Whether leading the X-Men or X-Factor, Cyclops keeps his teammates and mutantkind alive by doing what’s necessary.
Rocky Start
Scott Summers is the first of three sons born to Major Christopher Summers, a test pilot for the United States Air Force, and his wife, Katherine. One night while flying his family home from vacation aboard a vintage aircraft, a spacecraft from the interstellar Shi’ar Empire attacks their plane. To save their lives, Katherine pushes Scott and his brother, Alex, out of the plane with the only available parachute. Scott suffers a head injury upon landing, thus forever preventing him from controlling his mutant power by himself. With their parents presumed dead, the authorities separate the two boys. Alex is adopted, but Scott remains comatose in a hospital for a year. On recovering, he’s placed in an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska that was secretly controlled by his future enemy, the evil geneticist Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister.
As a teenager, Scott comes into the foster care of Jack Winters, a mutant criminal known as the Jack O’Diamonds. When Scott starts to suffer from severe headaches and eyestrain he sees a specialist in Washington, D.C., who discovers that lenses made of ruby quartz correct the problem. Soon following, Scott’s mutant power first erupts from his eyes as an uncontrollable blast of optic force. The blast demolishes a crane, causing it to drop its payload toward a terrified crowd. Scott saves the onlookers’ lives by obliterating the object with another blast, but the bystanders believe that he had tried to kill them and rally into an angry mob. Scott flees, escaping on a freight train. Winters seeks to use Scott’s newfound talents in his crimes, and physically abuses the young boy when he initially refuses. However, Scott’s display of power attracts the attention of the mutant telepath Professor Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, who teams up with FBI agent Fred Duncan in their mutual attempt to find Scott. Xavier rescues Scott from Winters’ clutches and enlists him as the first member of the X-Men, a team of young mutants who train to use their powers in the fight for human/mutant equality.
As Cyclops, Scott becomes deputy leader of the X-Men, and while he was a natural field general his social skills were somewhat lacking. Scott falls in love with his teammate Jean Grey, a young woman born with the powers of telepathy and telekinesis, but his reserved demeanor prevents him for years from expressing his feelings for her. When Xavier’s other original recruits leave the fold following an encounter with the living island Krakoa, Cyclops stays on as deputy leader of the new team.
Optic Energy Blast
Cyclops can project a beam of heatless, ruby-colored concussive force from his eyes that, at maximum force, is sufficient to tip over a filled 5,000-gallon tank at a distance of 20 feet, or puncture a 1-inch carbon-steel plate at a distance of 2 feet. His eyes are actually no longer just complex organs that utilize the visible spectrum of light to see the world around it; rather, they are interdimensional apertures between this universe and another. Cyclops’ body constantly absorbs ambient energy, such as sunlight, from his environment into his body’s cells, which allows him to open the apertures. Cyclops’ mind generates a particular psionic field that is attuned to the forces that maintain the apertures. Because this field envelops his body, it automatically shunts the other-dimensional particles back into their point of origin when they collide with his body. Thus, his body is protected from the effects of the particles, and even the thin membranes of his eyelids are sufficient to block the emission of energy. The synthetic ruby quartz crystal used to fashion the lenses of Cyclops’ eyewear and visor is resonant to his mind’s psionic field and is similarly protected.
The width of Cyclops’ optic blast is focused by his mind’s psionic field with the same autonomic function that regulated his original eyes’ ability to focus. As Cyclops focuses, the size of the aperture changes and thus acts as a valve to control the flow of particles and the beam’s relative power. The height of Cyclops’ optic blast is controlled by his visor’s adjustable slit, and its effective range is about 2,000 feet. If Cyclops exhausts the supply of optic energy he has generated, while he would begin generating new optic energy almost immediately it may be too little in amount to generate an actual beam. Cyclops can vary his optic beam for a variety of effects, such as pulsing it at a falling object to slow its descent.
