WHY CYCLOPS IS "THE CYCLOPS"
I've become absolutely obsessed with Greek mythology, myths, legends, tragedies, the whole package. Since I have no idea how to start a proper blog, Tumblr currently looks like the perfect place to be annoying on purpose. My first blogging trend is going to be matching superheroes with stories and works from Greek mythology.
Because why not?? :D
When I was a kid, I really hated the X-Men.
I'm the kind of person who develops aggressively specific favorites, so when someone said Marvel, my mind immediately went to the Avengers and all of their popular flagship heroes. I saw the X-Men as some kind of knockoff secondary team and whenever X-Men came on TV I would get genuinely irritated. Yes, actually irritated :D
I'd sit there thinking, "These are basically the same thing. Why does this even exist? This is so stupid."
But after eventually giving the X-Men a chance or more accurately, being repeatedly exposed to them I realized something.
They aren't traditional cape-and-tights superhero stories... When confronted with difficult situations, they don't react in ways that morally satisfy the audience. Quite the opposite. They're uncomfortable. Their traumas are much uglier and far more destructive. They're ostracized. Alienated. Marginalized.
I don't really want to get into the whole famous "superheroes are defenders of the status quo" discourse because there are genuinely stories that go far beyond that.
But since I want to praise the X-Men, I kind of have to make the comparison. Sorry :D
See, teams like the Avengers or the Justice Leagu and the traditional superhero archetype in general do, at their core, function as protectors of the status quo.
Sometimes they're literally made up of government-backed soldiers, billionaires, and gods.
Most comic book stories move along a fairly linear track. Of course, if you want to dig deeper into the superhero genre, it branches out into all sorts of fascinating territory. Spider-Man struggling to balance being a person and being a hero. Superman wrestling with humanity. Things like that.
But in the end, most stories are built around the world's order being disrupted and superheroes restoring that order.
Especially stories centered around superhero teams.
The X-Men can't protect the status quo because they are literally the thing that disrupts it!
A mutant waking up in the morning and simply existing can alter geopolitical balances.
Nobody hands them the keys to the city. Instead, they're met with Sentinel death squads, registration acts, and "cure" programs.
Traditional heroes fight for a world that loves them. Even when that world doesn't, the story is usually framed in a way that allows the conflict to be resolved.
With the X-Men, it's the exact opposite.
The problems they face are not things they can simply solve. They live in a world where their biological existence is viewed as a crime, and they struggle not only to survive in that world, but to be heroes within it. ANNND I find that immediately fascinating. I mean It's built upon a rejection of the "ideal".
These are not heroes whose identities depend on humanity's approval and support.
The Avengers, as a concept, offer us an aspiration. An ideal. We want to be as brave as Captain America or as intelligent as Iron Man. The X-Men offer us something different. They offer the feeling of being understood. Honestly, I think the X-Men have an incredibly strong queer and neurodivergent sub-textual foundation.
Don't laugh. I'm serious.
For example, Spider-Man is one of my favorite superheroes. I'm obsessed with relatable heroes, and Spider-Man absolutely is one. But as I said, Spider-Man exists within a much more easily framed "ideal" problem. After all, what happened to him was essentially an accident! Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. His powers are the result of an external incident that happened to him. Because of that, Peter can wear a mask. When the burden of being a superhero becomes too much, he can throw his costume into a trash can and walk away. In fact, he's done exactly that many times. Even if people hate a masked vigilante, nobody hates Peter Parker for what he is. If Peter keeps his identity hidden, he can still be accepted by the system. (Of course, we don't want that! the whole story revolves around this responsibility 😭)
BUTTTT Mutants, on the other hand, are born with the X-Gene. It is a biological reality for them. For many mutants, there isn't some magical costume waiting to help them. And even when there is, they still have to live with what they are. (Which is kind of the entire point here :D)
They cannot stop being mutants. Their powers usually emerge during adolescence—the exact period when a child first begins to realize they may be queer, neurodivergent, or fundamentally "different" from their family and the people around them. And those powers are rarely clean, elegant, or cool.
More often, they're grotesque, difficult to control, and deeply traumatic.
Cyclops can't open his eyes.
Rogue can't touch another person.
Nightcrawler literally looks like a demon.
The X-Men is, at its heart, a story about accepting who you are and building a family from that acceptance.
And the toxic father of that family is Cyclops. :D
Now, not every work of art across every medium is secretly hiding some deeper symbolic meaning. That's not what I'm claiming. This is mostly something I do for my own enjoyment.
However, when you genuinely start looking at stories through an analytical lens, you often discover fascinating connections.
