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Apr 6

Cyclops vol 2 – “A Pirate’s Life For Me”

Posted on Monday, April 6, 2015 by Paul in x-axis

The first volume of Cyclops was one of the quiet gems of the line last year.  Plainly never intended for anything more than a short run (though sales would probably have done for it anyway), and doomed to be seen as a footnote to All-New X-Men, the second volume nonetheless has a good stab at completing the title character’s arc.

But while the first five issues were written by Greg Rucka, this arc sees John Layman take over. Layman’s  good in his own right, though, and for most of this book he does a solid job of continuing what Rucka had started.  Broadly, the idea seems to be that the series starts with Scott depressed by the knowledge of what his older self will become, and sees him gradually regain his confidence and mature into a (somewhat) different sort of hero under the different mentorship of his father Corsair, who was absent the first time around.  So instead of Cyclops being defined by the X-Men, this is Cyclops having formative experiences in the Starjammers’ milieu.

One problem with the set-up is that Corsair is saddled with the Starjammers as his supporting cast, but they’re entirely superfluous to requirements as far as this book is concerned.  So, just like Rucka in the first volume, Layman sidelines the rest of the crew as quickly as humanly possible.  A rival pirate ship led by Corsair’s (apparently) old nemesis Valesh Malafect captures the crew, fires the Starjammers into space (which lets Scott heroically save them and otherwise gets them out of the plot), slings Corsair into the brig, and takes on Scott as a new crew member, not realising that he’s Corsair’s son.

What follows is several issues of Scott working with the rival crew and bonding with some of them – including the captain’s teenage daughter Vileena – enough that he’s not willing to throw them to the wolves when the time comes to make an escape.  This despite the fact that the Desolation’s crew are pretty much happy to kill anyone they attack; they’re not especially nice guys, but they do at least have some group loyalty, and since Scott is posing as a loyal crew member, most of them dutifully reciprocate.

This does start to verge into territory where a Starjammers story probably doesn’t want to go.  By giving us a “dark” version of the Starjammers, it rather begs of how a “heroic” crew of pirates actually works.  But of course, the Starjammers are “pirates” in the sense of being swashbucklers relocated to space; they’re tied to pulp fiction, not guys with machine guns off the coast of Somalia.  Probably wisely, Layman just keeps his head down and ignores the whole issue rather than try to explain it.

And these issues are good.  Layman has the voice of the teenage Cyclops down, and the dynamic of him simultaneously outwitting his new shipmates and starting to identify with them works very well.  Artist Javier Garron is well suited to the material, getting the “pirates in space” set-up effortlessly, and bringing plenty of life to his characters.  His Cyclops is maybe a bit too nerdy in issue #6, but he sells the comedy moments and the hook of Scott staying one step ahead of the rest of the crew.

Vileena works very well as a foil in those issues; she’s set up convincingly as an alternative love interest to Jean, which both plays into the general story of his divided loyalties, and helps to further extract him from the established course of his life.  The question of how she’s going to react when she finds out that he’s stringing them all along is precisely the sort of soap opera hook that works for the X-books.

Unfortunately, it all goes a bit awry in the last couple of issues.  The answer to “how will Vileena react” is “by turning into a crazy ex-girlfriend who wants to kill him”.  And that’s disappointing; she goes from a reasonably rounded character to a one-dimensional caricature almost instantly.  Fair enough, there’s got to be a backlash, but it’s played way, way over the top; the gear change is jarring and it doesn’t feel right as a resolution for her story.

And then we hit the final issue, in which Layman attempts to simultaneously deliver a thematic finale for the series, while also writing a middle chapter of the “Black Vortex” crossover.  This goes about as well as you’d expect.

For example, a main theme of this series is the father-son relationship with Corsair.  So you’d think it might be nice to have Corsair in the final issue.  And indeed, Layman clearly really wants to write a scene in which a final pep talk from his dad leads Cyclops to step up to the plate and accept his heroic mantle.  But the plot of “Black Vortex” doesn’t allow for that, because it has Corsair trapped on the planet Spartax.  Layman’s solution is to have Scott apparently receive that pep talk from Corsair telepathically, only for it to turn out that he’s imagining the whole thing and it’s just his own self-belief.

