Cyclops has been there from the beginning of my X-Men reading, and I want to spend some time on Scott himself. There’s a lot more to cover than the visor, the optic blasts, or h…

Cyclops has been there from the beginning of my X-Men reading, and I want to spend some time on Scott himself. There’s a lot more to cover than the visor, the optic blasts, or his relationship with Jean. I’m keeping this to the material I’ve reached, before the Muir Island Saga. The early Scott Summers is a young man who has been given a ridiculous amount of responsibility. Xavier is the teacher, but Scott is the one expected to turn the training into something the team can actually do when people are shooting at them. He has to understand everyone’s abilities, pay attention to where they are, and make decisions before he has all the information. Then there’s the fact that his own power requires constant restraint. Those red beams are concussive force. They hit things. They aren’t simply Superman’s heat vision in a different color, and his ruby-quartz glasses and visor are what let him function without putting everyone around him at risk. That gives a lot of context to how controlled he tries to be. Even something as ordinary as taking off his glasses can become dangerous. He learns to be careful long before he has any chance to be comfortable. You can see that caution in how he fights, how he leads, and how difficult he finds it to say what he feels.