An Awesome Scott Summers Moment

Most of Austen's run on X-Men is pretty awful, in my opinion. What with the Alex-leaving-Lorna-at-the-altar shit, Lorna being a flipped out homicidal slutty shrew, and don't get me STARTED on the Nightcrawler idiocy.

But there was one thing he did that I actually really liked. And that was his portrayal of Scott Summers.

Okay, a bit of background. Alex was dimension travelling for a while. He came back in a coma. The girl, Annie, was a nurse at the hospital. She didn't know who he was, but between the telepathic assistance of her son (long story) and her own kind of crappy life, she started falling for him.

Anyway, she sees a news article, figures out who her patient is, and calls the institute. Scott comes and retrieves his brother in a very cute scene leading to this bit from Uncanny X-Men 412.



(It probably should be noted that the scene Scott interrupted made it pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that Annie was falling hard for Alex.)

But anyway. I love this. I really do. This is Scott at his kindest right here. Okay, granted, he's not very GOOD at it. I put up the full page, because it shows exactly how abrupt he is. Scott, you have all the subtlety and gentleness of that brick someone chucked at your head during Exodus.

But at the same time, it totally melted my stone heart a little. Because abrupt or not, it really was the kindest he could be to her. At the moment, (telepathic son connecting their minds on a subconscious level aside), Annie is in a fantasy that will very soon come crashing into reality. Alex had a girl (Lorna), Alex loved the girl, and she's waiting for him. Scott could be more tactful, but he's essentially just ripping off the bandaid here. And the nice thing about his abruptness is that he never makes any accusation or reference to her previous behavior or emotional attachment. He lets her keep her dignity.

That means a LOT. For someone like her. For someone like him. That's pretty much all they've got.

And this might be intentional or not, but it really reminds me a LOT of the X-Factor storyline with Jean, Scott, and Madelyne. Granted, there are notable differences: the biggest being that Alex is in a COMA rather than too chickenshit to actually TALK to Annie/Jean. (As a side note, when you start looking at the characters in question, Annie has a lot more similarities to Scott than to Jean, far more than Alex does.) But I still wonder if one of the reasons he's doing it is because of his own experiences. He's doing for his brother what he wished someone had done for him.

Scott also gets additional awesome moments in otherwise mediocre storyline. He is the one to really notice that Alex, once awake, appears to be much more interested in Annie than Lorna. And even tries to get Alex to get a clue about his own feelings before either going through with the wedding or doing something really dickish like leaving her at the ALTAR. (*cough*DamnitAusten*cough*). Of course, being Scott, he does this by way of a shapeshifting stripper taking Annie's general appearance as opposed to, you know, TALKING with his brother. But Scott's always been good at taking dickishness and dysfunction to utterly magical levels of awesome.

And he's always incredibly kind to Annie. Not always the warmest, most approachable kind of kindness. But, it was true to the character, and nice. And really one of the few bright spots in a not so very appealing run.