Cyclops Is Back

Every Friday, we use the powers of Marvel Unlimited to look back at the most notable appearances of a character that made waves this week.

Slim lives again.

Having returned in this week's UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #1 by Ed Brisson and Carlos Gomez, Scott Summers is back in the game. But his new life won't be an easy one.

In anticipation of the action to come, we're taking a look back at the death and life of Cyclops. So let's begin at the end...

In 2015's SECRET WARS, the event in which Doctor Doom created a patchwork world to save what he could of existence, a Phoenix-powered Cyclops got onto one of the ships that mysteriously survived. However, when he tried to take on God Doom himself, the ruler of Battleworld simply snapped PhoenixClops' neck as seen in issue #4 of that series. 

Scott seemed okay after the other heroes saved the day and returned things to relative normalcy, but his days were certainly numbered. Around that time, a Terrigen Mist had been unleashed on Earth which spawned new Inhumans, but proved deadly to mutants. In DEATH OF X, Cyclops and his team first encountered the Mist and its devastating effects on Muir Island. 

Cyclops actually succumbed to the poison in the first issue of that series, but Emma Frost created a psychic recreation of him to fuel the X-Men's fire as they dealt with yet another threat to their very existence. She used his image to lead the X-Men down a path of war with the Inhumans, holding them responsible for all of those deaths. 

After their group managed to find a way to destroy one of the clouds, "Cyclops" fought Black Bolt and seemed to die during the battle. However, his brother Havok didn't buy it, so Emma revealed the truth to him and argued that she'd made him immortal in a way because his ideals for mutantkind would live on long after he did. 

Though Emma's plan worked well enough to get rid of one of the Terrigen Mist clouds, another still threatened mutants everywhere. They managed a truce with the Inhumans, but that threat still loomed. Others with a vested interest also tried to solve the problem like Mister Sinister. In the first arc of EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN, the less-than-gentle geneticist admitted that he'd been trying to splice mutant and Inhuman DNA to create Homo-Superior-Superiors who could survive the cloud. 

After the Extraordinary X-team showed up to free Colossus and Magik from Sinister, the scheming scientist revealed an altered version of Cyclops! A creation of Sinister's that used Summers' DNA mixed with an Inhumans, the entity fought Cyclops' old teammates before finally falling to them. 

Speaking of alternate versions of Cyclops, a younger version of him had been running around with the ALL NEW X-MEN for a while. However, Young Cyclops saw his older self as less of a role model and more of a person he'd do anything possible to not become. In the wake of that Cyclops' return to his own time along with the other youthful X-Men, the real deal Cyclops revealed that he'd been hanging out with a teenage version of Cable. 

In the UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL, we discovered that this Cable had been working with Paul Douek, a guy that Scott saved early in his hero career to build a better Phoenix Cage and implant it into the dead Cyclops' chest, which they did right after the Black Bolt incident. 

When Jean Grey came back to life in PHOENIX RESURRECTION: THE RETURN OF JEAN GREY, the Phoenix Force resurrected Scott to try and tempt Jean to return to it, but Grey refused, killing Scott once again. However, the burst of Phoenix energy was siphoned into the cage and used to bring him back for real.  

Cable demanded that Cyclops remain in hiding after his rebirth. He eventually told his father that it just wasn't right for the heart of the X-Men do die from such a simple thing and that the group needed him to survive. 

Those worlds couldn't ring more true...as anyone reading UNCANNY X-MEN can tell you. With the recent return of X-Man and his plans for a brave new world, the rest of the X-Men recently disappeared, and Cyclops has dedicated himself to getting them back. Keep your eyes on that title to see  how and when he goes about doing exactly that! 

Read these stories on Marvel Unlimited, then visit your local comic shop to read UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #1 right now!