UNCANNY X-MEN #391: Dad

Cyclops and Corsair hash it out on a fishing trip

Originally published April 2001

We begin with this fella:

Yes, somehow Cyclops returned, sporting Barry Watson's hair no less! 

How did this happen? Well, you would know if you joined us on Patreon and read limited series X-Men: The Search For Cyclops, in which Cyclops is searched for (spoiler: he is found.)

Scott's first order of business is not to spend time quality time with his wife Jean Grey, but, after ruminating on Colossus' sacrifice ever so briefly (and feeling responsible despite not even being present,) contacting this guy:

Yes, it's quality time with the family. And while you might think that means his wife, who has been grieving his absence for many months, or even his son whom he could stand to forge a better relationship with, he has instead called on his emotionally stunted spaceman father, Corsair, for a little woodsy excursion.

The two head out for some fishing, which reminds Corsair of an amusing anecdote from his time on the planet Aquanox...

But ah, you kinda had to be there.

Later, they pitch a tent and gather some kindling and Corsair makes a classic mistake by asking Scott to use his "heat vision" to start a fire.

I'm sorry I didn't know that, I'm not a nerd.

Cyclops goes for a sulk, looking out over the canyon. Corsair, incapable of reading a situation, goes to join him and makes his second faux pas when he tries to make chitchat about all the pretty colors.

Having failed in dramatic fashion to bond with his son, Corsair goes to leave, when Cyclops pulls out the big question -- why didn't you ever come back to Earth for your sons?

When Corsair gives a weak tea response about being busy Starjamming, Cyclops calls him out, saying that at the very least he could have confirmed that he was alive.

Christopher digs a little deeper by pointing out that what with escaping slavery and having his wife murdered before his eyes, he kind of felt like moving on from Earth at that point.

Things get heated...

Careful Corsair, he might roast you with his heat vision

Cyclops goes on to say that he, too, lost a son in melodramatic sci-fi fashion, but unlike Corsair, he followed said son to the future, to raise him in a secret donor body, so why couldn't Corsair have hopped into his fabulous spaceship and come back to Earth for a birthday or two??

Okay, Cyclops, let's not pat ourselves on the back too much

So Corsair breaks down and admits, he was just too ashamed to come back. That he had failed to keep Scott and Alex safe, and Katherine too, and that they were better off without him.

At long last, he does the only thing there is to do, and apologizes.

At this, Scott has but one question to ask.

With that, male bonding has been achieved.

And so they reminisce about the good times. It'll bring a tear to a ruby quartz-covered eye.

Issues resolved, trauma processed. The end.

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Further Thoughts:

Here's an issue that feels way, way ahead of its time, and somewhat unlike even the types of breather issues that X-Men comics have been known for. It brings to mind how, in the last fifteen years or so, it's been common for premium drama and comedy shows to randomly devote an entire episode to characters in a setting and situation completely aside from the usual plot -- often camping or getting stuck somewhere. There will be moments of whimsy and humor until the guard comes down and characters become vulnerable, or the storytellers reveal the truth of the situation. This kind of excursion, full of tangents that reveal character without particularly relating to the over-arching themes of the X-Men, where dialogue is loaded with implied meaning instead of being prosaic and in-the-moment is a lot more common in later years when comic writers started to get more ambitious and feel the influence of other kinds of writing, and, I suspect, try to take more pleasure in their craft. 

It doesn't at all feel like something that happened in comic books at the turn of the century. (In particular it feels like a Brian Michael Bendis comic form the late 2000s-2010s.) But here we are.

Why this issue, why now? Obviously, the remit was to do a Cyclops story to fully initiate his return to the team; the premise is that he's out here getting his head right after being separated from Apocalypse, reborn, whatever you would call it. As I mentioned above, it might have been nice to do something with the X-Men characters that are closest to Cyclops, particularly Jean and Cable, but maybe the other O5 or the Professor or even Wolverine or Storm. But it is a different story, and the story that it is, because Cyclops is out here away from the regular cast, and with his father, with whom he does indeed have a fraught relationship.

Or does he? This issue certainly does echo all the whining and crying Scott did when he first learned that Corsair was his father, but... hadn't we gotten past that at some point? They've long since hugged it out, and while in reality it's not at all wrong for the healing process to take years, in fiction it's kind of flogging a dead horse. Corsair hasn't appeared very much recently, I'm really not sure why he's here today or why we needed to run back over this relationship.

Buuuuuut, it appears to have been the issue Scott Lobdell wanted to write, and by gar he wrote it. Regardless of what you think about the actually content, of Cyclops' relationship with his father and how they work through it, the form it takes is a sensitive and artful examination. Salvador Larocca punctuates the thing with airy, tense silences that weren't common for a Marvel comic book at the time but are wholly appropriate. Superficially, this is great, and if you enjoy the complex dynamic at work here -- hey, maybe you haven't been reading the X-Men for 40 years like I have at this point and this is all new to you -- I can totally see it working.