Scott Summers in his alias as Cyclops is by far one of my most appreciated characters when I was growing up. He was the one whose costume was most loyal. He was the one who led the team. It was his role to captivate a youth’s mind by inviting him into the scenario, invoking the thought: what if you were in control of an X-Man covert mission. Even as other titles found his presence, his integrity persisted.

Who is this hero? How exactly does a character of this caliber find himself in the creative domain we used to know as Marvel. Is it safe to say he has had the most lasting prowess as far as a team member goes? What exactly inspired Stan to devise Scott and his brother’s origin in the manner it was, do you suppose? Would you place him in the top ten super heroes of all time?

I find staples like Cyclops are what brought the boom of Marvel and DC. Is it the recent lack of introducing new kinds of characters like Cyclops that have brought the industry down, is it just hasty publication and a refusal to recognize the reader's interest, or do you think comics are in a relatively healthy state instead?

Cyclops is a problematic character.  He is a cypher for 'collective responsibility' and, as such, he is difficult to humanise.  JB and Chris Claremont did a great job of making me give a shit about his fucked-up relationship with a woman more powerful than he, a woman who never seemed (to me) to be fully in love with him.

Fire at will.

David, I'm not going to start naming names right now since I don't have my comics collection here with me in my small apartment (its in storage).

  It's not so much a specific point where Cyclops went in what I consider to be the wrong direction, but rather that he gradually turned more and more into too much of a brooding mess, rather than the strong leader he was. he always had a tendency to be serious to a great degree and expect a lot of himself, but those went from being portrayed as positive traits to being shown in a light that made them seem like weaknesses on many occasions.

 As I said, I don't want to start tossing writers names around without looking up the stories (some of which I haven't seen in years) but I will say that Claremont isn't completely blameless.

  Lest that be taken the wrong way, let me add that I like Claremont's work overall. he is in my list of favorite writers and his X-Men were remarkably consistent in quality for many years, but he did "drop the ball" somewhat around the early 200s of Uncanny.

Aaron Smith wrote:

Cyclops, in my opinion, and i suspect in the opinions of many long-time fans, is the type of character that used to make Marvel so good. He was the member of the X-Men that I always identified with. He had the same sort of appeal that Peter Parker had, although with a different personality.

***

Yes.

Scott Summers was the shy guy who didn't think of himself as a hunk.

Warren Worthington III, the filthy rich kid, was not shy.  He was a hunk and knew it.  He wanted to be with the beautiful Jean Grey.

But, Jean was attracted to Scott.