Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
Every X-Men character is somebody’s favorite. Mine’s Cyclops. But as I don’t own the rights to Scott Summers — and he’s existed longer than I’ve been alive — all I can do is hope his creative caretakers do him justice, with the understanding of how much he means to readers like me. Since Marvel announced that writer Alex Paknadel and artist Rogê Antônio would be producing a new Cyclops limited series, I’ve had no reason to worry.
Why? Well, as Alex has been making the comic book press rounds to promote Cyclops, it’s abundantly clear he understands what makes Scott one of Marvel’s most compelling characters. And Alex seems driven to tell a very specific story, with Cyclops-like determination. Get out of his way and let this man unleash an optic blast of concussive creativity!
But enough from me. Alex has returned to X-Men Monday, ahead of Cyclops #1‘s release on February 11, 2026, to discuss his take on the character, his relationships, and more. Let’s see what he has to say.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Alex! Since Cyclops was announced at New York Comic Con 2025, you — and several of your creator friends on social media — have spoken about what you have in store for Scott Summers. As a founding member of the White Noise Studio, clearly, you’re a writer who sees value in workshopping ideas with peers to receive feedback. But I’m curious how that changes when some of the writers you’re chatting with are current or past Cyclops writers, like Jed MacKay and Matthew Rosenberg. Were there any nuggets of wisdom that informed your own take on Scott (a character you had also written not so long ago)? Or maybe even reaffirmed your opinions?
Alex Paknadel: Well, Matthew Rosenberg is the reason why this story crossed my friend and Editor Darren Shan’s desk in the first place. I’d been offered the Sentinels gig, and I was strolling through Central Park with Matt and telling him my idea for this very stripped-out survival horror with Cyclops, where he was basically deprived of his powers. Matt basically ordered me to pitch it cold, which I was very uncomfortable doing because I’m really not that guy, but he threatened me with social exclusion and I relented.
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I’m so glad I did because it gained traction almost immediately — not least, I believe, because our fearless leader, Tom Brevoort, is a big Cyclops fan and my take more or less mirrored his own. Once it was greenlit, however, I coordinated very closely with my good pal Jed MacKay to make sure my Scott was his Scott and vice versa. Our takes were broadly similar from the jump, I think, but one nugget Jed gave me that I’ve kept with me throughout is that Scott is really mutantkind’s King David. That burden of holding a people together against impossible odds really stuck with me, and gave me a greater appreciation for Scott’s stoicism in the face of literally infinite responsibility.
AIPT: On a related note, Scott’s been with the X-Men since the very beginning, way back in 1963. As a result, we’ve watched him evolve from a teenage deputy leader too afraid to tell his crush how he feels about her, to a husband and father, the vessel for Apocalypse, the savior of the mutant race, a vessel again for the Phoenix, a controversial revolutionary, the Captain Commander of Krakoa, and so much more. Basically, Slim Summers is a pretty complex guy. As a writer, do the many eras of Scott Summers make it challenging to zero in on what makes him tick, or do you see a clear throughline?
Alex: I absolutely see a clear throughline, and it’s always duty. I think he’s often spoken of as this fixed point around which all this crazy stuff revolves, but if you really look, he’s far more malleable than he initially appears. Since the book was announced, I’ve had the extraordinary privilege of having fans share their favorite Cyclops eras with me, and sometimes — candidly — it can get pretty passionate. But here’s the thing: they’re all Scott. Every era is Scott, and I see no contradiction in any of it. The expression never changes and the eyes remain unreadable, but I think Scott simply becomes what he thinks his people need him to be at any given moment.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Sometimes that’s a bureaucrat and sometimes that’s a revolutionary, but it’s always underpinned by a profound sense of duty to mutantkind. Sometimes he gets it wrong because he’s a human being, but that’s a different conversation.
AIPT: This week’s first X-Fan question comes from Rift, who wants to know what sort of mindset we can expect Scott to be in. Considering how confusing the situation must be, he has to be in a rough place. What can you share?