Due to a head injury, Cyclops is unable to shut off his optic blasts at will and must therefore wear a visor or glasses with ruby quartz lenses to block the beams. The mask Cyclops wears to prevent random discharge is lined with powdered ruby quartz crystal. It incorporates two longitudinally mounted flat lenses that can lever inward providing a constantly variable exit slot of 0 inches to .79 inches in height and a constant width of 5.7 inches. The inverted clamshell mechanism is operated by a twin system of miniature electrical motors. As a safety factor, there is a constant positive closing pressure provided by springs. The mask itself is made of high-impact cycolac plastic. There is an overriding finger-operated control mechanism on either side of the mask, and normal operation is through a flat micro-switch installed in the thumb of either glove.
Cyclops is immune to the energy generated by his brother, Havok, but is vulnerable to the energy wielded by his other brother, Gabriel Summers, AKA Vulcan. Cyclops is also a skilled strategist and battle tactician who possesses an innate spatial awareness that allows him to ascertain complex geometric relationships in his mind through observation of objects and surfaces in his surroundings. As such, he can determine the angles found between them in order to cause his optic beam to ricochet so as to strike a target or targets in a trajectory of his choosing. He can successfully reflect his optic beam off over a dozen surfaces in the course of one blast.
He is also an exceptional leader, extensively trained in unarmed combat, an accomplished pilot of various craft, and an experienced radio announcer. He trains his mind to be resistant against casual psychic infiltration.
Persistent Foes
Cyclops’ foremost foe is Mister Sinister, the mutant obsessive immortal scientist who experiments on Scott, using his genetics and others, like Jean, to create clones. He creates Madelyne Pryor, whom Scott falls for and has a child with, which is all part of Sinister’s plan to use their genetic potential against the mutant warlord En Sabah Nur, AKA Apocalypse. Scott also goes head to head with Apocalypse, even merging with him, resulting in an evil entity.
Close Connections
Scott’s allies are often mutantkind and his closest connections remain his mentor Professor X, his long-time love Jean Grey, co-worker and love interest Emma Frost, close friend Storm, and the X-Men. From his father Corsair and brothers Havok and Vulcan to his children—Nathan Summers, AKA Cable, and Rachel Summers, AKA Marvel Girl—Scott will do anything to protect his family and suffers grief when any one of them is lost.
Scott shares a long-term on-again, off-again romance with Jean Grey and his love for her sometimes blinds his decisions. When fellow X-Man James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, holds a candle for Jean, a rivalry ensues between him and Cyclops, and sometimes affects their working relationship.
When Jean seemingly dies, Scott finds solace in a woman eerily similar in appearance to her, Madelyne Pryor, not realizing she’s a clone of Jean created by Mister Sinister. They marry and have a son, Cable, though Madelyne goes insane and seemingly dies while fighting a returned Jean.
Scott then rekindles his relationship with Jean and they marry. Their marriage sees tough times following a merge of Cyclops with Apocalypse, and though free of Apocalypse, Cyclops later engages in a psychic affair with fellow X-Man and telepath Emma Frost. He ultimately ends things with Emma, realizing the damage it had on his life.
When Jean perishes at the hands of a Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, imposter, Cyclops falls in love with Emma and rekindles their romance. Though, they eventually have a falling out when the Phoenix Force overtakes them both, but work together later amicably. Following subsequent deaths and resurrections, he and Jean find each other again and together with their extended family, including Wolverine, they live on the Blue Area of the Moon.
Scott shares a friendship with fellow X-Men leader Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm, and when their powers combine, they are a formidable force to be reckoned with. Though they sometimes differ over their methods regarding mutant enlightenment and liberation, which sometimes causes friction between them.
Scott often leads the X-Men and X-Force with a marked determination to fulfill Xavier’s dream of peace between humans and mutants. He tends to lean into a more structured and militaristic team dynamic than say others like Storm, who leads the team at times and is more empathetic. His views on training the next generation of mutants to be prepared to fight for their right to live are sometimes so one-sided that it leaves little room for alternative ways, leading to a schism between himself and Wolverine for a time that divides the X-Men.