 
explains why he might be tempted to do what he did rather than 
justify actually doing it.  For exactly the reasons I just outlined 
I would have expected better of Cyclop's sense of responsibility: 
he should have done the right thing (no matter his personal 
preferences) rather than selfish thing. 
 
Perhaps I'm being too much of an over-assertive fanboy in picking-
and-choosing what's in-caharcter and what's not, and then insisting 
that the character should be written to my preferences.  But to me 
putting Cyclops in the original X-Factor just to fit the high concept 
was badly out of character for him.  
 
Does that make sense, or am I just waffling?
 
---
Saxon Brenton