Scott and Jean forever!

As the Starjammers were getting ready to depart to space again, Corsair offered Scott to tag along but he was insecure as he felt happy with Madelyne. She told him not to hold back on her account but he, in turn, asked if she would be willing to accompany him if he left Earth. While still thinking about Corsair’s offer, Scott proposed to his lover and Maddie accepted. Without knowing it, the couple was stalked by Mastermind, wanting revenge for his earlier defeat at the hands of Phoenix. He increased Scott’s doubts to the point that he actually asked Madelyne if she was Jean Grey reborn and, of course, Madelyne got furious and slapped him in the face. As he ran after her, Scott was hit by a blast of cosmic energy; Dark Phoenix had resurfaced – or so he thought. Actually the couple was now fully trapped in Wyngarde’s illusion. Mastermind took his victims to the Xavier estate in New York, where he made it look like Dark Phoenix was attacking both Xavier and Cyclops. Shortly, the rest of the team started to fight the non-existent foe, much to the villain‘s glee. Noticing some errors, Scott saw through the ploy and he made Rogue absorb the unconscious Xavier to use his telepathy and disrupt the illusion. Madelyne and Scott finally got married and held a big party at the Xavier estate.

During their honeymoon in the Caribbean, the happy couple was almost eaten by a shark and a giant squid. This prompted Scott to choose retirement, realizing he wanted to be happy and to have a family without having to wonder about the endless battles of the X-Men or the Starjammers. After saying goodbye to Corsair and his crew, the couple moved to Anchorage, the place where they had met, and worked for the airline. A few months later, Madelyne discovered that she was pregnant, much to the couple’s delight.


Some weeks later, Moira MacTaggert contacted Cyclops as she was concerned about Professor Xavier‘s condition. His bad health endangered his life and Madelyne understood that Scott needed to check on him, but when he did not come back, Madelyne followed him to Westchester, as she wanted her husband to be present when their baby was born. With the X-Men, it‘s one crisis after the other and, while both the X-Men and New Mutants were busy in Asgard and afterwards had to stay in Paris for Magneto’s trial, Madelyne was alone in the mansion, where she went into labor. Upon the team’s return she had already given birth to a beautiful baby boy.

Instead of apologizing and making up with his wife, Cyclops was more concerned about the X-Men’s fate, as in the meantime Xavier had been forced to leave Earth because of his health. Scott thought that Xavier’s idea to leave the school in Magneto‘s hands was a bad choice, so he himself wanted to lead the team again. However, Storm thought that his responsibilities were to Maddie and that he could no longer properly focus on the job, so she dueled him for leadership, despite being powerless. The duel went in Storm’s favor, as she managed to outmaneuver Cyclops a few times, before robbing him of his visor, making him helpless, unless he would have wanted to risk random blasts at innocent bystanders.

Scott and Madelyne returned to Anchorage but there was some tension between them. Scott kept brooding and refused to talk about his problems. Not before long, he received a phone call from Warren Worthington with astounding news. Jean Grey had been found alive at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. Naturally, Scott kept this to himself and started packing. He departed despite Maddie saying that if he left her again, he should not even bother to come back. In New York, Scott was welcomed by Jean and the rest of the original team, who, upon learning that Magneto was involved with the X-Men, decided they needed to form their own team, with Scott being the leader. The plan behind X-Factor was to pose as mutant hunting humans and police evil mutants, while recruit innocent mutants to help them learn how to use their powers. They also worked as mutants in a team known as the X-Terminators.

Scott tried to call Maddie from New York but couldn’t reach her. Though the five friends worked together well, Jean felt that the others were keeping something from her. After Scott slipped and called her Maddie, she pressed the truth out of the Beast, Angel and Iceman, only to learn that during the time she was believed dead, Scott had gotten married. During one of their missions, Jean confronted Scott about it and he showed her a picture of his wife and baby. Jean told him that his place was with his family and he should search them out.

A short while later, Cyclops indeed traveled to Anchorage, only Madelyne and the baby weren’t there. The house was empty and neither police nor hospital held any records that either of them ever existed. Scott returned to the cabin and suddenly saw a vision of Madelyne, changing into Phoenix, Jean and Dark Phoenix. He began to doubt once more – could it have been that they all had been the same woman all the time, only dying and being reborn time and again ? Back in X-Factor’s headquarter, he saw a similar vision, and was now convinced. He accused Jean of being Phoenix and, to prove his point, he almost killed her by taking off his visor. Phoenix would have been able to keep his eye beams in check but plain Jean couldn’t. Fortunately, Leech cancelled Scott’s powers until he saw his error. It turned out that both sightings were actually holograms, created by Cameron Hodge. The public relations manager of X-Factor was secretly a mutant hater and knew where the members were the most vulnerable.

