Well, no messing around with that story title, is there? \u00a0Still, coming after the decidedly underwhelming “Disassembled” arc, this is more like it. \u00a0It’s no classic – there’s an unavoidable sense of a writer and his editors grabbing the story by the neck and yanking it into the desired position. \u00a0But on the flip side, it also brings a clear sense of what it’s trying to accomplish, and it gets there in a fairly satisfying and efficient way. \u00a0It does a rather better job than “Disassembled” of conveying a sense of purpose.<\/p>\n
“The Return of Cyclops” is written by Ed Brisson, one of the X-books’ regular stable of writers, with strong art by Carlos Gomez. \u00a0It’s solid storytelling that adds to the scenes with some decent acting, and hopefully Marvel US will do more with him. \u00a0He does a particularly solid job with the young Cable, who comes across as annoyingly relaxed for much of the issue, something that plays nicely into the way he acts. \u00a0But the scene of the villain returning to his neglected lab after years in jail is also beautifully done.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Technically Cyclops already made his return in the epilogues of\u00a0Extermination<\/em>, and of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #10. \u00a0But this story has the remit of doing the heavy lifting. \u00a0There are two big tasks here: explain why Cyclops isn’t dead any more, and clear the decks to get him ready for the next storyline.<\/p>\n The first point is basically a matter of plot mechanics, and the solution is mercifully straightforward. \u00a0It takes advantage of the fact that Cyclops was already brought back very briefly in\u00a0Phoenix Resurrection<\/em>, when the Phoenix was trying to win round Jean Grey. \u00a0Young Cable, being a time traveller, knows that’s going to happen, and sets up a device to divert a bit of the Phoenix to revive Cyclops for real. \u00a0And that’s it. \u00a0It’s a bit hand-wavy, and there’s a minor plot hole (why does Cyclops end up buried again, other than so he can dramatically emerge from his grave?). \u00a0But it gets the job done using only elements that were already on the board, so it’s comparatively elegant and means we don’t have to think about it again.<\/p>\n And that leaves more space to do an actual story, designed to justify a reset of Cyclops to a more traditional depiction as a conventional hero. \u00a0This is an exercise in booting the Bendis run, and arguably most of the Utopia era, into touch – not ignoring it, in as much as Cyclops is still going to have to atone and reclaim his traditional role, but definitively resetting the personality of Cyclops himself.<\/p>\n So the story opens with a flashback to the Silver Age, complete with throwback colouring and conservative page layouts, in which Cyclops does some conventional superheroing and stops a mad scientist from taking revenge on his students. \u00a0It’s a scene of no importance whatsoever in Cyclops’ life (until now), but the student he rescues, Paul Douek, grows up as a huge admirer of Cyclops. \u00a0That lets Cable enlist him to help in bringing Cyclops back, and also means the first thing the returned Cyclops gets is a gushing speech of thanks from a Silver Age admirer. \u00a0Cyclops promptly reverts to his Whedon-era costume, and winds up rescuing Douek from the mad scientist villain again, choosing to do the proper, superheroic thing instead of racing off to join the big fight against X-Man in\u00a0Uncanny<\/em> #10.<\/p>\n It’s all about getting Scott to see the last few years as him succumbing to anger and betraying his values. \u00a0So if you liked that direction, well, tough, because it’s underneath a bus now. \u00a0But the “mutant revolution” was so vague and so badly thought out that it had it coming.<\/p>\n What makes this story more than merely a mechanical exercise is Cable’s role. \u00a0He’s nakedly manipulative and bullying towards other characters, taking the line that he’s doing what needs to be done, but it’s clear that his motives are complex than that. \u00a0Supposedly he’s all about protecting the timeline, and he got rid of the older Cable when that version failed to do the job. \u00a0(He talks as though this wasn’t a murder so much as a pruning of an errant timeline.) \u00a0But this Cable’s notion of preserving the timeline seems suspiciously close to making things the way he thinks they “should be”, for reasons he can’t actually explain or justify beyond gut feeling. \u00a0And restoring and redeeming his father seems ultimately to have nothing much to do with that agenda at all. \u00a0He’s possessive, controlling, and generally reluctant to let Scott go his own way in case he fails to live up to the agenda. \u00a0Scott’s comparative tolerance of all this is also curious; he seems willing to rationalise it as the behaviour of a distraught loved one.<\/p>\n That’s the added dimension which takes this story beyond its immediate agenda and makes it a more interesting read. \u00a0Given that “Disassembled” didn’t fill me with much confidence about where things were going, this is a definite relief.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, no messing around with that story title, is there? \u00a0Still, coming after the decidedly underwhelming “Disassembled” arc, this is more like it. \u00a0It’s no classic – there’s an unavoidable sense of a writer and his editors grabbing the story by the neck and yanking it into the desired position. \u00a0But on the flip side, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4483,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482\/revisions\/4483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}