The X-Axis – 11 February 2026
Last week, five books. Next week, five books (including both X-Men titles and two Wolverine books). This week… well, Marvel would say two, but I don’t count Deadpool as an X-book for the same reason that I don’t count Alpha Flight. He’s his own thing, and there’s no reason to think that’s changing. So, no, I still don’t count Deadpool.
So.
CYCLOPS #1. By Alex Paknadel, Rogê Antônio, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Joe Caramagna. Always nice to see Alex Paknadel getting an outing beyond the Infinity Comics. Antônio did a few issues of Hellions back in the Krakoan era, and he worked on the previous Deadpool run. I like his work – it’s shiny and dynamic but also makes things like the Reavers’ assembly lab suitably bleak. And he gives Scott an impassive self-control that contrasts with everyone else.
There are good reasons why we don’t get many Cyclops solo stories – his defining characteristic is team leadership, and by definition a solo story takes him away from that. But it can work occasionally, as something that forces the character out of his comfort zone.
So what have we got here? Well, after a brief intro to remind us that Scott sees himself as running a team of soldiers, we get Scott meeting up with Dr Hanover – the nice one from Sinister’s orphanage – to see the orphanage site finally being cleared. Hanover still doesn’t know that there was anything behind the orphanage, but does see it as an abusive regime that she didn’t do enough to stop. The more interesting idea here is that while Scott believes that Sinister fails to break his spirit, Hanover thinks that it absolutely did, and that he started off much less repressed. That’s actually an angle worth exploring, as is the idea that Scott has just blithely written off this presumably formative period of his life as a minor piece of continuity that doesn’t come up very often.
Quite what this has to do with the rest of the story – which sees Scott being shot out of the sky by some overenthusiastic new Reavers, forcing Pierce to try his bunch of rookie cyborgs against Scott – is less obvious. Paknadel seems to be repositioning Pierce into more of a U-Men figure, who want to harness mutants for parts rather than kill them. And I guess that makes more sense for his cyborg gimmick, particularly given the sort of allies he’s had in the past. I suppose the idea is we’re going to get Pierce as the leader, and Scott as the lone wolf. But how that ties in with the orphanage material, it’s hard to say. Still, it’s a pretty strong first issue, all told.
Having read that, I wish Marvel sided with Morrison on the Gambit idea. That’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever read involving Gambit, and it never made it past pitch.
It’s also funny that Lobdell chose to kill Colossus and almost got away with killing Magneto immediately before Morrison took over on X-Men, when Morrison had major plans for both characters (obviously, the Magneto ideas came to fruition, but only by Marvel quickly changing Lobdell’s ending claiming that Magneto’s spine was severed but he didn’t die). Again, maybe the change with Colossus was for the better as Piotr was replaced by Emma Frost.
@Chris V – Actually, I believe Morrison had planned to use Emma before finding out Colossus was a no go. I think he just couldn’t remember precisely what her powers were (not surprising given that he mistakenly depicted Shaw as a telepath later in his run).
The diamond thing came about when Morrison said he (going from memory of old Wizard interviews here) “realized that Emma was yet another telepath who really didn’t fit in with the team”. So, he gave her the diamond mutation. By this point, he must’ve known Colossus wasn’t usable.
Hmm. I wonder if Morrison’s rejected Gambit-phantom pitch inspired that “Ambient Magnetic Fields” story of his from New X-Men 132. The one with the “ghosts” (fractured manifestation of repeated thoughts and voices) in Genosha.
@Chris V: Betsy was a model, charter pilot, and spy.
@John: If by “Phoenix” you mean Jean, she worked as a model. Cyclops also worked as a talk radio host for a while.
@Michael: Rachel has never had a real job, AFAIK. Given that she comes from a dystopian future and has a bad habit of getting lost in the time stream, that’s probably understandable.
Interestingly, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Polaris and Havok with real jobs either. The closest I think they’ve come was when we saw them doing field work for their doctoral program.
Alex is still in university. He graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and acquired his Bachelor’s by the age of 19, but deciding to emulate his under-achiever older brother, he’s been pursing his doctorate degree for ten years.