Over time, Scott and Jean grew closer again but, during the Fall of the Mutants, a TV message was shown from Maddie, “dying“ along the X-Men in Dallas. Her last words were to her husband to find the missing baby. Scott and Jean tracked the baby down to a secret lab below the same orphanage where Scott grew up in, yet they couldn’t prevent demons from snatching the baby. The baby was brought to Madelyne, who, with the help of N‘astirh, had found a way to awaken her latent powers and was now called the Goblyn Queen. The demon was responsible for the Inferno incident and wanted her to sacrifice her own son to gain even more power. Both X-Men and X-Factor fought the demons, while Jean and Madelyne were separated in a telekinetic bubble. Madelyne revealed the truth of her origin, that she just had learned herself from Mr. Sinister. She was actually a clone of Jean Grey, empowered by a fraction of the Phoenix Force. The knowledge of this drove her insane.


She hated Jean so much that she killed herself and forced Jean into a mental bond to die with her. Luckily, Jean survived, but only to be attacked by Mr. Sinister. The X-teams tracked him down to his hiding place – Xavier’s mansion and fought him. During the battle, Cyclops remembered the manipulations the villain had put him through in his time at the orphanage and, seeing his lover in his foe’s arms, finally broke Scott’s mental blocks. Empowered by his brother’s plasma bursts, Scott hit Sinister with such a strong optic beam that it blew Sinister apart.


Several weeks later, when things had calmed down and he and Jean were taking care of the baby, Scott asked Jean to marry him but she refused. She felt that everyone took their eventually getting married for granted and having absorbed the memories of Scott proposing to Phoenix and Maddie did not help at all. To defend her right to make her own decisions, Jean turned Scott down.

The future again seemed set in stone, however, when they learned shortly afterwards that Excalibur’s Rachel was actually their adult daughter from an alternate timeline.


Several months later, Apocalypse had his Riders of the Storm kidnap the baby. He infected the boy with a techno-virus that was destroying his body, cell by cell. X-Factor followed Apocalypse to his lunar base and battled him and his forces. During the battle, a woman answering to the name Askani appeared through a time-portal, claiming to have come from nearly two millennia in the future to save Nathan Christopher. Indeed, she stopped Beast from trying to remove Nate from the power drainer he was in, which would have killed him instantly with a cosmic energy pulse. Instead, Askani took the pulse herself, shorting out the equipment she needed to safely use her time-portals. Askani told Cyclops and Marvel Girl that she had technology in her future that might be able to save Nathan but her powers would most likely destroy her if she made another time-jump. Their choice was simple: let Nate die of the virus or never see him again. Cyclops chose to save him and sent his only son into the future, fully aware that he would never know if the cure was successful.

Some time later, it was discovered that the supreme telepath known as the Shadow King had taken over the minds of the residents of the Muir Island Research Facility. Most X-Men were captured by the residents when they tried to stop the Shadow King, so Xavier enlisted the help of both X-Factor and SHIELD. After the villain was defeated, X-Factor rejoined the X-Men, with Cyclops in charge of the Blue Strike Force that also included Psylocke.


Soon, she started to heavily flirt with him and Scott seemed to respond, though she could also have been using her telepathy to nudge him into her direction.





Shortly thereafter, Stryfe made an assassination attempt on Charles Xavier and infected him with a techno-organic virus, all without his helmet on in order to frame Cable. At the same time, Cyclops and Jean Grey were kidnapped from Harry's Hideaway. Captive in Stryfe’s base, the villain teased them with bits of the truth and it seemed to be the case that he was the little baby, grown up in the far future and returned to the present to get revenge on the parents who abandoned him. Cable apparently was an impure clone, therefore needing bionic body parts. The X-teams found their missing comrades in an atmospheric base on the lunar surface, but only those two of Summers genetic code managed to make their way through it’s pre-programmed force field. Cable and Havok battled Stryfe and managed to free Scott and Jean as well. As Nathan and Stryfe were locked in a life-and-death physical struggle, Cable keyed an explosive device and temporal portal, sending them both tumbling into the timestream. General consensus was that both had died as a result and Cyclops had lost his son a second time to a fate unknown.


More and more disturbed by Psylocke’s affections and unable to handle the events of the X-Cutioner’s Song, Cyclops took a leave of absence and visited his grandparents in Anchorage. He confided in them what really happened to Madelyne and the baby and they offered comfort as best as they could. Scott was also approached by one of their neighbors, who turned out to be Sinister in disguise. After dropping some hints about the Legacy Virus and a possible third brother besides Scott and Alex, he helped him to withstand the test the Dark Riders put him through. They battled Cyclops for 15 minutes and afterwards considered him worthy enough to live on to expect the coming great conflict.

