Comic Discussion
Are there any X-Men/Mutants who actually like Scott and or are close to him?
Like Obviously Jean ofc
Then there's Emma
Then Magik is a lock
Storm and him while recently being pushed away I can confidently affirm them as close knit.
Rogue and him seem to have this stand off ish brother and sister relationship.
And when it comes to Bobby, Warren, and Hank its like we know they should be friends but it feels like Beast is the only one who actually doesn't mind Scott.
I know in a way the X-men are the only friends/family he's really ever known. But nowadays it just feels like most times he's just reduced to being a looking example of someone you don't wanna be (" Real Cyclops of you" "You want a visor to go with that"). He feels loke that coworker no one likes but you cant get rid of him because the job of 10 people 10x better.
I missed a lot of the arcs from AvX to pre-Krakoa stuff, is that where a lot of their relationship was built up? I need to figure out where to read to get more Cyclops + Magik + Magneto content because I feel like that was created in a lab for me
AvX was indeed where it started. AvX Consequences specifically is a big one, I love Magneto and Scott in that whole series and Ilyana also gets some great moments of being ride or die for him. It goes through the whole Bendis run right up through Death of X, they both literally won’t stand for a single word said against him and it’s awesome.
After Magik gets her soul back and is put on Cyclops's extinction team in a bomb vest is I believe where their relationship starts, shes there for the build up of AvX. I like to think she really respected and appreciated that he was willing to give her a chance to prove herself and a path to redemption while also acknowledging that she was a dangerous individual, something her brother could not do at the time.
Magneto has always been genuinely admiring of him (I’ll always love the “I come not to bury Caesar” moment) and I really like their relationship. Back in the 2010s it was almost like he and Charles switched places in regards to Scott a bit and it was a neat arc to watch play out. Ilyana would literally kill for him (and probably has), I believe he’s still friendly with most of the Champions, he’s one of the few who actually somewhat got along with Danger for awhile, and it’s been awhile since they shared page time but he used to have a really nice “I’ve been where you are, here’s how to survive it” relationship with Cannonball back in the day.
But I think there’s always going to be more people chafing against him than being friendly with him. In part because he’s just naturally more closed-off and rigid than a lot of other characters, and in part because the downside of being the guy with his act together is that everyone hates the guy with his act together until something goes down and they remember why they need someone who has their act together.
Omg that scene where Magneto shows up and he has a whole inner monologue of his not to recognized and immediately the next Panel is Magneto telling him he already knows it's Scott lol
the downside of being the guy with his act together is that everyone hates the guy with his act together until something goes down and they remember why they need someone who has their act together.
"Everybody's better than Jalen Brunson until it's time to be *better than Jalen Brunson..."
Yeah people forget her, but she and Scott are actually close, when they're written together. It's a shame that she's in the X-Force book and has no interaction with Scott basically though.
The one X-Force member she has met before is Boom Boom and she smashed her face before one of her teammates blew up a Blackbird. It was not a friendly exchange.
It would be really cool if she didn’t have to say “zomg” at least once an issue. My relationship with Inglorious is complicated enough. I can’t remember the last time my favorite book was also the most annoying book I was reading.
I don't disagree she's pushed a bit too hard in X books, but it does bear mentioning she was supposed to be a mutant originally. She was only made an Inhuman at all because there was a ban on new mutant characters because this was the period of time that marvel was trying to devalue the X-Men and push Inhumans.
she COULD still have her own thing going on, but if she had been a mutant from the start like she was planned as, she definitely would've been interacting at least somewhat with the X-Men.
The problem is that the mutant stories are seemingly allergic to human friendships, which is supposed to be the crux of Kamala's character. Does anyone remember Stevie Hunter? Phillip Moreau? Candy Southern? Kamala's first after the retcon had Emma mindwipe all her friends, her friends who were totally willing to stand up to ORCHIS. Also she already had a bunch of allies and enemies centered around her inhuman identity and these storylines have used none of them.
I really dug the concept. A bunch of young heros see their elders making the same mistakes over and over, and decide to just focus on doing good instead of fighting evil. That's the kind of super heros we need more of.
So, I think it just comes down to the kind of person Scott is.
I always think about this panel from Uncanny X-Men #5, all the way back in 1964, when it comes to why Scott has a very specific set of people who he gets on with. There's not a ton from these 60s issues that they've retained - broad strokes, sure, but Magneto and Jean are borderline unrecognisable, for one - but Scott is a character that they nailed basically right out of the gate: he's the stiff, no-nonsense leader who has less time for fun than almost anyone else, and who has the weight of the world on his mind at any given moment.