This is… pretty excruciating, really.  It’s awkward enough that I wonder whether the original idea was a telepathic pep talk and they ended up trying to shoehorn the scene into the story anyway.  In the event, the result is a story where Scott inexplicably hallucinates before making a key decision.  It doesn’t work at all.

Worse yet, the plot of this series wants Scott to complete his character arc by embracing his role as hero.  But the plot of “Black Vortex” calls for him to submit to the Black Vortex, which by this point in the story has been clearly established as a dangerously self-destructive thing to do.  Surprisingly, this being a crossover, the interests of the series prevail – and so, for one night only, submitting to the Black Vortex is a good, brave and courageous decision.  In fairness, it’s conceivable that this might be heading somewhere in the crossover story, by giving this Cyclops an opportunity to show that he can handle the sort of cosmic power that his adult version couldn’t.  But it reads quite bizarrely on any view.

It’s a noble effort to make a crossover chapter double as the finale of a series, even though the two stories have little or no overlap – and it’s clear Layman knew that this was coming, because earlier issues are already setting up the crossover to make sure it doesn’t come out of nowhere – but it’s an impossible task that gets the book caught up into some pretty horrid convolutions.

Which is a shame, because there’s two thirds of a good volume here, and the good bits are self-contained enough to make it just about worth recommending for them.  But boy, does it spin off the road at the end.

Bring on the comments

  1. Jamie says:

    Why do crossover stories these days have so many goddamn parts? The ’90s are truly back.

  2. joseph says:

    It doesn’t compare with Rucka’s run, which was more multifaceted and seemed longer than it actually was, but I mostly enjoyed Layman’s work here. The final issue, however, was really inadequate as a conclusion. It left me googling to clarify that there would indeed be no further issues. Why are final issues such secrets these days?

  3. BringTheNoise says:

    I really hope that post-Secret Wars/Convergence both of the Big Two stop doing line wide crossovers for a while, but I’m not exactly holding my breath

  4. The original Matt says:

    That would be nice. Let all the various IPs settle into themselves for a year or 2, then start slowly crossing them over again. After 5 years of that the Avengers, the X-Men and spiderman meeting back up would be exciting.

  5. Jamie says:

    “Why are final issues such secrets these days?”

    News of cancellation causes a greater drop in sales. People jump ship early when they hear it’s sinking.

  6. Zach Adams says:

    Vileena Malafect is easily the best worst character name in AGES. Was Evilyn Badguy taken?

  7. I had a Vileena Malafact but the handle broke and I ended up just using kitchen roll and my foot.

    //\Oo/\\

  8. odessasteps says:

    It seems like such a personal book for Rucka, so it would have been hard for anyone to follow.

  9. Jason says:

    The Starjammers are pirates against the Shi’ar who despite a decent relationship with the X-men aren’t the best people around. That’s how they work

  10. Nu-D. says:

    So is X-Axis on it’s deathbed? It’s not even a weekly review anymore.

  11. Chris says:

    X-Axis reviews when the story is completed or packed for trade….. so I think the X-Axis comes out when those rare events happen.

    I can’t wait to make fun of the All-New Iceman clumsy reveal…. well, “reveal”

  12. Gay Iceman aside, Young Jean Grey’s invasive approach to telepath ethics are making the Stepford Cuckoos seem pretty saintly.

  13. wwk5d says:

    Bad fanfiction come to life!

  14. I was going to say Jean Grey’s telepathy ethics makes White Queen and Xavier look saintly, but no, if we have to assign levels here, telepathically outing your friend is still a few levels below making someone’s pony explode (Emma) or covering up the botched operation that lead to the death of your pupil’s long lost brother (Xavier).
    …Comics! Mindreaders are bad people.

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