Goddamned if I know. Maybe a skrull? An alternate world Scott Summers? A post hypnotic command from Emma Frost or Sauron? A cosmic cube? The Infinity Gauntlet?

So many bad ideas have come out of Marvel, there's GOTTA be a couple good ones to address this...

Rob O: "I'm sorry but you can't unshit a bed once shat in." I think you've pushed the metaphor just a little too far, my friend. Perhaps, "You can't unshit a catbox in which you've shat. But you can clean it out and try again."

Truly, I've long thought that Charles Xavier is a much bigger ass than Scott Summers, and were I an X-Man, I am uncertain I could back him up 100%. But I cannot imagine the circumstances under which Bobby, Hank, Jean, and Warren - even Alex and Lorna if you like - would not give up their lives and risk their souls for Scott Summers and back up his every action and word. And if Scott were acting terribly out of kilter, they wouldn't just shake their heads and walk away... they would go through heaven and hell to find out what's wrong and save him. (Purely as an aside, I know the same thing on Cyclops' part... but he' the topic here.)

He can be saved and salvaged by someone who knows the characters perfectly... Mr. Byrne for example. Once again, I look to THY for the real X-Men.

——

How about just stop bringing up his history and stop writing him like shit?

But how can one avoid his history? It's one thing that Ben Grimm had an older brother... if you don't mention it again, so very few will notice. But how do you ignore what Scott Summers has been subjected to? I do not see it possible... although I don't say it's impossible either.

It's a double edged sword. 

Ignore his history and you run the risk of fans pissing and moaning that he hasn't redeemed himself and is no hero.  

Attempt to retcon what he's done, whether it be via Skrull, Apocalypse, PTSD brought on by his rapport with Jean, Mr. Sinister (the most likely solution), and you'll no doubt alienate - and trigger - all the people who've grown up knowing nothing but Scott the Dick. 

"That's not my Cyclops!"

I will agree on one point - JB is really the only one I'd trust to do the fixing. Mmmaybe Alan Davis, who seems to be a big fan of JB, anyway.

:)

Also, in case y'all didn't know, Jean Grey is again alive and well and has no connection whatsoever to the Phoenix Force anymore. It's leaving her alone, for good (or at least until Marvel editors say otherwise).

The PTSD idea sounds as good as any for explaining why Scott became such a jerk. Also, Emma Frost telepathically influencing him in Grant Morrison's NEW X-MEN run (though why Jean couldn't effectively fight that before she died -- again -- is a fair question).

 I'd love to know what Claremont's retcon is re: Scott and Madeline Pryor.

As I mentioned upthread, I run into more younger fans of Cyclops who have issues with the current depiction of Cyclops. They want the animated series Cyclops. It’s the older readers who defend Cyclops the dick. Ostensibly because they want their “time” put in as comic historians to count.

You know, it would help a lot if there wasn't a new mutant holocaust every couple of years.

Cause it's not about Cyclops, it's about mutants. He could be a hero when the stakes were smaller. When it becomes mutant holocaust after mutant holocaust... Someone gotta react to it. It bothers me more that the "good" X-Men don't. Schism made no sense.

And really, his marital life is not a big deal (why mentioning Maddie ever again?). The Inhuman war was all Emma. And possession is a good enough excuse to every character but Cyclops. For some reason, fans can't forgive Scott for being possessed a couple of times. The out is there, it's for fans to take it.

Unfortunately for his plans, he lacks a powerful enough identity of his own to overwrite Scott's forceful and driven personality. He winds up a poor copy of Scott living life in Scott's body, while Scott's spirit and self remain bound to the cocoon in which Jean is healing.

The Stalker then proceeds to carry out things as Scott himself would have done, subsumed by Scott's leadership and character patterns. This copy of Scott senses on some level however that something is wrong. He does not feel the death of Jean in the Savage Land Saga as he should because somehow she is not Jean and hasn't been since her "transformation" in Phoenix. Storm is closer to the mark than she knows when she tells Scott that he is no longer the boy he once was, nor is Jean the girl he once knew. The Stalker begins to falter in his role. 

"Scott" has not become Jean's lover in the way the Stalker wished. Jean is not reciprocating the feelings as he'd hoped. When "Jean" kills herself to keep from destroying more inhabited worlds, the Stalker is lost. As Scott, he would stay with the school in spite of everything. But he leaves instead...

He searches for romance with Aletys Forrester to no avail. When the clone of Jean shows up as Maddy Pryor, he sees a means to accomplish his aims as they exist now in this new form. He dedicates himself to marriage with the image of the woman he once loved. Then Jean comes back, risen from the waters once again. 

Ever in love with appearances rather than actual substance, "Scott" throws Maddy over for the genuine article. She is not the Mother of Stars he first fell in love with, no, but she is the creature the Mother felt was worthy of saving and personifying. She is the better of the two choices. All of this is done on a subconscious level so far as "Scott" is concerned. He still really doesn't know what he feels or why he's feeling it. He doesn't realize that he's an unworthy suitor in love with a shining cosmic force that has obliterated herself. He still thinks he's a good guy doing the best he can in difficult circumstances.

