Scott's first reaction to a teammate getting hurt is to put himself on trial.

Scott's first reaction to a teammate getting hurt is to put himself on trial. In X-Men #27, Warren is recovering from injured wings, and Scott cannot get past the possibility that he failed him. Warren tries to take away that burden. Scott keeps it. His feelings for Jean make the situation even harder to untangle, because he worries about motives that the people around him aren't accusing him of having. He asks to give up command. Mimic receives the deputy-leader position, which promptly demonstrates that a powerful substitute is no guarantee of a more stable team. Scott's confidence may be shaky, but the alternative is a man who has barely accepted the idea of cooperation. The later Sentinel story in #59 gives Scott a very different problem. There is no useful version of winning that consists of trading optic blasts with every robot in the building. He has to exploit the way the machines classify mutants and follow their own reasoning. Disguises, timing and a devastating argument about the source of mutation get him further than force alone. That combination is the late-1960s Cyclops in miniature. He can be painfully uncertain about himself while remaining extremely good at reading a crisis. The private doubt doesn't make the tactical intelligence disappear. Alex's arrival adds another complication. Scott is suddenly somebody's older brother in front of the people who mostly know him as their leader. He has family pride, worry and a little competitiveness to manage alongside the mission. These years make him less of a fixed authority figure. Scott has to keep earning the position, sometimes while wondering whether accepting it was a mistake. The impressive thing is how often he can still make the necessary decision with all of that running through his head.