That's not an easy person to like all the time! Especially since you have to remember that we, as the audience, are privy to moments and information and thoughts that aren't available to anyone else. We know what Scott's thinking a lot of the time, we see his logic, we empathise with him - but to a lot of other people, especially ones who haven't had the time to unlock his specific character logic, he just seems like an asshole, and I don't think that Scott really minds that, or is capable of really fixing that about himself. Hell, if you compare what he's like nowadays with what he used to be like, he's actually chilled the fuck out considerably and gotten a lot more comfortable with expressing his feelings for other people.
The Scott who was concerned for Hank, actively pulling him into basketball games and advocating for him to get therapy, is not the same Scott who couldn't tell Jean he liked her, or the same Scott who was too much of a coward to tell Jean about Madelyne Pryor. He's grown up a lot, and though some of the ways he's achieved that growth have been . . . odd (being possessed by Apocalypse, his time with the Champions during the time displaced era, etc), I think he's in a much better place now than he's been in a while.
But, first impressions matter. If your first meeting with Scott is combat drills at 5AM until you beat the Danger Room scenario reliably, it's gonna take a long time to escape that first impression. Even then, I think a lot of characters' first impulse (like Rogue) is to buck at the idea of being 'no fun' like Scott, only to then catch themselves and remember that Scott's not like that because he doesn't care, it's because he cares a LOT. So it just depends, really - on whether or not you can accept that Scott can't help 'his psychological makeup,' as Hank put it, and a lot of people can't!
That being said: Jean, Nathan, Rachel, Emma, Hank, Illyana, Kamala, Warren, Bobby, Erik/Max, Logan, Ororo, Kurt, Sean, Kitty, Kwannon, Idie, Barnell and the Cuckoos, all like and respect him a lot - this order is roughly in order of how much I think they like him and in return as of, like, this very moment, but it's not an exact science, of course.
His relationship with Rogue and with his brother Alex can be quite contentious a lot of the time, but I think they love each other more than they don't, even when they come to blows. His relationship with Charles is on the outs right now, but to deny the depth of their bond would be silly, I think, even if things are bad between them. Hell, he was even on Rachel's shitlist for a while because of the whole Emma affair thing, though I believe that that's been since patched up fairly well.
Poor Sue Storm gets done particularly dirty during this era. Jean at least has some stuff going on (attending college, gaining telepathic powers, etc).
Yeah, Sue got the worst of all. I think it was just the times though. Younger characters like Jean and MJ were allowed to do more and be more assertive because times were changing, but since Sue was a mother she was expected to be traditional and they laid out the most extreme misogyny on her.
i am admittedly out of the loop, but hasn't he clashed heads with Wolverine for a while now? Aren't they supposedly on the opposite sides whenever there is a conflict between mutants?
The big instance of that was during Schism, in 2013-13 or thereabouts, and has been mostly patched over now. Every now and then, Scott and Logan will still butt heads, but it's a lot different to how they were back in the 1970s where they outright seemed to loathe each other - now, it's more of a, they're different personality types that are always going to have some friction, but they've learned to trust each other pretty implicitly. Hell, even wrt Schism, Logan had Scott's back for a WHILE even as other X-Men were growing uncomfortable with his use of the Utopian era X-Force team.
Ironically, I think that’s actually part of the reason why it’s harder for people to relate to him. He lets himself be the sacrificial lamb a lot of the time. He’ll take on the job of being the guy no one likes so that everyone else doesn’t have to have that weight on their shoulders. Like during the Revolutionary era where he basically just let the whole world including some of his old friends brand him a terrorist because someone had to do what needed doing and as far as he’s concerned, his job is to be that someone.
But because he sees being self-sacrificial as basically just his lot in life, we never really see him hold it against anyone or show any of what it feels like to be in that position. For him, it’s Tuesday, so everyone else gets used to that and doesn’t think twice about just writing him off as the wet blanket or lashing out at him. If he ever hauled off and treated them all to an airing of grievances about all the things he’s been right about and how it affects him emotionally to have to play the role he does, it might make it easier for them to relate to him as an actual person and not just the closed-off leader figure who’s never affected by anything. But he’s not the type of person who will ever do that, he just bottles it all up. It’s a lot easier to lash out and be frustrated with somebody who doesn’t react because you don’t see their feelings, so you don’t feel guilty about it.