When you look at Cyclops as a character, the most obvious thought is: Oh, he has one eye and a sort of tunnel vision. Cyclopes were like that." And honestly, there's a very good chance that's exactly why the name was chosen. But when you start looking at Cyclopes in Greek mythology, things become much more interesting. Even if the comparison wasn't intentional, that's what literary analysis is for :D When we look at the stories of the Cyclopes in Greek mythology, we begin to notice some interesting parallels
HESIOD, THEOGONY
If you've read Hesiod's Theogony, you'll know that the Cyclopes were not mindless monsters. In fact, contrary to popular belief, they were far more than that. In the Theogony, the first three Cyclopes were the children of Uranus: Brontes (Thunder), Steropes (Lightning), and Arges (Brightness). Uranus feared the power of his children and, more importantly, the uncontrollable nature of that power. So he imprisoned them in the depths of Tartarus the moment they were born. Until Zeus freed them, they spent their entire existence in darknes, isolated, imprisoned, and forgotten. When Zeus finally released them, they chose to forge his thunderbolts: the most powerful weapons in his arsenal. They became the greatest craftsmen of Zeus's military order. I know I know, This is not a perfect one-to-one match for Scott Summers' origin story. But it is remarkably close to the blueprint.
Scott never truly experienced a stable family life. After believing that he had lost his family in a plane crash, he was secretly placed in an orphanage run by the villain Mister Sinister.
Like Hesiod's Cyclopes, Scott was kept in darkness. He was subjected to medical and psychological abuse and isolated from other people. And then, at precisely that moment, Professor X (Zeus!) appeared as a great liberator and "freed" him.
He gave Scott a purpose. A life.
And Scott, much like the Cyclopes of myth, became the most loyal and productive craftsman of Xavier's (Zeus!) ideal. I don't think the name Cyclops was chosen for nothing.
Scott's powers have a surprisingly strong connection to the names of the original Cyclopes.
His optic blasts are, quite literally, Brightness, Lightning, and Thunder. They form the primary offensive force of the X-Men—and the thunderbolts of Professor X's ideology. Scott is cursed with the Brightness of Arges. The explosive luminous energy that pours from his eyes is permanently visible. Even behind his visor, light leaks through. Like Arges, Scott carries a brightness that cannot be hidden. His power can never be fully shut off. It is always trying to escape into the world. In many ways, this also symbolizes the trauma he has carried since childhood. The energy within him can never be completely contained.
The Lightning of Steropes reveals itself through Scott's combat style. Lightning is one of nature's fastest and most precise forces. Scott approaches battle in much the same way. He does not think emotionally on the battlefield, he thinks geometrically. A Cyclops attack is often instantaneous, precise, and surgical. His power is less about brute force than it is about accuracy. But it is still devastating. Like the lightning of Steropes, Scott's optic blasts are used to impose order upon chaos.
The Thunder of Brontes, however, is psychological. Thunder is the echo that follows lightning. It is the impact a force leaves behind. Scott Summers functions the same way within mutant society. The consequences of his decisions reverberate for years.The creation of Utopia. The authorization of X-Force. The Phoenix Five era. Schism... Each of these events is a shockwave produced by Scott's will. An optic blast may last only a few seconds. The thunder created by his leadership echoes across the Marvel Universe for decades.
You could summarize Scott's power like this:
Like Arges, he carries an uncontrollable brightness.
Like Steropes, he is lightning directed toward a target.
Like Brontes, he creates echoes that shake the world.
He spends his life carving himself into a weapon for Professor X's deeply questionable ideals. (Yeah Proffesr X is a .....)
Normally, in literature and even in religious texts—the eye represents enlightenment, wisdom, nuance, and understanding.
For Scott, however, the eye functions differently.
It represents singular focus. A single perspective. Obsessive concentration. Being a Cyclops is a symbol of his inner world. His thinking is often detached from alternative perspectives. He thinks without nuance.Or perhaps more accurately: He chooses to! He looks in one direction and one direction only. He rarely questions Professor X, and as a result spends much of his life being shaped—if not outright groomed—by Xavier's worldview.
Even the visor itself works as a symbol.
It represents Scott's tendency to view life through an intensely black-and-white filter. There is always something standing between him and the world. He judges people and situations through the lenses he has constructed for himself. Rather than seeing events with the broad perspective that two eyes might provide, Scott focuses on a single point like one of his optic blasts.
Good or evil.
Duty or distraction.
Mission or priority.
Everything becomes a target to be aligned, categorized, and confronted.
Polyphemus
However, just as Scott's story changes over time and just as he occupies wildly different emotional states and narrative roles across various comics... the Cyclopes undergo a similar transformation.
Independent from the first generation of Cyclopes, there is also Polyphemus: the son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Thoosa. And Polyphemus contains some surprisingly strong parallels with certain eras of Scott Summers. There are similarities that go as far as a Cyclops finding himself trapped in a love triangle, but I won't get into that right now. I need to do a little more research first. :D Just as Scott eventually retreats into isolation with the remnants of mutantkind, Polyphemus is also a second-generation Cyclops who lives alone in a cave on a remote island.