Meanwhile, the rest of his identity as Scott is going to hell in a handbasket. X-Factor operates as a Mutant Extermination Service, ala' the Orkin Man, and publicly fans the flames of Mutant Hatred by offering to come to your community and remove the offending elements. This is nuts. No one truly dedicated to Xavier's dream would put that out there in the world. Hank, Warren, Bobby, and Jean go along with "Scott's" nutty concept because they trust Scott, but X-Factor is a hate crime in constant progress, and no one is happy with the arrangement. "Scott" is too tone-deaf to pick up on this. He's focused entirely upon Jean. The real one, not the lookalike he's abandoned. Somehow, he has to make it work with her. He's given up so much of himself in the effort to get her, he can't let her go now.

Jean agrees to marry "Scott," since it is him so far as she can determine. There are no telltale traces of Stalker to send up any red flags. It's Scott, but at a slight remove. Well, he's suffered a lot; been through so much. Many the marriage will bring him back around... 

Then again, maybe not. Things continue to fall apart for Stalker/Scott. He screws up a lot of things that the real Scott wouldn't. He makes some weird mistakes, like, say for instance, forming an X-Force that operates as a Black Ops/ Wetwork branch of the School. Why not kill people? Why haven't we been killing people? Stalker has never truly valued human life on the face of it. He has to have a special interest in a human for her to have any value to him. "Scott" has gone from being in a downward spiral to freefall. 

Jean is killed somewhere along the way and comes back. I wasn't reading the book at the time, so I have no idea what the mechanics involved there were, but somehow Stalker/Scott wound up in the arms and the bed of Emma Frost. If Emma can sense anything, it's a weak man. Somehow, the thoughts of Scott are perfect and he should not be this weak, faulty thing that he is, but so long as he is, she can definitely make use of him. 

She does fall for him, and being weak and hung up on women in a position of power, "Scott" takes to this new love affair in a way he hadn't responded to the others. Heartless as the Mother of Stars could sometimes be, Cold as airless space... Emma definitely has qualities the weak, flailing Stalker inside Scott wants. 

When the Phoenix Entity returns (it's Mother aspect clearly in retrograde) to inhabit Hope Summers and once more become a thing of fiery terror and destruction, "Scott" and a few others get in her way and he winds up in a situation he'd never expected; He becomes the host for the Phoenix along with four others. He is literally the same being as the woman he has sought for millennia. 

It's a heady experience. "Scott" is completely set off-balance by it. Since he never really understood nor embraced Xavier's dream despite the original's dedication to it, he can let it go. Run a mutant terrorist cell. Kill. Whatever. He can even kill Xavier. And does so. It's not like he really cared.

Very quickly something becomes clear to the Phoenix-inhabited "Scott" that he never really noticed before. The Phoenix Entity doesn't know he's there. 

She has never noticed that was there.

She is able to operate through him and never give a thought to the fact that Stalker is in there along with her. He is too small. He is beneath her notice. The episode passes without anything of substance taking place between the two cosmic entities. He wasn't big enough to get her attention. 

He falls back on his Scott identity harder, trying now to be the very best Scott he can be, since maybe that was it somehow...? If he'd been better at being Scott maybe she's have given him the time of day...? The time travel nonsense with the original team coming back takes place and Scott gets to meet the original on terms that throw into sharp contrast how bad at this he's really been. 

Bendis leaves. Stuff happens. "Scott" is killed. Big deal. So what. No one notices. They think it's the original. No eulogies are said for the pathetic tagalong who trailed along in the wake of the Phoenix Entity for so long and tried to win her attention by becoming a mortal and failing even more tragically as a man than he had as a meager cosmic force. 

So... Where is the real one, anyway? His body is dead, taking with it the almost-but-not-quite-perfect copy of himself who'd been bothering everyone for so long. Whatever happened to that astral self the Stalker flung out of his body all those years ago? 

He's been hanging about Jean's cocoon, filling her with every ounce of psychic strength he could muster; trying to help the cocoon heal the radiation damage done to her. He's been keeping in touch with her throughout her ordeal, talking with her, holding her hand, and comforting her as best he could. He's been a ghost all this time, but his spirit and his love for Jean are formidable forces. He has been pouring his strength into her for years.

When the cocoon is wrested from the sea floor and he can see that she has been rescued... he finally sleeps. There is almost nothing left of him. Everything he had he gave to her, is speed her on her way back to life. 

It takes a very long time for him to awaken with any semblance of the strength he once had. He has no awareness of what's been done in his name in his absence. He barely recalls the hijacking of his body by the Stalker entity. He's labored all this time under the impression that he is a ghost, killed in the shuttle crash, and that he hasn't moved on because Jean was still here and needed him. Now he's awake and apparently that wasn't true. Without the gravity of Jean's suffering and her need for him to hold him to the sea floor, he is able to rise. 

He is not going to be happy with what he finds when he gets back home...

It was basically a sort of cold war that was happening off in one little corner of the Marvel universe. The X-Men dealt almost exclusively with mutants and mutant-related issues. Run of the mill supervillains and cosmic adventures fell to the FF and the Avengers.

When you have enough mutants to result in a “holocaust”, it really does detract from the notion of the appearance of any given mutant as the sort of freak occurance which the X-Men were basically created to investigate. Xavier was the visionary who saw where things were headed—more mutants, more bigotry, and more danger for everyone—, and wanted to steer the future in a positive direction. And, Scott, being the first X-Man, would be the guy to take up the cause in Xavier’s stead, if need be.