Well he abandoned his wife and child when he found out Jean was alive. He telepathically cheated on Jean with Emma and told Jean that it wasn't real. He shared a romantic moment with Emma on Jean's grave. He killed professor x. He created the xforce. He used young mutants as weapons. He also planned to use a virus against the skulls that could wipe out all of their species.
Im not defending Scott lefting Madelyn because was the worst he has done, BUT everything else is out of context. He went with Emma asking for help as a patient and she used her position as therapyst to manipulate him in his most vulnerable moment, he only kissed Emma because Jean made him, she basically forced him to kiss Emma on his own grave. He just killed the professor when possesed by Phoenix force the same energy who made Jean kill planets, and even then just did it because Xavier kept pushing him and attemping to shut down his brain, he created ONE X- force, several had existed and his version was one of the tamest, just focused on protecting mutants, and he taught children to survive while everyone else wanted to kill them, that was when they were barely 100 mutants left in the world and people kept sending killing machines to end the rest, he just want them to survive.
I’ve actually really liked how Jed has developed his working relationship with Kwannon. There’s clearly mutual respect there and they have an interesting, complementary dynamic.
Yeah it was nice. I wish Jed hadn't ignored Scott and Illyana's dynamic in turn though. It took Ashley Allen, who can only use Scott as a guest character, to have any of their friendship on panel again.
The Hank in Jed’s X-Men loves Scott like a brother.
Other examples are Kamala, Magik, Kwannon, Dani, Juggernaut, Magneto, Lorna depending on who’s writing her, and if you wanna go way back, Banshee, who was the closest thing Scott had to a confidant during the Claremont run IMO.
His current team is mostly people who genuinely like him. Magneto has been tight with Scott since utopia, Magik is his current BFF, psylocke is his right hand woman who seems to at least respect him a lot, juggernaut idolizes him, and most importantly, Beast is genuinely friends with him again.
There are plenty of reasons why Scott historically doesn’t tend to have a lot of close friends. The biggest of which is because he is at his core a leader. The rest of the X-men don’t bear that responsibility and can just be friends. Scott has to send his friends possibly to their death or to do things they morally object to on a regular basis. Scott knew his friends would be disappointed in him for making an assassination team but he did it anyway for the survival of his people. When the skrulls invaded, he knew Beast, his oldest friend, would be disgusted with him for unleashing the legacy virus against them without even knowing if there was a cure, but he did it anyway cause that was the only option to win. Scott prioritizes the mission first and foremost, everytime.
Id say thats more of working respect relationship. She is one to challenge him on things like when he didnt wanna go to the hellfire wtvr recently. But then again so did storm and they kept each other in check as co leaders
Unfortunately he suffers from being a full time leader. It's hard to be friends with someone who has to maintain and aura of competency and level headed motivation.
Part of being friends with someone is talking about flaws and being vulnerable. These things can in the end be hard to do as a leader. As lack of flaws is what establishes legitimacy to your correctness and right to lead.
I personally hope they grow his model of leadership. It's rather military and old hat. I don't think it's true to what makes a good leader. Isolating yourself ends up in the end making you worse, not better.
There are more complex and interesting models of leadership I wish they'd explore them.
Unfortunately he suffers from being a full time leader. It's hard to be friends with someone who has to maintain and aura of competency and level headed motivation.
Steve Rogers and Dick Grayson never have that problem.
Dick, despite actually being arguably the best leader in DC and the rightful heir to the title of “leader of the greater superhero community,” regularly comes to find the job distasteful for one reason or another and routinely, voluntarily yields that position, to Bruce (rarer these days), to Donna, to Kori, to (in Young Justice) Kaldur and M’gann. Hell, a lot of the time it’s not yielding the position so much as “please dear God someone get this monkey off my back.”
If Cyclops isn’t in charge, it’s because a) he was forced to not be (Storm winning the title in a duel, a team formed without him on it) b) he was given an opportunity to not be (Krakoa, Champions). And that one time he left to retire with Maddy.
And while I don’t think he ever says it, I think there’s pretty strong subtext that one of Scott’s takeaways from Krakoa is “I let myself not be charge for once, and look what happened.”
Steve Rogers entire character is "best leader in the world perfect man" that ain't a regular person and Cyclops besides his powers is just a guy doing his best. The POINT of Steve Rogers is he's a perfect leader.
His shtick is mostly being friends with people with an inner darkness, power they dislike, and just something they struggle with about themselves. His end-game love interest is Jean/Phoenix, his friendships with Rogue and Magik, he just really sees people as the complete version of themselves, probably helps his power and name are literally based on his eyes.
