Cyclops vol 1 – “Starstruck”
This volume collects the first five issues of the Cyclops ongoing series, written by Greg Rucka, and with three issues of art by Russell Dautermann before Carmen Carnero takes over with issue #4. The whole creative team changes again with issue #6, which will be by John Layman and Javier Garron. Hence, one assumes, the unusual decision to have the first collection cover five issues rather than the more normal six.
A Cyclops ongoing series, then. Let’s be honest, it’s not something many people were crying out for.
That’s largely for reasons I discussed last week in relation to Nightcrawler. Some characters by their nature lend themselves to having secret lives with separate adventures of their own. And some simply aren’t designed that way. Cyclops is about as heavily in that category as it’s possible to imagine. For decades, his defining features have been his leadership role in the team, and his lack of much of a life outside the team. Claremont occasionally toyed with sending him off to try his luck on fishing boats, but it’s not the character’s natural register.
This doesn’t mean he’s a bad character – far from it. But he’s not a character who naturally lends himself to carrying a solo title.
The solution to this problem is, in a sense, not to use Cyclops at all. Because this series isn’t about the “main” version of Cyclops at all. It’s about the teenage version from All-New X-Men, who has wandered off on his own to spend some time in outer space with Corsair, the father he thought was dead. So to all intents and purposes this is really a Cyclops & Corsair series, with the “other” version of Cyclops. The main version of the character doesn’t appear.
Yet he hangs over the whole series. While All-New X-Men makes much of the time-travel paradox at the heart of having the Silver Age team come to the present and do things that will plainly screw up their personal histories, Cyclops largely plays that angle down. It doesn’t worry itself about how all of this can fit together, and instead focuses on the idea of the younger Cyclops seeing “our” version as a fairly depressing future that he’s keen to avoid. The central idea, then, is not that Cyclops somehow has to go back home so that his timeline can be resolved. Quite the opposite. It’s that Cyclops, knowing how one version of his life turned out, has the chance to do it over again and get it right. And this makes the core version of the character central to the series, even in his absence. He is the road that was travelled, and will not be travelled again.
Purists might question whether this is really a Cyclops series at all, given that there’s not even a pretence that this character is going to go back in time and live out the life of Cyclops Proper. By treating it in this way, Greg Rucka is effectively writing the title character as a divergent Cyclops.
But even if he’s not The Cyclops, he’s certainly A Cyclops, sharing a common history up to an early point in their superhero careers. His experiences in All-New X-Men have knocked him wildly off course – not only does he actively want to live a different life, but his role as team leader has been undermined, and pretty much taken away from him, as a result of what the team have seen of his older self. So this version of Cyclops has been denied the opportunity to grow into the role that would have come to define his character; he has no choice but to go somewhere else instead. This is an interesting opportunity to dig into what lies beneath the character’s surface and see what’s there when you really do take the “leader of the X-Men” stuff away from him entirely.
It’s also a second chance for Corsair, partly because he wants to avoid a repeat of Scott’s life, but also because he sees this as an opportunity to get right the relationship that he botched so badly with the original Scott. As the series points out, once Corsair had escaped the Shi’ar and hooked up with the Starjammers, there wasn’t really anything stopping him from trying to get home to his family. But he chose to stay and be a space pirate instead.
Actually, there’s a bit of finessing of history here in order to make Corsair look worse. He says in issue #3 that he told himself Scott and Alex had moved on and didn’t need him. As I recall, the original story was set up so that Corsair saw their parachute on fire and quite reasonably assumed that they must be dead. Still, he did have other relatives on Earth (his parents were still alive), so there’s something to the basic point.
Corsair works very well as a foil for Cyclops, considering that he wasn’t originally designed for the role. The Starjammers were designed by Dave Cockrum to be the stars of their own space pirate series; they wound up in X-Men after Marvel’s anthology titles turned the pitch down, simply because it was the series Cockrum happened to be working on at the time. Corsair’s connection with Cyclops was added after the fact.