He has one primary purpose:
To tend his flock. He protects his sheep with unwavering determination.
Even after being blinded, Homer gives us an incredibly touching scene in which the giant gently pets his favorite ram and speaks to it with a tenderness that reflects his profound loneliness.
"Good ram, why pray is it that thou goest forth thus through the cave the last of the flock? Thou hast not heretofore been wont to lag behind the sheep, but wast ever far the first to feed on the tender bloom of the grass, moving with long strides, and ever the first didst reach the streams of the river, and the first didst long to return to the fold at evening. But now thou art last of all. Surely thou art sorrowing for the eye of thy master, which an evil man blinded along with his miserable fellows, when he had overpowered my wits with wine, even Noman, who, I tell thee, has not yet escaped destruction. If only thou couldst feel as I do, and couldst get thee power of speech to tell me where he skulks away from my wrath, then should his brains be dashed on the ground here and there throughout the cave, when I had smitten him, and my heart should be lightened of the woes which good-for-naught Noman has brought me."
If I had to summarize the story of Polyphemus as briefly as possible, it goes something like this:
While returning from the Trojan War, the cunning king Odysseus and his companions enter Polyphemus' cave in search of supplies Interestingliy, they expect xenia - the sacred Greek concept of hospitality. Polyphemus, however, is furious.
Strangers have invaded his home.
The sheep he wishes to protect are now in danger.
This is strangely reminiscent of Scott during the Decimation and Utopia eras of X-Men comics, when the mutant population fell below two hundred individuals and Scott gathered virtually the entire mutant race onto an island, becoming a shepherd to the surviving young mutants while growing increasingly distrustful of outsiders. And so, operating under a brutally simple sense of duty, Polyphemus kills Odysseus' men. Violently.
The savage reputation of the second-generation Cyclopes creates a fascinating irony when compared to Scott. Odysseus quickly realizes that he cannot defeat this powerful Cyclops through brute force. He needs to think in terms of "alternative possibilities" and different perspectives. So he intoxicates the giant with a powerful wine. Then he introduces himself with a false name: "Nobody." When the Cyclope finally collapses into sleep, Odysseus and his men drive a burning wooden stake into his single eye and blind him.
Polyphemus awakens in agony and calls upon the other Cyclopes of the island for help. When they arrive outside his cave and ask who has harmed him, Polyphemus shouts:
"Nobody blinded me!"
The other Cyclopes conclude that he has either gone mad or been punished by the gods and leave without helping him. The next morning, Polyphemus opens the cave entrance so that his flock can leave to graze. Blind, wounded, and with only his sheep left as a connection to the world, he still fulfills his responsibility as their shepherd. Meanwhile, Odysseus and the surviving soldiers escape by clinging to the undersides of the animals. Polyphemus carefully checks their backs as they leave. Because he only examines the one place he expects to count them, he never discovers where the soliders are actually hiding. And they escaped. This, I think, is where Scott's greatest tragedy emerges. Scott is not incapable of seeing other perspectives.
Quite the opposite.
In many ways, he sees all of them. The problem is that he convinces himself the perspective he has chosen is the only viable path forward. It is a cop-out.
Interestingly, Scott derives a strangely toxic comfort from being a Cyclops. He fears the uncertainty and nuance that come with behaving like an ordinary person. As a result, focusing on a single objective feels safer. Cleaner. More manageable.
Polyphemus' blindness reflects something similar. He interprets the world through a single framework. When Odysseus tells him, "My name is Nobody," he accepts the statement literally. It never occurs to him that it could be a strategy. It never occurs to him that reality might possess another layer. Polyphemus genuinely believes that "Nobody" can be someone's name. Scott, meanwhile, often make himself believes that the framework offered by Xavier is the only legitimate framework through which the world can be understood. Neither of them falls into a trap because they are unintelligent. They fall into traps because they fail to sufficiently account for alternative interpretations. Even the escape beneath the sheep points toward this idea.
Polyphemus assumes checking the animals' backs is enough. But another reality exists beneath the surface.
And that is one of the things I love most about X-Men characters. They do not respond to trauma perfectly. Sometimes they genuinely run away from it. Sometimes they make terrible decisions. Sometimes they become trapped by the very coping mechanisms that once helped them survive.
That is why X-Men is beautiful. It does not expect you to be perfect. It asks you to accept yourself within an imperfect situation and search for a way forward anyway. And that path is not always easy.
It is not always "ideal". It is certainly not a path that guarantees everyone will love you.
With Cyclops finally arriving in Marvel Rivals :D :D I felt like writing something in his honor.
He remains one of the most criticized characters in superhero comics.
But I really love him.
That doesn't mean I support everything he does, of course.
If you've made it this far, And if anyone is reading these rambling notes I'm writing to myself, thank you! and congratulations. :D