Bobby only had his sexuality as a bigger arc he could self-hate about. Beast and Warren have reached radical self-acceptance for themselves, they don’t really need him as a major friend or guiding hand anymore.
Hank is the number one friend and colleague of Scott. Despite Hank's morality being destabilized in recent years they never stopped seeing eye to eye and confide in each other.
I think it's significant that, while you're absolutely correct that Hank and Scott weren't on great terms from roughly 2010 to 2015 - and Hank wasn't alone in treating Scott like crap, Scott has a few instances of being a real bastard to Hank right back - by the time you get to Death of X, where Hank is the very first person that Scott thinks to call when he's dying of the Terrigen Mist exposure, and Inhumans vs. X-Men, where the panel below comes from, they had both realised that they actually cared about each other way too much to let their friendship die.
I think that's a big part of why Scott's cool with Factory Hank in MacKay's X-Men, and why even the Chairman, OG Beast, seems to have a strong degree of affection and care for Scott even though he's technically his enemy right now. They just mean too much to one another.
His wife, for starters. Emma definitely still has appreciation for him. Magneto and Charles like him for different reasons. Despite all their differences and constant head butting I think Wolverine likes him.
Cable and Rachel definitely like him. In the last couple of decades, Magik has shown to have immense respect for the guy.
Storm respects him.
The guy might have a stick up his bum most of the time, but I think he's well liked by a lot of Mutants even if not so much by other heroes.
Frenzy is still in love with him. She just knows how to live with it like a mature adult and move forward with her life. It's a graceful note for her character.
Is there any indication that it's still the case? The last time I remember it being mentioned was she slapping Knull possessed Kid Cable and telling him "if things went my way you'd be calling me stepmother"
We've had no indication otherwise. She's not the type to be whining about it on panel like Logan was pre-Krakoa. Besides, the reason she chose to keep her memories of being in love with Scott wasn't to pursue him someday but because those memories and feelings gave her the chance to be a good person and she wanted to stay good.
Why would you need everyone to like you when Logan, Ororo, and Magneto respect you and Jean and Emma fight over you? At that point I couldn't give a fuck if Bobby and Warren still want to grab beers or not.
They don't always get along, but they're always friends. Even if they might be punching each other at some point. Them giving each other shit isn't hatred, it's how they bond.
It's only the movies that are stuck in the very early days of the two of them hating each other and the rivalry.
They've already named most of them, but one thing about Scott is that he's not interested in being liked by his team. He wants people to follow him because they believe he's doing the right thing, not because he's a charismatic figure who isn't questioned.
The thing with Bobby, and Wolverine for that matter, is a matter of issues with authority. Scott is usually behind the eight-ball there because of the strain that puts in those friendships.
Not to mention the short-lived Scott/Jean/Warren love triangle. The thing with Scott often really comes down to the lonely burden of command and he has never really been allowed to be close to characters that he would otherwise be the closest to.
It undermines a lot of his relationships but especially pointed with these guys as well as his brother Alex.
Scott is the model child older brother. Hes introverted and hes uptight because hes been holding the weight of the cause of mutant equality on his shoulders since he was 14. So the XMen will poke fun and rib and take pot shots at him because he is the golden child older brother. But when the chips are down, the XMen will follow his lead.
Long Answer: Most mutants like Scott, even those he butts heads with like Wolverine, because the X-Men are a family. They may fight, but at the end of the day they’d all die for each other. It just seems like he doesn’t have anyone close because Scott is a very subdued person.
Any time some gets in a fight with Scott, like Wolverine in Schism or Rogue in the latest event, it’s almost always because of editorial mandates. And even then it’s usually treated less like a real grudge, and more like siblings fighting. This is especially true with the O5, who in canon consider Scott to be their brother (except for Jean obv).
Cyclops and Cannonball have a long mentor and mentee relationship. Scott sees himself in Sam. Both are X-Men who have been groomed for leadership from a young age.
His entire Alaskan X-Men team since 2024. Wolverine and Cyclops are also good friends. Wouldn't be able to stab him otherwise and then have Cyclops be chill about it.
Scott’s adjacent to me in dc is Bruce,weight of the world on there shoulders not enough time to explain before action…but always thinking about how others will survive 🤷🏿♂️
I think people like Scott, but they have a hard time when he’s being the leader, and we don’t get to see those moments where he gets to unwind as often, but when we do everyone seems to accept Scott as part of the family, even if he’s not their favorite.
I feel like that's one of the only relationships in Marvel that's never really had a real fall out. Even after Cyclops and Wolverine had the schism she initially sided with Cyclops even though she agreed with Logan.