As far as I’m aware, Lorna graduated at the regular age, so she’s managed to finish high school, her four-year degree, and catch up with Alex while he’s been working on his doctorate. Poor Alex.
Polaris? She’s always being mind-controlled. That’s a full-time career for her at this point.
“Cyclops also worked as a talk radio host for a while.”
He did? I must’ve repressed that memory. I’m hard-pressed to think of an occupation that he’d be less suited to. Family counselor, I suppose.
Storm should get a job as a TV weatherperson. She’d be the only one in the industry who could just ad lib.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of Scott as a talk radio host. What could Scott even talk about on a radio program that might be remotely interesting or helpful to the average listener?
Plane crash survival tips? Fashionable eyewear frames? (<–I feel like this would need visuals) How to keep a secret from your mind-reading girlfriend?
I think Cyclops got a job as a radio DJ, not having his own radio talk show. I’d imagine the driest, most square radio program imaginable. “Hey, teeny-boppers. It’s your old pal, Scott. Someone said they wanted to hear this newfangled band, The Beatles, but frankly I’m concerned about the effects of this band on my fellow youths of today. Instead, I am going to play The Everly Brothers, all you cats and jammers. I see I have a call.” “Are you 60 years old?”
It was during the period when the government forced the X-Men to split up after Professor X faked his own death, and they each had to get a job. Which was also when Jean figured out she had no marketable skills in life and decided to become a fashion model.
Scott: They hired me at this radio station because I’m hip and with it, daddyo.
Jean: Poor Scott. I thought I had no life skills. He’s become totally deluded since Professor Xavier died.
No, I stand corrected. I looked at X-Men (vol. 1) #48, and Scott is a radio news reporter. He was apparently going to spend the week looking at the inner workings of the Mayoral administration. I’m assuming it was his last week on this job as well.
I bet Scott was a really biased political reporter. Being one-eyed and all that.
Ohhh. A reporter. Well, that’s different.
I was trying to imagine Scott as a radio personality and… well, I couldn’t.
I don’t have access to X-Men 48, but I did look back at Paul’s index coverage of the issue:
“Scott’s reports are every bit as exciting as you might imagine. (“How good is the good government administration of Mayor Van Clete? We’ll spend this week unravelling that political puzzle!”)”
Yep. That’s Scott alright. The world makes sense again.
Concerning the fact that Iceman was not available for use by Claremont, I imagine it may be related to the fact that the character had been associated with Spider-Man in the animated series Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, and perhaps Marvel had plans to use him in some related project (in addition to the one-shot released in 1981).
Scott Summers, the next Les Nesman.
@Midnighter- Byrne claims that Bobby was unavailable in the summer of 1980. Spider-Man and His American Friends premiered in September of 1981.
And Gruenwald famously proposed a “West Coast X-Men” title featuring Bobby, Hank and Warren in early 1982 but Claremont and Louise Jones came up with the New Mutants title instead.
“Byrne claims that Bobby was unavailable in the summer of 1980.”
I think Byrne was just making that shit up.
It’s awfully convenient that the character Byrne wasn’t yet comfortable drawing at this point in his career was conveniently unavailable for the Dark Phoenix Saga (where he’d have to be iced up for battle), but then magically became available again in time for Jean’s funeral service in 138.
It wouldn’t be the first time Byrne was completely wrong about something he claimed about his career. If it’s that Byrne makes it up or if he just is convinced that the story in his head is how it really happened after so many years is a different question.
Oh, he definitely makes shit up.
All those interviews he’s given where he said he never wanted to do an Alpha Flight series in the first place? Load of crap. He only started making that claim after he left the series. In the X-Men Companion magazine (with reviews conducted by Peter Sanderson in ’82) he was enthusiastic about doing an Alpha Flight series.
Here’s what I think happened with Iceman…
I think one of the requests Byrne made of Claremont when they first started working together was that Claremont not make him draw Iceman. Keep Iceman away.
Then the Dark Phoenix Saga came along, and Jean wasn’t originally meant to die in that story, and so keeping Iceman out of it was still doable.
