This week’s All-New X-Men has a surprise revelation that will make it possible for Greg Rucka to return to Marvel for a new ongoing series starring Cyclops, teaming with artist Russell Dauterman, CBR has revealed. Stop reading now if you don’t want spoilers yet.
We’ll even give you a break with the cover art for the new series from Alexander Lozano, and the official blurb:
Long thought dead, Corsair, leader of that intergalactic band of misfits the Starjammers, has returned! And he’s got a new recruit in the form of his son, young Cyclops himself! Scott Summers is leaving the X-Men behind to stay in space and learn a few valuable lessons from dad: 1) How to shave, 2) How to talk to women, 3) How to steal a Badoon spaceship.
Crap, that might’ve been a spoiler, too. Then again, it’s not very likely that you care an awful lot about Corsair, aka Christopher Summers, aka the guy who threw his children out of an airplane and then became a space pirate. One of those children was Scott Summers, aka Cyclops. Now, however, the 16-year-old version of Scott is in the present day, and now, Chris is alive, and they’re both in space. The adult Cyclops never got much time with his father, but this is teenage Scott and a new-lease-on-life dad. So they’re going to be a family again. No word on how Havok will feel about this.
The interesting thing is that it’s Greg Rucka, a guy who has been focusing on creator-owned work after seeing his stellar run on Punisher get tied up in a team book that made little sense at the time, which burnt him out on work-for-hire for a while. Now he’s back, and if anyone can make Cyclops interesting, it’s Rucka.
“This is a story about the two of them,” Rucka told CBR. “At the heart of everything we’re going to do here, it’s about these two. When you think about that 16-year-old Scott, what he’s carrying into this is pretty obvious. ‘I’ve spent eight years as an orphan, I’ve moved from place to place, and some places have been awful. I got to a place that was a good place, relatively, I had a father figure in Xavier, and I had a purpose — and then all of that got disrupted. And then here comes my real dad, and he’s Han Solo!’ So that’s awesome right there.”
Rucka is committed to making this a fun adventure book, and he’ll be working with Brian Michael Bendis on the time-travel story involving the original five X-Men, which doesn’t seem like it will be resolved anytime soon, if they’re launching a new ongoing in the midst of it. The first three issues of Cyclops are designed as stand-alones before building into a bigger story.
But Rucka is about character building, and if anyone could use some of that, it’s Scott Summers, who has been through the ringer so much in the last few years that they had to bring in a young version of him to get him out of it. Rucka mentioned something to CBR about the first issue that makes us think he’ll be able to make Cyclops compelling. “Near the end of the issue, there’s a moment between Scott and Chris, and Chris says, ‘I’m pretty sure I suck as a dad.’ Scott says, ‘That’s alright, I suck as a 16-year-old.’ Chris says, ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Scott: We all suck as a 16-year-olds.'”
This feels like Han Solo as young Luke Skywalker’s dad, trying to keep him from becoming Darth Vader himself. This feels like a story we’ll want to read.