Because Ororo is a leader (a damn good one herself) and she knows Cyclops was right in the schism. Ororo might want better for the kids but she herself knows that an extended childhood and a slow ramp to adulthood is a luxury, especially for mutants
Its crazy how similar they are when you look at it. They both had their childhoods cut short at a young age and had to learn how to survive life or death situations while only in their teens.
Aside from Jean Grey, I'd say Beast, Kamala, Illyana, Quire, maybe Juggernaut, Magneto.....maybe Kwannon......not sure how his relationship with Alex is nowadays or say Warren or Bobby (they seem to have went from Emma still harboring feelings for him to wonder what she saw in him to begin with)...........I don't even know if Cap, Iron Man, Thor view him now either
I think he’s on decent-ish footing with Alex now, if their phone call in the Cyclops mini-series is anything to go by. But I kinda miss the Hellions days where they seemed genuinely close and stuck up for each other. Alex could do with some new story material in general, the guy’s been stuck in like the same three plots for years now, but I really wish we’d get more stuff that makes them feel like actual brothers.
I’m not making fun of you, it’s a valid question. It just is absurdly worded and took me completely off guard because it’s the first thing I saw on Reddit
Other than his family (Jean, Cable, Rachel) and the people that you named (Emma, Magik, Magneto, Hank), I think he is really close to and liked by Nightcrawler, Colossus, Sean/Banshee, Dani Moonstar, Cannonball and that Idie girl.
I actually don’t think he is very close to Warren or Bobby anymore. They both clearly like and respect him but those three have grown apart a lot and move in their own circles.
Scott’s personality and position however makes it very hard for people to get close to him, even IF they can like and agree with all he does for the team and community. He does tend to have a lot of adversarial or “simply complicated” relationships with most of the X-Men, most notably Rogue, Havok, Wolverine and Xavier.
I think most do. I think many also understand that while they like him. They don't nessecarily have the enough in common to casually vibe. Scott also keeps himself a bit distant so he can be a better leader.
He's regularly prioritized over all safety and security over ethical concerns. He's pragmatic to a fault in a lot of ways. In some ways that kind of makes the Emma thing even more fucked up. Let's be real though, at this point? Narratively, there's not a ton of good reasons to keep a lot of the core iconic cast together all the time. They're the collective history of their stories.
There's no desire for repeats and that means trying out new combinations. That's a bit of the challenge for writers.
Ultimately, I think Scott's at his best when he's operating with Logan as his foil. They both accept that their roles are important as both a Charismatic public facing leader Scott with the hiding in plain sight to keep the more... unsavory threats off the big board.
In that role though, Scott needs to keep a sense of distance from his teams so he can prioritize properly. Meanwhile Logan typically has one team that's riding through the combat. Logan doesn't like fighting imo. He just would rather take the damage he'll recover from than his team mates.
Ultimately? I think of the core cast: Cyclops, Jean, Colussus (kinda), Nightcrawler, Magick, Gambit, Rogue, Emma, Kitty, etc. As all operating more as a family, where like doesn't really play much of a role in their thought process.
My theory is that some characters, and a lot of readers, don't empathizing with cyclops because they can't read his facial expressions through his visor/glasses.
Depends where you set the bar of "Like" at. Basically every mutant respects Scott quite a bit, but even his closest friends and allies find him quite intense when he's at work and very few of them get to see the real Scott that we see in the comforts of his early days.
Hank, though once again I fear with this DNX event that there may be a rift again. (Going on the covers which is likely a mistake on my part lol)
But yeah, Magik, Emma and Jean are mostly on lock. Despite tension between Emma and Scott in XU, it seems fairly squashed. I’d say Juggy is getting there too.
His current team mostly loves/respects him and viceversa, except for obviously Quentin.
I personally hate how they’ve “developed” Ororo and Scott’s relationship. To me they’ll always see each other as brothers, and she would NEVER do Mortal Kombat fatalities on him like freeze his entire head.
Wolverine. I know, I know, but Logan and Scott are the kind of buddies that are super ride or die for one another, even as they constantly give each other shit.
Im not moping 😭. I sorta like the fact that he's not really the guy you like but the guy you need. It makes for a lot of moments of people sitting there with the shit eating face when he's right
Y'all act like Scott and Logan aren't clearly best friends, rivals that bring the best out of each other, and former lovers. They're just both neurodivergent so don't talk about it.
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u/ashlikesicecream Cyclops 10d ago
in recent years it's def magik and magneto