But then Shooter ordered Jean’s death at the last minute, and now Byrne and Claremont had to prepare a funeral issue. And Claremont had to say to Byrne:
“Bobby wasn’t there for the fight. He *has* to show up for the funeral. The readers are already going to be angry enough about Jean dying. Some angry reader and future writer will probably even go so far as to pitch a way to bring her back for some spinoff series written by someone else entirely, even though there’s no chance of that ever happening. Anyway, we can’t have Bobby *not* show up for Jean’s funeral. He has to be there. But don’t worry. I’ll make it a plain clothes affair. Although there will be flashback sequences involving the original team. You’ll just have to do your best.”
Here’s the link to the Byrne/Sanderson interview. It’s difficult to cut paste the exchange where Byrne is talking enthusiastically about doing an Alpha Flight series because it’s a bunch of scanned pages from the original publication. To find it, you’ll want to click on the pages and look at the page numbers at the bottom until you find page 87. That’s where he talks about it.
https://tombrevoort.com/2023/01/22/the-x-men-companion-2-john-byrne-interview/
Didn’t Byrne spend plenty of time drawing Iceman during his run on the original volume of the Champions?
@Omar – That’s exactly why he didn’t want to draw him again. Michael posted a quote from him about this further back in the thread.
That explains why Iceman doesn’t appear throughout Byrne’s tenure, but not the part about him being supposedly unavailable for use. I suppose it’s possible Byrne genuinely misremembered this part (though he’s still a liar, liar, pants on fire). If Iceman was truly unavailable for 135-137, he shouldn’t have been available for 138 either.
So, I think it was just a matter of Claremont doing his best to keep Iceman out of the stories at Byrne’s request until it became absolutely necessary to have him make an appearance (Jean’s funeral).
By some accounts, Byrne wanted to get the O5 back into Uncanny, while Claremont was against it.
That’s why Angel rejoined the team post-Dark Phoenix Saga and was written out of the book shortly after Byrne quit.
But that info also relies on creators’ memories, so who knows exactly what happened or when.
Yes, he did, Omar. Although it was just five issues (#11-15).
And also in 1978’s “Hulk Annual #7” shortly after, where Angel and Iceman guest-starred.
@Thom – Those accounts (whosever they are) don’t sound to me like they could be accurate. Michael has Byrne quoted as saying that he found Iceman difficult to draw back when he was on Champions and that’s why he didn’t appear when Byrne was on X-Men, and that he didn’t figure Iceman out until he did Hidden Years. Hard to believe he misremembered any of that.
Angel replacing Scott isn’t surprising. Who else was left? Byrne didn’t want to draw Iceman and the Beast was already spoken for. Banshee was out of commission and that was at Byrne’s request as well (he felt his projectile attack was redundant because of Scott’s optic beam, and his elder role was redundant because Xavier was there). Havok, I suppose.
Oh, and Bobby (plus Alex and Lorna) showed up in the four issues of Uncanny immediately after Byrne left, published in early 1981.
@Moo: From Byrne on his website, right before all the other things he’s quoted in this thread saying:
“Whose idea was it for Angel to rejoin the X-Men?
JB: Mine. Part of my insidious plan to reassemble all the Real X-Men. (3/31/1998)”
Real info or just sarcasm? Who knows?
Also, I’ve definitely read an interview with Claremont somewhere (that’s literally as precise as I can be) that he got rid of Angel as quickly as he could, using that stupid “I think Wolverine is crazy!” excuse. Probably so he could focus more on Kitty.
@Thom – Um, I’m not sure what your point is there. You said Byrne wanted to bring the originals back, but as you said, he was gone by this point.
As for Angel getting written out. If that had to do with anyone in particular, it was likely Cockrum given that he was back on the series by this point, and this is what he said of Angel in that same magazine I referenced earlier…
“Angel has always bothered me. I’ve always been a big fan of Hawkman’s. Hawkman is a character to be reckoned with, but what’s Angel? He’s an idiot that flies.”
That was from the Sanderson interviews in ’82. Cockrum was still on the book at the time the interviews were conducted.