But with the teenage Cyclops, they work very well together. Even without his air of authority, Cyclops is still a rather serious, thoughtful, morose character. He needs a flamboyant, more superficially charismatic figure to balance him out. This still wouldn’t really work with the main Cyclops, who has always had a middle-aged soul. But with a Cyclops who is actually written as a teenager, the dynamic is perfect. On the one hand you’ve got Corsair able to dispense genuine wisdom of experience; on the other, there’s a nice inversion of the father-son relationship in having the father being the one running around dressed as a spandex pirate. He’s a very different sort of role model compared to Xavier, ultimately encouraging Scott to lighten up a bit.
There was a long period in which the space opera and pirate motifs looked rather dated, but it feels like they’re coming around again; look at the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, after all. And Corsair’s “space pirate” schtick is really what defines the tone of this book. It is, after all, about Cyclops entering his father’s world, however odd. Space opera is not something I’ve ever really gone for in a big way, but at the end of the day it’s a load of trappings you can nail on to pretty much whatever story you want, and that’s very much the way it’s being used here – as a shortcut to familiar “alien” settings that lets Rucka get straight to the more interesting point of his father-son relationship. These aren’t stories that are particularly preoccupied with world-building, and it’d be pushing a point to say that either artist has a particularly new take on the genre.
But both artists are strong on the character-driven aspects of the book, which is what it’s really about – and no doubt that’s why it’s one of the few X-Men stories in this sub-genre that I’ve really enjoyed. As with All-New X-Men, you can certainly make the point that this version of teen Cyclops bears only a passing resemblance to the actual Silver Age character, who was decidedly more square-jawed than this. This isn’t the Silver Age Cyclops, but rather a teenage version of the character projected backwards from the Cyclops of 2014. But I have no problem with that; the style clash with the comics of 50 years ago is so extreme any interaction with that part of continuity by necessity has to treat it very flexibly. Truly faithful versions of the Silver Age characters would be two dimensional at a push, and would barely be functional in modern stories. This version is more interesting – because it’s not about the 1960s Cyclops anyway, it’s about the Cyclops of 2014, albeit indirectly.
Rucka’s run was originally intended to extend beyond this, and to be honest, it shows. These are the first five issues of a series, and there’s no real attempt at any sort of closure. The moral of issue #5 is a lesson about the importance of sacrifice in maintaining honour, which is fine for the issue that precedes it, but doesn’t really tie in very strongly to the broader points about the series. Perhaps it’s a sudden departure, or perhaps Rucka has just taken the perfectly sensible decision that since any attempt at resolution would be forced anyway, he might as well just leave it open so that the incoming writer can take over smoothly. (And it’s certainly encouraging to see that it’s the usually-reliable John Layman; the set-up established here feels like something that ought to play to his strengths.)
I suspect there will be fans who’ll skip this book because it’s an inessential spin-off featuring a character who isn’t really Cyclops anyway. And in a sense it is. But it finds space in there for a recognisable yet very different take on Cyclops, and a convincing father-son relationship of a type that’s surprisingly rare in this genre. Well worth your time.
Because I’m a huge Rucka fan, he took the decision to leave the book after his father passed away. He felt…uncomfortable, I guess, writing a book about parenthood, whilst grieving for his own father.
I’m gutted Layman is taking over, and will likely drive the book into cancellation, but he’s Mike Marts’ buddy, so he gets a job.
This book has been surprisingly entertaining. Not a true stand-out compared to some, but reliable and fun so far. And I do have faith in John Layman to deliver a good story as well, even if I don’t have faith in this comic’s long-term survival. It’s a rare solo X-Book that lasts more than a year or two anyway, no matter who’s writing it.
But hey, even if we can get a fun story and several trades out of this, that’s good.
“a convincing father-son relationship of a type that’s surprisingly rare in this genre”
Honestly, this more than anything is the selling point of the series for me. Despite the “X-Men as a family” trope, actual family relationships don’t come up a lot (or maybe that’s because of, rather than despite–actual family relations get in the way of establishing proxy father figures). There’s plenty of father surrogates, starting with Xavier, but actual actual father-son relationships among X-folk tend to be either estranged because the father missed most of the childhood (Cyclops’ original case, Pietro/Magneto, Siryn/Banshee), bizarre because of complicating elements (X-23’s clone status, or Cable being much older than his own father), or outright antagonistic (Wolverine and Daken).