Alex: Scott’s in a very beautiful place geographically and absolute hell mentally. He’s being hunted in the wilderness without his visor and with no means of contacting his team, which means he’s going to have to lean on some very old survival skills — the same skills he had to use in the orphanage and when he and Alex bailed out of their parents’ plane as kids. His first instinct is going to be to restore order and find a way to resolve the situation neatly. Unfortunately for him — and fortunately for readers, I hope — that won’t be possible. Chaos ensues.
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AIPT: X-Fan Reese, a long-time Cyclops fan, says Scott is so often defined by his role as the X-Men’s leader, so we rarely see his private, human side. This is a side many fans have loved seeing through his dynamic with Illyana on various X-Men teams. How consciously did you make room for that side of him here — especially with him essentially operating as a lone wolf with only a teenage mutant at his side?
Alex: Well, that’s a tricky one. The first thing you’re going to see is Scott attempting to be all business because that’s the only strategy he understands for getting through gnarly situations. If anything, he’s more walled off, more stolid. But we know it’s a mask, right? It’s a game face, and like any game face, it can only be sustained for so long. So yes, we’re going to see his human side in this book, but I think it’s probably wilder and more aggressive than folks are expecting.
AIPT: Speaking of that teenage mutant, I don’t believe you’ve shared too much about her yet. X-Fan Jason would like to learn more about Scott’s relationship with this character. Can we expect to see Cyclops mentoring this young mutant?
Alex: Well, her name is Mei (no relation to Maystorm), and she’s lost in the wilderness with Scott for reasons that will become apparent as the story unfolds. It’s a kind of inverted Lone Wolf and Cub dynamic because Scott can’t see, so she has to be his eyes to an extent. I love her as a character, but she was introduced out of necessity because I thought Scott needed a foil for this story — someone to really draw out the themes. I didn’t want the story to be particularly interior because that’s the classic Wolverine move, and in a lot of ways, Scott’s inscrutability is what keeps him interesting.
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Accordingly, I needed a foil for him because otherwise there would have been huge silent sequences in the book where Scott’s just thinking and plotting. I would absolutely be down for a book like that, don’t get me wrong, but it’d be an awfully quick read.
In terms of Scott being a mentor, I’ll go this far: He TRIES to be a mentor to this young mutant, but maybe he has more to learn from her than she does from him. How’s that?
AIPT: Sounds like a dynamic I can’t wait to read! On to another dynamic — the solicitation for Cyclops #3 mentions the new Reaver Tearjerker. What can we expect from Cyclops’ cyborg adversary?
Alex: Tearjerker is one of a team of all-new Reavers built by Donald Pierce to help him oversee this project up north. Unlike the original Reavers, these aren’t mercs or professional soldiers; they’re dumb kids radicalized during the Krakoa era.
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They’re not supposed to elicit a great deal of sympathy, don’t get me wrong, but the thing that interested me about them was the fact that these are young adults who have been so brainwashed by hate that they’ve thrown away their own bodies — their biological reality as human beings — in service to this messed-up cause. I’ve also added another dynamic that makes them internally competitive, so in a way, I’ve set them up as everything the X-Men aren’t. They’re pretty despicable and incredibly dangerous, but there’s also something profoundly pathetic about them, too.
AIPT: I look forward to Scott and Mei teaching them a valuable lesson. Now, X-Fans Dan Sail, Elly, Jes, Nema, and Vick all wonder what role, if any, Scott’s wife Jean Grey might play in the story. And as I’m sure you can’t say much there, I have a backup question: In the conclusion to your first X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic arc, Scott admits to Jean that she’s “Ageless. Eternal. Aflame.” and “just part of something bigger” than him. Tom Brevoort’s “grand unifying theory” aside, what do you think it is that keeps these two so devoted to one another?
Alex: Jean is pretty absent from the story, as are the other X-Men. The whole purpose of the story is to take away Scott’s support system and show you who he is — or could be — without it. That’s no slight on any other character — especially Jean — but just as the Phoenix book was largely about Jean getting some space to figure herself out, this is almost the same. The big difference, of course, is that in Scott’s case, the personal odyssey is involuntary.