@Thom – Incidentally, that last post of mine was in reference to your post about Bobby, Alex, and Lorna showing up
Went to the trouble of typing all of this out from the magazine. Take a look at an idea for Angel that Cockrum had been toying with all those many years ago. Not too different from what eventually happened…
“I’ll tell you, my wife and I and Jo Duffy were kicking the Angel around- we were talking about winged characters and the Angel and one thing and another, and I designed a new character, which we worked out in a storyline about the Angel having gone schizo and turning into a Batman-style character. We called him Dark Angel and somehow or other we figured that by the end of the two or three-part story we were working out that Dark Angel would split off from Angel somehow and become a separate character. And we would have an ominous Batman-style winged character in dark garb and all that and black wings.”
The real problem is the makeup of the original team. A bird, an acrobat, a snowman, a guy with laser eyes and two psychics, one in a wheelchair. Not exactly the most dynamic or exciting of setups, is it? No wonder later creative teams started writing them out, giving them upgrades, anything to relieve the boredom… it’s a surprise at how long it took to introduce any new permanent members, especially since Alex and Lorna had no real staying power. 🙂
I think it’s safe to say that neither Claremont nor Byrne had much interest in using Iceman during their time on X-Men. Given that Cockrum only drew him in a handful of issues and that he didn’t show up in subsequent X-Men comics (outside of flashback panels and crossovers) until the ‘90s, I don’t think any other artists pushed for his inclusion either.
I could see Cyclops having a successful but short-lived radio career. “I was about to interview the deputy mayor, when out of nowhere a giant purple robot started smashing city hall, saying ‘mutant detected!’”
“Just like when you were about to interview the police commissioner, Scott?”
“… yes…uh, eyewitnesses described the robot as a ‘hoax’ or ‘a publicity stunt for some new sci-fi movie.’”
Pretty bland archetypes too. You had the Leader, the Girl, the Smart One, the Rich One, and the Youngest One.
Warren arguably got dealt the worst hand. Hank being the Smart One turned out to have great utility for writers when Beast eventually rejoined the X-Men. He figured out and explained all of the science stuff that comes up all the time in X-Men stories.
But Warren being rich never really mattered all that much. Xavier was already rich, so who cares? That, coupled with the general lameness of his mutation made for a pretty lousy combination of defining characteristics.
Yes, but he was the rich, pretty boy to make Scott feel more insecure and compete for Jean’s affections, for a time during the Silver Age. His weakness even helped Scott with his terrible guilt, as when he accidentally shot weak Warren with his great and powerful eyebeams, then was left to angst that maybe he did it on purpose because he wanted Warren out of the picture with Jean.
I like the idea that Scott shot Warren because he subconsciously wanted to.
Anyway, Warren’s “relationship foil” role for Scott and Jean obviously couldn’t go on indefinitely. If it did, Cyclops would have to change his name to “Blueballs”. Then we’d have two X-Men teams today. One led by Blueballs and one led by Goldballs.
@Moo: I mostly just thought the timing was funny.
Did Claremont write these stories for Byrne and then other artists ended up drawing them because Byrne quit? Or maybe Claremont wrote a bunch of older X-Men into the story to spite Byrne on his way out. That makes me laugh.
It also confirms that Bobby wasn’t as “off limits” as Byrne said he was. Or it’s possible that Bobby was off limits in certain ways (starring) and not in others (guest starring) and Byrne exaggerated the problem.
I do agree that Claremont generally wrote to his artists’ strengths and interests. One of the reasons Byrne wanted Angel on the team was because he enjoyed drawing him. And he didn’t enjoy drawing Iceman, as we know.
But Claremont wouldn’t have dropped a character he had plans for just because the artist didn’t like him. Especially not in such a rushed way.
“But Claremont wouldn’t have dropped a character he had plans for just because the artist didn’t like him.”
That’s precisely what Claremont did with Banshee. Byrne was very insistent.
Anyway, Claremont could’ve simply wanted to lose Angel and it’s not like Cockrum would’ve complained. If Claremont said that’s how it went down, then I guess it did.
But Byrne’s testimony about anything should be filed under “needs verification”
@Moo and Michael: Sorry. Missed that post in my quick skim of the comments. Makes me wonder how Byrne felt about Claremont scripting a story for him featuring Equinox, the villain who’s half-Iceman and half-Human Torch back in Marvel Team-Up v.1 #59-60.