There’s a tradition in material designed for young adults to minimize parental involvement and existence to allow the teenagers greater agency (see also Twilight, Hunger Games), but the cost is missing out on some story potential.
So I quite like what Rucka did in that direction. It’ll be interesting to see what Layman does, since the main series I associate him with, Chew, also features an estranged parent/teenager relationship.
On a side note, everyone should be reading Rucka’s Lazarus. Excellent works building and character work.
World*
The only nitpick I have of this book is that the new artist draws young Cyclops optic beams to be “broken” like the current version. I miss a time when something like this would be caught by editorial.
I’m out of the loop. I didn’t realize Marts was back from DC. I thought he did a horrible job the last time he was at Marvel. I never got any sense that he actually read the books he oversaw.
This book was great. It’s a real shame it was only 6 issues. Great review though, Paul.
* I mean five issues.
Halapeno –
He came back to Marvel after being booted from DC for not wanting to move to Burbank. He then somehow wangled his old job as group editor back, and has overseen a stunning fall in quality of the X-Books, aside from the Bendis books, which seemingly ignore him. The rest of the books? Jason Aaron dumped from two books, and replaced by Marts buddies Yost and Kyle. The Wolverine books been taken over by Marts Acolytes Tom Seeley, James Tynion and Kyle Higgins. Marguerite Bennett getting her feet under the table. Claremont’s return, Si Spurrier being sidelined. Awful, awful art on near every book.
And, I would point out, an apparant upswing in the quality of the Batman books, but I dont read them
Corsair works very well as a foil for Cyclops, considering that he wasn’t originally designed for the role.
What does “originally” mean? Corsair was designated to be Cyclops’ father before he made his first published appearance. While Cockrum’s pitch to editorial did not include that element, the character, as written by Claremont, was always Cyclops’ father.
In regards to what Dave O’Neill said – I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the x-books are suffering at present. In fact, I’m going to be ditching some books at the end of their current arcs, and in the aftermaths of Death of Wolverine and Axis I’m going to be doing a major stocktake of what comics I’m buying. When Marvel NOW launched I couldn’t afford all the books I wanted, guess it’ll be a good opportunity to go back and pick some up.
@Nu-D: Paul wrote “foil” and for some reason you’ve read this as “father.”
@Dave: Thanks for the info.
“He then somehow wangled his old job as group editor back”
How about he was given it due to the extremely successful Bat-books he oversaw?
You seem to be making up paranoid conspiracies left and right. We’re talking about fucking comic books here.
Extremely successful Bat-books he oversaw?
Well, thats your opinion, which you’re of course welcome to, but I was driven off buying the Batman books for any number of reasons, mostly decisions made under Marts’ stewardship, decisions he’s repeating with the X-Men books, as well as making his old mistakes again (pointless solo books, deferring to Chris Claremont)
“You seem to be making up paranoid conspiracies left and right. We’re talking about fucking comic books here.”
What does that mean? That the comic book industry doesn’t have its own element of “It’s who you know” hiring practices that can be found almost everywhere else? Pretty sure Bob Harras landing the EIC position at DC had something to do with Jim Lee being one of their top guys, just as I’m pretty sure Scott Lobdell landing two(?) New 52 ongoings had something to do with Bob Harras becoming the EIC.
“Well, thats your opinion”
No, the success of the line is evidenced month-in, month-out by the monthly sales charts. This is not even up for debate.
The fact that you don’t like something does not give you the right to make shit up about who hires who.
Since when am I making shit up? This is a real thing: Marts hired, amongst others, Tim Seeley, James Tynion and Kyle Higgins to write low selling Batman books. Suddenly, these guys are the best people available to write the Wolverine books after Soule. I love the X-Men books, but I’ll stick with Bendis is Marts is putting DC castoffs on every book going.
@Dave O’Neill “I’ll stick with Bendis”.
