The Long-Threatened Amateur Analysis of Scott Summers's Girlfriends

Okay, so I've been intending to post this for a while: it's my rambling diatribe on how with every major love interest he has, Scott Summers is essentially dating stand-ins for his abusive (or at least lousy) father figures. This post can also be subtitled reason number #467 why Xavier should have realized his adopted son/pet general needed therapy for a long ass time.

So anyway, for the benefit of the less obsessed comic nerds in the community (is there a such thing), I'll do a quick run down of poor Cyclops's history. First, he had parents and a brother. Then there was a plane crash. Parents got kidnapped by aliens. Kids went splat, and essentially Alex bounced and Scott didn't.

After that, Alex gets adopted and Scott gets sent to an orphanage run by Mr. Sinister. It should probably be noted that orphanages of that type haven't been in vogue since the seventies. But Mr. Sinister is a batshit crazy Victorian telepath, so I'm thinking he doesn't care. So yeah, there's messiness involving brainwashing, torture, abuse, experimentation and at least one set of would-be adopted parents going splat on the side of a mountain. Eventually, sometime after having a weird dream involving a bald guy and a pretty red haired girl with a firebird motif, in which the bald guy is all "Hmm, nah, we'll collect him later", he runs away.

P.S. This is another reason Xavier sucks.

So anyway, he roams around the streets of Omaha (Nebraska has streets! News to me!) and hitches some trains and the like and eventually the powers kick in. This is awkward, and generally results in an angry mob. Fortunately, and by "fortunately" I mean "unfortunately", since this is Scott Summers we're talking about, he ends up getting taken in by a low life criminal, who is also telepathic by the way with a few extra powers (more on that later) named Jack Winters. A number of beatings and forced criminal endeavors later (which vary depending on the particular take on this part of his origin story), Jack ends up dead, and Xavier gets himself an abused teenager who he raises up to be his general.

Xavier is a dick.

So anyway, this totals to at least three telepathic father figures of debatable morality. And by "debatable", I mean "utter jerkasses." And I'm totally including Xavier in there. Dick.

Okay, so the first and most easily correlating girlfriend is totally Grant Morrison's fault. You see, Jack Winters, low life thug that he is, has a number of notable traits. 1) a last name related to the season directly opposite "summer". (Winters). 2) A code name related to a game. (Jack O'Diamonds). 3) Telepathy. 4) Additional powers including an "unbreakable diamond form."

And who's he dating now? A lovely upper crust lady who happens to have 1) a last name related to the season directly opposite "summer". (Frost). 2) A code name related to a game. (White Queen). 3) Telepathy. 4) An "unbreakable diamond form."

It's a bit awkward. And that's not even counting that the debatably healthiest portrayal of the Emma/Scott relationship involved her (granted under influence) basically spiking his brain like a volleyball and him THANKING her for it later. I'm just saying.

Sadly, I still think the Emma/Scott relationship is the healthier alternative to Scott and Jean.

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And speak of the devil, we'll move on to scary correlation number two. It's not as overt as Emma and Jack, but let's be frank, Xavier has always been a creepy spectre within the Scott-and-Jean relationship since the very beginning (where he mooned over her himself, then decided to try to push Scott into admitting his own feelings.) And then there was all the times he lied to the team and faked impairment or even death to push them further. That latter, he'd roped poor Jean into lying to others for him.

Of course, I'm not equating Jean to Xavier in morals. Jean is not actually a dick. Even if a future version of her totally mind-whammied her husband into a relationship with Emma Frost after her death. (I know some folks see it as "encouragement" but when you look at how the scene from NXM 151 goes from this:page 1, page 2, to THIS in 154: page 1, page 2... Well, honestly, I'm not sure it's not the weirdest case of spousal rape-by-proxy-for-his-own-good-and-the-future I've ever seen. At the very least, she definitely overwrote his will and that's pretty dickish.)

But anyway, Jean, like Xavier, has a tendency, I think, to make "for your own good" type judgments. Granted, unlike Xavier, she seems to be right more often. But this is a post about the similarities, not the differences.

Beyond that, there are circumstantial ties: he only met Jean THROUGH Xavier and the team. She's always been kind of symbolic for him, in the same way that Xavier and the dream are.

(For the record, they're still my favorite X-couple. But they're kind of fucked up, regardless. When she inevitably comes back to life/ages up properly and yoinks back her husband, I suggest couples' counseling.)
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The next one is even more of a stretch, but considering that he MADE her, I think equating Madelyne Pryor and Mr. Sinister is not completely unfair. (Which is why I tend to give Scott a pass for most of the Madelyne related dickishness. I mean, when the guy who raises you, clones the love of your life, and basically MAKES her specifically to appeal to you - including making her a PILOT, yeesh, you don't really have a prayer, even if you aren't completely fucked in the head.)
There may be an interesting comparison to make with Essex's transformation to Mr. Sinister and Madelyne's to the Goblin Queen, too, but the first part's probably enough alone.
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Of course, there's a special exception for the only girlfriend/relationship Scott's ever had that could even remotely be classified as healthy. Lee Forrester, the shrimp boat captain. A relatively low pressure, low complication relationship with a woman who isn't even a telepath!

But I'm never one to drop a metaphor even when it doesn't really fit anymore. So I've decided shrimp-boat captain = space pirate. They both tend to be largely unconnected to the drama of the X-Men Universe (discounting the part where Corsair's currently dead, as far as I know, but he's a Summers. They'll fix that eventually. If they haven't already.) And really, Scott would be much happier/healthier if he just ran away to become a shrimp fisherman again. Or a space pirate (didn't Alex Summers visit a universe like that at some point?).

So yeah, basically the entire point of this post is to show that if you really want to sleep with Scott Summers, you apparently need to parallel one of his father figures. Or retcon/time travel a new one in. Or you know. Get the guy some actual, legitimate, psychiatric help. But how likely is THAT to happen?