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As to what keeps Jean and Scott together — and I will say this as a fan of both Emma Frost and Madelyne Pryor, incidentally — I think it’s the inevitability of loss. Jean is the perpetual Eurydice to Scott’s Orpheus. Every time he thinks they’re on solid ground, he loses her all over again. Nothing in Scott’s life is permanent, but Jean’s presence is kind of hyper-contingent, right? He has to share her with these enormous quasi-Lovecraftian cosmic forces, so sometimes she’s dead and sometimes she’s an elemental force of creation and destruction, and so on. The net result of all that, I believe, is that he cherishes every second with her because he knows it won’t last. He’s a minor footnote in an epic story spanning eons and galaxies, and they both know it, so when they’re together, they make it count.
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AIPT: Semi-related — X-Fan Kat Penn notices that psychics seem drawn to Scott Summers. You have Charles Xavier as a mentor, Jean, Emma, and Betsy Braddock all attracted to Scott, and, currently, Psylocke and Kid Omega are following his lead in X-Men. Why do you think that is?
Alex: Great question. I honestly think it’s because he’s inscrutable, right? Logan had parts of himself he couldn’t access because he’d been prevented from doing so; Scott has parts of himself he WON’T access because he chooses not to. We’ve seen his black bug room, and it’s not pretty. For most psychics, everyone around them is an open book. Scott is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. You can immediately see how someone that buttoned down and complex would be irresistibly compelling to someone who can read minds.
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AIPT: You’ve mentioned that Scott reminds you of your father, given both men’s stoic approach to tackling whatever problems come their way. But what’s your opinion of Scott Summers as a dad himself?
Alex: This is a great and terrifying question, and like everything else in Scott Summers’ life, I don’t think there’s a simple answer. I know accounts of Scott’s time in the Essex Home for Foundlings vary, but I think I’ve seen enough to conclude that he had parental responsibility thrust upon him almost from the moment his parents disappeared. Having been, for all intents and purposes, orphaned, he then had to become a father of sorts to Alex, which is where things start getting really knotty and tragic.
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He and Madelyne then have Nathan, and then we have the catastrophic fallout of Jean’s return, which was so brilliantly handled by Louise Simonson and Chris Claremont. In addition, you have the timeline-displaced Rachel Summers, who, of course, will go on to found the Askani and save Nathan from the techno-organic virus ravaging his body by spiriting him away to the future, where he will become Cable. Then you have all the iterations of Nathan, so X-Man, Stryfe, young Cable, and so on. Then there’s Hope, who is kinda-sorta-ish Jean’s biological child, but also Cable’s stepdaughter, making Scott both her stepfather-ish *and* her kinda-sorta-ish step-grandfather.
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It’s super messy, and our guy has undoubtedly made some pretty huge mistakes. However, without excusing anything, let’s take a beat and consider the fact that this guy is canonically not even 30 and he has an entire household of grown-up kids who can and do age up, down and sideways — or get switched out with dimensional doppelgangers — at a moment’s notice. The poor guy does the best he can, but the ground is shifting beneath his feet constantly. Plus, this is the guy who’s been told from a young age that he pretty much has to be father to an entire evolutionary branch of humanity. Can we really blame him for being overwhelmed at times?
AIPT: [Laughs] I don’t know, some X-Fans can be pretty unforgiving. Finally, I wanted to wrap up with a simple, non-controversial question everybody feels 100% aligned on — and you just touched on! X-Fan Emmett Jackson wants to know how old Cyclops is. You just said under 30… but what’s your real take?
Alex: My take is the official take, which is that he’s somewhat nebulously under 30. It became a slight issue when I was writing my From the Ashes Beast story for the lovely Phillip Sevy. I assumed he was 30, because of course, Hank — the post-Krakoa Hank — should be a tad younger, which he is.
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Anyway, I inadvertently opened a very small Pandora’s box by having Hank give him a little bit of stick over his age. I then got a very polite note back informing me that Mr. Summers is, in fact, a proverbial spring chicken himself.
AIPT: Then that is the final statement on Scott’s age, and no one shall ever debate it again — especially on the internet after reading your answer!
But on that epic note — Alex, thanks for stopping by X-Men Monday!
Remember, X-Fans, Cyclops #1 goes on sale February 11, 2026. Below, you can read the issue’s eXclusive lettered preview, eXtra early, courtesy of our friends at Marvel!
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
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Yeah, I wish I could keep reading, too. Looks awesome.
Until next time, X-Fans, stay eXceptional!