Good! Let me know as soon as something happens in his books worth reading. 😉
I’m pretty sure Bendis has a killer four parter coming up where Emma eats a sandwich and everyone argues about it.
It will be a killer 5 parter, not 4. Part 3 or 4 will veer off into a pointlessly unrelated story about how Iceman, Doctor Strange, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk have been having regular weekly get togethers at a bowling alley since the Champions disbanded and have been doing so ever since, like, you didn’t know they did?
Well, that’s just ridiculous.
Jennifer Walters wasn’t even the She-Hulk yet back when the Champions disbanded.
It will be a killer 5 parter, not 4. Part 3 or 4 will veer off into a pointlessly unrelated story about how Iceman, Doctor Strange, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk have been having regular weekly get togethers at a bowling alley since the Champions disbanded and have been doing so ever since, like, you didn’t know they did?
…
Well, that’s just ridiculous.Jennifer Walters wasn’t even the She-Hulk yet back when the Champions disbanded.
LOL.
I’ve sporadically picked up Bendis x-books. Ugh. Yeah. So bad. Can these DC cast offs be any worse?
“Jennifer Walters wasn’t even the She-Hulk yet back when the Champions disbanded.”
Like continuity has ever been as issue for Bendis before lol
“Good! Let me know as soon as something happens in his books worth reading. ”
“I’ve sporadically picked up Bendis x-books. Ugh. Yeah. So bad. Can these DC cast offs be any worse?”
I like Brian Bendis’ work and consider it of value. When Tim Seeley writes an eight year run on a franchise book, and writes the best Spider-Man book on the stands for 15 years without a break, you get back to me.
Ultimate Spider-Man is too much of a whiny piece of kidnap material to be confused with Spider-Man.
In any event, Jason Aaron wasn’t dumped off of anything.
@Dave O’Neill –>
Can you tell me what it is about Bendis’ X-books you like? I’m not being a jerk; I genuinely want to know. I liked Bendis’ noir work-Powers, Alias, Daredevil-and the little bit of his Avengers I read I thought was fine. But I despise his X-books, and can’t figure out why people like them. The characterization is off, the pacing is terrible, the plots are dull and at times incoherent, the dialogue is trite and stupid, and he’s terrible at following through on his premises (which are the best thing he’s got going).
What is it you like about them?
Sorry, I say I like something and I have to explain myself because you don’t approve of it?
The start, and the end of the statement is “I like Brian Bendis’ X-Men work” and how dare you suggest that I’m wrong for thinking otherwise.
@Dave O’Neill,
I was trying to engage you in a conversation. I was not saying you’re right or wrong. I just was trying to understand a different point of view.
A point of view you evidently believe is wrong, given your apparant need to “understand” it.
Let me tell you something – I used to work in a comic shop. And I saw people buy stuff that I would never touch in a million years. But I never once criticized someone for their purchase, or tried to “understand” why he was buying it. In face, another coworker did once ask me why i bought what I bought and I gave him hell for it.
If you don’t like Bendis’ X-Men, thats fine. Thats your loss, and Marvel is producing a ton of other stuff that you can gladly spend your money on. But dont dare tell me how to spend mine.
Dude. Chill out. I neither told you how to spend your money, nor criticized you for buying Bendis’ comics. I stated that I don’t like them, and why I don’t like them, and asked why you do. I don’t say you’re wrong. I just asked what you like about the comics. There was no personal attack. If you don’t want to tell me why you like the comics, that’s your business. But there was nothing wrong with me asking.
The x-axis comments threads seem to escalate quickly these days.
Well, that certainly wasn’t my intent, and if you’re offended, I apologise. However, at 31 years of age, I no longer feel the need to explain my comic buying habits to anyone, and “Nud’s” overreaction to me having the unmitigated gall to actually liking Brian Bendis’ work and demanding I provide a detailed explanation of why I have the nerve to like someone just….bugged me.
you clearly feel the need to explain (or at least discuss) your comic buying habits, or you wouldn’t be posting comments about them on a blog.
Dude. Again, I made no “demand.” You completely misread my tone. Maybe that’s my fault, but I thought it was just a friendly question to talk about what we like/dislike about comics. You know, because this is a blog that reviews comics, and the comment section is a place to discuss comics.