As to Angel “going schizo” and becoming a Batman-type, that wasn’t too far from the origin Roy Thomas gave him back in the 1960s backups. Warren was established as a masked hero before he was an X-Man and shot ping-pong balls full of sedative gas at criminal.
He canonically first met the nascent team while he was especially aggressive after breathing in some of that very gas. So the Angel has a history of developing a belligerent alternate personality.
I wonder if the Cockrums and Duffy were aware of that material when they developed their idea.
Of course — honestly, Claremont’s the same way. Even if I can find that old interview with him, we should take everything in it with a grain of salt.
And I didn’t know that about Banshee. Interesting.
The Banshee stuff is there somewhere in that interview I linked to. It’s worth reading the whole thing g, honestly. There’s some other interesting stuff in there about Byrne’s frustration with Claremont’s depiction of Kitty, from her personality to her powers. Byrne didn’t want her to be a female Vision. The idea he had in mind was that when she passes through a wall, she doesn’t become intangible. She makes the wall intangible. Something about canceling the valence of the atoms of the things she touches when using her powers. She was always supposed to remain solid.
Warren as the Flash Thompson to Scott’s Peter Parker might’ve made the Silver Age X-Men slightly more interesting. When a character’s only defining personality traits are that he’s rich and handsome, there’s plenty of room to play him as a smug jerk.
@Thom H- The Doom story which featured the former X-Men was probably written by Claremont after he knew Byrne was leaving. That story was inspired by Marvel Two-in-One 68, which came out the same month as Uncanny X-Men 138. It would have taken time for Claremont to learn of the story, think of the Doom plot, etc. Byrne’s last issue was issue 143. Plus, Byrne DID NOT like the Doom story- he retconned the Doom in it into being a robot.
Regarding Claremont’s feelings for Warren, he had this to say in X-Men Companion 2:
“The problem with Angel, as we discovered after we put him back in the X-Men, is that he’s functionally redundant. The only thing he can really do is carry people around. He flies and he hits people, but considering the quality of the foes the X-Men run up against, that doesn’t really give him much opportunity to do things.”
@yrzhe – Absolutely. A more interesting presentation of Warren, and one that would have also made his wealth actually relevant, would have been if Xavier wasn’t rich at all, and that the school, the tech, everything was financed by the Worthingtons.
In exchange, Xavier had to accept the Worthingtons’ spoiled brat, obnoxiously conceited son Warren as a student- to help with him his mutation as well as to try to teach him some humility.
@Moo- Byrne hated the idea that Claremont made Kitty a genius- he wanted her to be a normal girl. Claremont did it because he needed someone to be the Smart One and explain things to readers and fix machinery, etc. It became really apparent after an Annual where the team needs someone to fix a machine that was designed by Tony Stark and they get Wolverine to do it. Yes, engineers like Tony are trained to make their inventions as easy to fix as possible but the idea that Wolverine could fix it was just ludicrous. At that point, Claremont realized he needed someone to play the role of the Smart One since Beast was unavailable.
#Michael – Hilarious that Claremont had to “discover” that about Warren *after* putting him in the book. You’d think have already realized that.
It sounds almost as though Warren lied on his resumé and Claremont didn’t find out how useless he was until after he gave him the job.
“@Moo – Byrne hated the idea that Claremont made Kitty a genius- he wanted her to be a normal girl.”
Yes, Byrne talked about that in the interview that I provided the link to.
But I don’t see anything in the Claremont interview about him making her a genius because he needed a genius, though. Where’s that from?
She really needed to be a genius. She was a 13-year old girl. Xavier is the only teacher at the Academy. The only thing Xavier knows how to teach youngsters is to put on spandex outfits. If Kitty was a regular girl, she’d end up stuck in high school longer than Alex has been trying to acquire his PhD.
@Chris V – Alex could get his PhD if he applied himself. He just needs Scott to set him on fire. I mean light a fire under him.
Make Kitty a normal girl and you deprive so many teenage boys in the 1980s of their fictional Mary Sue crush, especially the ones going thru their Bar Mitzahs in that time,