After returning from his trip to Alaska, Scott promised to Jean to never again leave her out of his decisions.


They made up and, a short while afterwards, Jean decided that it was finally time to tie the knot. All of a sudden, with Scott the least expecting it, she asked him to marry her and he happily agreed.


Almost anybody who belonged to an X-team attended the wedding that was celebrated at the Xavier estate. Alex and Ororo were Best Man and Matron of Honor. Rachel Summers, especially, was very happy, as the wedding seemed like a first step into a future where she would possibly born as their daughter.




During their honeymoon, the consciousnesses of Scott and Jean were taken 2000 years into the future by an elderly Rachel (who ended up there later, after entering the timestream). She needed their help to train Nathan Christopher, who had been infected with a techno-organic virus and sent to the future for a possible cure. The techno-organic virus was spreading and could only be held in check with telekinesis. Under the aliases of Redd and Slym, Jean and Scott raised the boy, who one day would become Cable, for twelve years, until the day that Rachel died of old age. Then, the couple was sent back to their rightful bodies.


When Magneto’s space station Avalon was under attack, Jean and Scott were teleported there by Amelia Voght to help. They came too late to prevent the destruction of the base but they helped to evacuate the Acolytes. Scott and a group of Acolytes crash-landed in the Australian Outback and it was his ingenuity and knowledge that kept them alive till they reached the abandoned outback town that the X-Men once had used as their base.

Later, Cyclops was chosen as one of Onslaught's test subjects, along with Storm, Iceman, and Wolverine. They were pitted against Post, Onslaught's servant, in a specific battle area. After they won and were returned to the mansion, Cyclops found the area where the battle took place. There were no signs of battle, leaving many questions to be answered. When Onslaught finally came and turned out to be none other than Professor X, it hit Cyclops the hardest, because Xavier was like a second father to him. During the crisis, Cyclops led his team to Muir Island and uncovered the Xavier Protocols, a group of files telling how to kill all of the X-Men with ruthless efficiency. When the Onslaught identity was destroyed and Xavier was arrested for the events in Onslaught, Cyclops and Phoenix were left in complete control of the X-Men.


Weeks later, some X-Men were busy battling the Phalanx in Shi’ar space. Those that remained on Earth, including Cyclops, were captured and imprisoned by Operation Zero Tolerance. They later escaped from their secret base and managed to demolish their Prime Sentinel factory. A squadron of SHIELD agents then arrived and shut down Bastion. However, while in Bastion's clutches, Cyclops had been implanted with a nano-tech bomb.

When the X-Men returned to the mansion, it took a combination of all the old and new X-Men to save Cyclops with a last minute operation organized by Cecilia Reyes.



Afterwards, Scott and Jean left the team to recuperate in Alaska. Scott was slowly but surely recovering and he tried to hone his mutant abilities to what they were before. Their "normal" life there was hardly uneventful, though. At first, Jean had Scott worried, as she seemed to be on the way to become Phoenix. He decided to call in the other original X-Men to discuss this and the original dream of the X-Men. Yet whatever plans they might have had were cut short, as Jean was struck by the psychic wave generated by the Psi-War, which caused a temporary loss of psi-powers worldwide. Now it was because of her recovery that the couple stayed in retirement.

Months later, Xavier pushed the X-Men too far and Storm called in Scott and Jean to reason with the professor. They failed to help Xavier, who then dissolved the X-Men and told them to go their own way, since he had no use for failures. The majority of the team left on personal vacations but Storm stayed behind to keep Xavier from harming himself. Before they could return to Anchorage, Scott and Jean were contacted by Nina of the Mannites, who requested the X-Men's aid. Along with Wolverine, the only remaining member of the former team, Cyclops and Phoenix gathered Archangel, Cable, and X-Man as the new team. They proceeded on a mission to save the Mannites from Death, one of the new Horsemen of Apocalypse. In their battle with Death, the X-Men were unable to hold back the Horseman. He brutally beat Cyclops and the others and killed Wolverine with one thrust of his sword. The remaining X-Men rushed Wolverine back to the mansion and met up with Xavier and the recently scattered team as well. Xavier revealed that he had only pretended to lose control in order to uncover a traitor he had sensed in their midst. The traitor was discovered when Wolverine's deceased body reverted to its true form: that of a Skrull warrior. The true Wolverine had been kidnapped months ago by Skrulls, working with Apocalypse, who brainwashed Logan into becoming his Horseman of Death.