I frequent another comics site where the general consensus on Bendis’ X-Men work is that it’s mediocre at best, and terrible at worst. But I know that a lot of people really like it. None of my usual interlocutors fall into that group. When I heard you liked it, I wanted to know why. It was that simple.
As an impartial observer, in Dave O’Neill’s defence, I can kinda see where he might take offence. It’s like walking out of a movie you really liked, (say, Dark Knight Rises), and having someone explain to you that everything you liked about it was garbage. The performances, the fight choreography, the writing, dozens of plot holes, etc.. It almost questions the intelligence of the person (if I like stupid things, does that make me stupid?). Maybe Dave’s only defense is “I like all of the things that you find terrible about Bendis’ writing”.
Again, sorry to jump in uninvited. Personally, I think Bendis has his moments, but haven’t read his x books.
I agree that there has been a fair amount of drama in the comments here lately. We’re just talking about superhero comics, which we all presumably like. No need to get so worked up.
For my part, Bendis’ X-men has a lot of severe flaws that bug me and have been bugging me since the start, but I like some things about them enough to hang on. In particular, I’m really into the team in Uncanny, and the students.
I like Bendis’ X-Men run better than his Avengers’ run–I think his conversation-heavy approach is a better fit for a team that’s been more family-squabble oriented. I’m more disappointed that the run as a whole hasn’t amounted to more. Way back when, I was excited after Schism that there seemed to be a sharp difference in philosophy–and I loved Gillen’s aftermath miniseries–but (in my opinion) that momentum was mostly lost when the two schools never really behaved all that different. Over time, it’s made the differences between Wolverine’s stance and Cyclops’ seem more like hurt feelings and beliefs that neither are putting into practice (which makes them both rather hypocritical). Arguably, that could be deliberate, and it’s certainly not all Bendis’ fault; he’s not the only X-writer. But I wish more had come out of it than what we got.
Count me as a fan of Bendis’ X-books.
While his dialogue is certainly an acquired taste, I for one enjoy it. Humor is highly subjective and I find The humor Bendis’ injects into his writing to be clever and genuinely funny. His action scenes were never his strengths, but having grown-up on Claremont’s X-Men, I associate the franchise more with never-ending stories propelled by a lot of melodrama. And in a sense Bendis’ X-men is in keeping with that precedent.
Even in Claremont’s most memorable stories (Days of the Future Past and Dark Phoenix Saga), I remember them less for their action and more for the characters’ many thought bubbles agonizing/reflecting on their plight.
A lot of the criticisms hurled at Bendis’ run to me feel more of a reflection of the changing tastes in the audience than any real criticisms to his ability as a writer. His dialogue in his X-books is oftened criticized as unrealistic (as if realism is necessary for a good superhero comic) where ten years ago he was praised for it. If there is a “major” flaw to be hurled at Bendis, it is that he still writes the same as he did ten years ago. However, since I enjoyed his original Ultimate Spider-man run, I don’t mind it.
Also, as a long time X-fan, I enjoy the character studies being done in each book. All-New as an examination of Jean Grey and why she “matters” to the X-men, and Uncanny as a rehabilitation of Cyclops (although it also serves as a character assassination of Beast, he may not be in cat-form any more, but he sure is a catty bitch now). As with most Bendis’ story, the plots are never the point, it’s the characters he cares about. Or at least “character.” As much as I like his books, he’s basically writing two solo books about Jean and Cyclops. The other team members are treated as supporting characters. But since Jean was given basically no character other than “female,” I’d say it’s only fair.
So while I wasn’t specifically asked why I like it, I hope that this helps detractors of Bendis’ run understand that there are people who genuinely like it and in defense Dave O’Niell, while there’s nothing wrong with asking someone why they like a comic, it gets very tiring coming to a blog you enjoy quite a lot hoping to discuss books you like, only for every comment thread to be derailed with someone constantly commenting on Bendis’ comics.
