what writers do you think ruined him?

Whichever writers decided he had more long lost relatives than Blake Carrington.

Back in the day, when the creators knew who he was, Cyclops wasn't just my favorite X-Man, he was up among my favorite Marvel characters. Since the days of Byrne and Claremont on X-Men, however, I don't think writers have really understood what made Scott Summers work. Bringing in Madelyne Pryor and then mangling that relationship when Jean returned was horrible; it betrayed the essence of Cyclops as "the guy who embodies responsibility."

His characterization has been hit or miss in the last several years. The original Cyclops is terrific-- but I don't know the guy with the visor these days. The last time we saw CYCLOPS was in JB's Hidden Years.

A hero who drops wife and son so he can return with his first love wasn't well accepted. I didn't like that, either.

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To be fair his true love had just returned from the dead. So I think anybody could get a pass for acting out of character.

Unlike many people, it seems, I am one of the few that actually like the leader characters the best in team comics. I like Reed Richards (the REAL Reed, not whoever that jerk is in the current Marvel Universe), Captain America, and Cyclops the best out of the members from their respective teams.

I do think that much of the bad writing of these kind of characters come from people who think such characters are uncool, and boring because the characters have (had?) solid ethics and values, and were, well, leaders. As such, they are deemed "authority figures," and some people pride themselves on being anti-authority. Many of the writers probably think they are taking a pop at authority by writing the characters so out of, well, character.

OK...I've been thinking about exactly when Cyclops's character started to be portrayed badly. I think the biggest shift started to happen when the powers that be decided to launch the X-Factor title. Obviously, they had to have Cyclops leave the main X-Men book to get to X-Factor, and it seems the only way they could do this was to have him act completely out of character.

  X-Men 200-201: Magneto has just had his trial and has ended up at the mansion with the X-Men and New Mutants, supposedly changing his ways. Professor Xavier has vanished, is possibly dead, but no one can be certain since there is no body (because he's been teleported away by the Starjammers)

   Cyclops now proceeds to let himself get talked into a duel with Storm over who gets to lead the X-Men. Storm, who has no powers at the time, beats Cyclops, who should be able to anticipate her every move and easily win. Wolverine blames this on his heart no longer being in it. After losing the fight, Scott just packs up and leaves. This is WAY out of character.

 Cyclops was basically raised and mentored by Charles Xavier to become leader of the X-Men. He has dedicated his whole life to Xavier's mission. Under these particular circumstances, there is no way he would have just walked away, whether or not he and Madelyne had just had a baby. Prof. X was missing, Magneto, who had been trying to kill Scott since he was 17, was living in the mansion, etc. etc.   

  The Cyclops I knew would have rallied his team around him, been the leader he always was in the past, kicked Magneto out of that mansion and as far away from the students as possible, or at the very least kept him under very, very close scrutiny, and then pulled out all the stops to do everything possible to find Professor Xavier, including appealing to Reed Richards, Doctor Strange and everyone else neccesary to find Xavier.

   Looking back, it appears that for the sake of starting the spin-off title X-Factor, the writers at the time could find no better way to include Cyclops in that book than completely stripping away the characteristics that made him one of the 3 best leaders in Marvel comics history.