The X-Men found evidence in one of Destiny's journals of a group known as The Twelve and both Jean and Scott were among the names on that list. For one last time, the couple opted to help the X-Men before fully retiring. Apocalypse and his forces captured all of the Twelve during the battle, using them in a ritual to give the Chaos-Bringer a new body and incredible power. Magneto and Polaris created opposite magnetic polarities, Iceman, Storm, and Sunfire provided elemental extremes, Cyclops, Phoenix, and Cable gave the unity of family and the vast energies of the Summers bloodline, Xavier provided the power of mind, while Bishop and Mikhail represented control over time and space. The Monolith linked all their energies together. Nate Grey was to be Apocalypse's new host, a powerhouse to store his massive lifeforce. The Twelve managed to free themselves and Cyclops sacrificed his own body and lifeforce to keep Apocalypse from getting Nate. Instead of merging with Nate Grey, Apocalypse fused body and soul with Cyclops. This new gestalt being attempted to use the absorbed power of the Twelve to rewrite history at various crucial points in order to dominate the future. The X-Men, however, defeated the new Apocalypse, who escaped.


Apparently, a portion of Cyclops was still fighting the merged being, for he was next seen in Morocco. Wandering as an amnesiac, Scott Summers, without mutant powers, was having flashbacks to Apocalypse's memories. After the former Dark Rider, Gauntlet, attempted to kill him, Scott joined up with Anais, a worshipper of the Cult of Apocalypse. Meanwhile, Ozymandias had enlisted the aid of Cable and Phoenix to track down Cyclopalyse. In a four-way final battle, Jean managed to separate Apocalypse's spirit from Scott and Cable dispersed it with his psimitar. Cyclops returned to the X-Men but forever carried the taint of Apocalypse within him.



Though free of Apocalypse, the experience left Cyclops deeply changed. While he still was a fantastic strategist and self-confident leader, he became more ruthless and started to doubt both himself and his relationship with his wife Jean. Both he and Jean became active members of the X-Men again but the marriage started undergoing a strain as Jean felt that Scott was keeping things and Scott was acting cooler towards her.






















While investigating the murder of X-Corporation Hong Kong member, Risque, the X-Men came across a trail of illegal mutant organ trade between U-Men leader, John Sublime, and the Chinese government. Their latest victim was to be Xorn, a Chinese mutant with a tiny sun in his head, who should have been a new Buddha, but was instead kept as a prisoner of the Chinese government for fifty years. Finally free, Xorn wanted to commit suicide by collapsing the sun in his head into a black hole- an act that would have destroyed Earth but Cyclops managed to talk him out of it, make him see new possibilities and befriended him. During that adventure, Cyclops also grew closer to new teammate Emma Frost.  Some time later, when the X-Men were in need of a healer, Cyclops recruited Xorn for the team.

Scott confided in Emma Frost – the X-Men’s self-appointed sex therapist - of all people - that he was confused. Afraid of the darkness within himself, he considered much of his relationship with Jean to be only a façade and was unsure how to honestly talk with her about his feelings (His wife apparently turning into Phoenix in fact, as well as name, didn’t help much in that regard). With Jean away, traveling around the world and visiting the diverse X-Corporation headquarters, Emma agreed to a therapy, which grew into an odd kind of psychic affair.


When Jean returned from her world tour, she caught the two of them during one of their sessions and things turned ugly, as she confronted Emma telepathically. Scott finally interrupted this catfight by showing Jean that nothing physical had happened between he and Emma and then left the mansion, deciding to quit the X-Men.


While he was busy getting drunk and pitying himself at the Hellfire Club (newly turned into a mutant strip club), Wolverine found him and bought him several more rounds. Scott fully inebriated, Logan drafted him into helping he and Fantomex infiltrate the Weapon Plus complex to find about the secrets of Wolverine’s past. In the process, after learning about Weapon Plus’ horrifying plans for mutants, Cyclops and an injured Fantomex returned to Earth, while Wolverine was left behind.



Back on Earth, chaos had broken out, as Xorn turned out to be really Magneto, who had once again declared war on humanity. Cyclops and Fantomex rallied several new students of Xavier’s behind them and attacked. They were joined by the other X-Men, who’d been saved by Phoenix from several scenarios that Xorn/Magneto had trapped them in. Cyclops told Emma he had now decided between she and Jean, though he didn’t get around to telling her the choice, and he was furious over “Xorn’s” betrayal brutally attacking Magneto with his optic blasts.






Magneto’s final act, as he was beaten, was to kill Jean, who urged Scott to live as she died in his arms.

Shortly thereafter, after Xavier had stepped back from his headmaster duties, Emma Frost asked Scott to reopen the school with her. Originally, the guilt-ridden Scott would have refused both her and the offer. However, influenced by Phoenix, who now dwelled on another plane of existence, Scott changed his mind and said ‘yes’ to both. However, he now has to face the disapproval of the other X-Men, who are somewhat disgusted by his starting another relationship so soon after his wife’s death.