Scroll through the reviews for the past year or so. Reviews on Uncanny Avengers, All-New X-Factor, Etc. all slowly devolve into people complaining about Bendis comics. Some x-fans may not understand how people can like all-new or uncanny, but fans of all-new and uncanny can’t understand How people can complain about books they don’t read? Or Why people are reading books they don’t like?
The X-books haven’t been interconnected for quite some time, so there’s very little excuse for people who don’t like it to continue reading his books. Even form a collectors mentality, All-new is “his” book and Uncanny x-Men is in its third volume. Your collection of X-men comic doesn’t have to go on indefinitely when there are clear stopping points.
I think the Bendis thing stems from the ideas to execution. I followed the entire Avengers run he did, and while the ideas were grand and sweeping, the execution was frustrating. I’ve found his X-books to be the same way.
He seems to come up with a good large concept, and the. Has the characters talk about it without doing much about it. Granted those character moments are nice, and ultimately the things about Bendis books that make me smile, but it can get a bit much. I haven’t been enjoying the current Uncanny arc at all.
It’s also a little frustrating with the pacing. Rachel should not have been finding out about Young Jean in issue 10, for example, when they have been living in the same house. (I get that maybe 4 hours and gone by since issue 1, but that’s what I mean about pacing problem)
There is plenty to like in Bendis comics. Grand ideas and nice character moments, and I completely understand why people like them. In the other token, I can also see why people don’t. Despite the f
Ugh….
Despite the flaws, I fell into the like them camp for much of the Avengers run. Somewhere after the start of the Heroic Age, I fell into the “not” camp.
My 2c
“However, at 31 years of age, I no longer feel the need to explain my comic buying habits to anyone.”
Did that happen right on your 31st birthday? Like, did you blow out the candles on your cake and think, “Fuck it. I’m not going to explain my comic buying habits to anyone from now on.”
Because that’s what happened with me as well.
Okay, in all seriousness, Dave, a question for you: Have you never developed an appreciation for something you didn’t initially care for?
I can’t speak for Nu-D, but whenever I pose a similar question to someone, it’s not a matter of me thinking “How dare you like this crap?”, but rather “Am I missing something here?”
And every once in awhile, that might just be the problem. Something in a person’s work that goes right over our heads, or some element we don’t really appreciate but perhaps could if it were turned to our attention and we became more conscious of it.
Or then again, maybe not. But it looked to me like Nu-D was, at the very least, allowing for such a possibility, hence the question.
Dave O’Neil is on a paranoid psychotic roll.
With a little distance and reflection:
I can see why Dave got offended by my original post. I shouldn’t have opened the conversation with such a strong statement of my position, since it comes across as an attack. Even the “I’m not trying to be a jerk…” comes across as a thin veil for an attack. @Dave: Sorry to offend.
@halapeno: you nailed it. My intent was exactly what you described. What is it about Bendis’ X-Men that I’m missing?
@Lawrence: Claremont’s original Uncanny run is the heart & soul of my love for comics. And for exactly the reasons you describe–the soap opera aspects, moreso than the superheroics.
But I don’t see the same thing in Bendis’ X-Men, because to me the characters are not realistic or relatable. Events and relationships seem to develop from the ether, and character reactions seem arbitrary and generic.
It occurs to me only now that maybe it has more to do with the art than the writing? Maybe Immonnen and Bachalo simply aren’t capturing the character moments well enough? I mean, look at the Paul Smith examples we recently saw on CBR’s 75 greatest Marvel moments countdown. They are powerful character moments not just because of the writing, but because of the art. Maybe these guys are failing to live up to the script?
But it also seems like the character moments are inconsistent with the characters themselves, and shoehorned in to incoherent adventure stories.
As for why I read them? Well, I don’t pay for them. I hang at the LCS after hours and split a sixer with the owner in exchange for the privilege of reading some books without buying. I buy the ones I like. I read these to see where they’re going to go. Like everyone has observed, it seems like Bendis’ has an interesting grand plan. But the execution leaves something to be desired.
“Events and relationships seem to develop from the ether, and character reactions seem arbitrary and generic.”
Why the hell is X-23 and Young Angel getting together?
Why are these ugly costumes being treated seriously?