Cyclops Shoots First

So today's post is actually a continuation of my previous post. Those of you that are getting tired of X-Men references are probably on the wrong blog, especially since I'm now midway through X-Men Evolution on Netflix. For the rest of you, here's some interesting things I learned about Cyclops from the X-Men while researching this post:

1. Cyclops gets his powers from solar radiation (similar to Superman, but weaker because he's just a mutant human, not an alien).
2. Cyclops used to be able to control his powers until he sustained a head injury as a child. The trauma caused him to lose control to the point that whenever he opens his eyes the beams come out. This is why in X-Men Evolution when Rogue absorbs his powers she doesn't need to wear his special sunglasses, since Rogue doesn't have the head injury and would therefore be able to control his powers.
3. His beams hit with a concussive force (like a giant, long-range fist) rather than heat. This is different from Superman's heat vision, which is drawn in a way similar to Cyclops' optic blasts (as red beams coming from his eyes), but heats up and vaporizes what it hits rather than smashing it.
4. Cyclops has a brother named Havok who shoots plasma out of his hands. For some reason his powers don't work against Cyclops and vice/versa. Ironically, his powers work very much like Superman's heat vision.
5. In the comics, he doesn't marry Jean Grey first. Instead, one of the times Jean dies he marries Madelyne Prior, who looks just like Jean, has a son with her, and retires from the X-Men...... until Jean turns out to be alive again, at which point he ditches her and the kid, proving that comic book writers are all despicable human beings. To justify all this, they end up rewriting Madelyne as a clone of Jean Grey, a goblin queen, the daughter of Mr. Sinister, and various other explanations for why it was okay for Cyclops to dump her that were later retconned* because they were all terrible ideas. (This is why I prefer the cartoon and movie versions of most comic book franchises. The actual comic books tend to go for so long that they jump the shark, then nuke the fridge, then nuke a fridge that's jumping over a shark. The cartoons usually avoid most of the nastier retcons and horrible moral dilemmas because they have to stay kid friendly and only run for a few seasons anyway). 
6. Cyclops' son is named Cable. For some reason Cable ends up living a thousand years in the future and has a "techno-organic virus" that gives the writers an excuse to draw him with an awesome metal arm and really cool futuristic guns that he actually uses to shoot things (One of my pet peeves is that more comic book characters don't use guns and conventional weapons). With the possible exceptions of Wolverine and Bishop, Cable may just be the baddest X-Man there is.

Cable gets first place because real men take care of baby girls

You'd think as Cable's dad that Cyclops would end up on the podium, right? Well, let's just say he gets an 'A' for effort.

*Comic books change their continuity a ridiculous amount. Aside from the fact that no one stays dead except for Captain America's sidekick Bucky, Jason Todd (the second Robin), and Uncle Ben from Spiderman, there's the fact that people's powers, costumes, and back-stories change from issue to issue. In the industry this is referred to as a retcon, which stands for retroactive continuity.  DC Comics is worse about this than Marvel, but they both do it.

Anyway, now that we have all that background we can continue the narrative I started in a previous post about what would happen if I woke up one day with Cyclops' powers. In our last issue, our intrepid hero was just finishing lunch at Professor Xaviers School for At-Risk Teens Gifted Youngsters when...

12:30pm: An alarm sounds in the building. Immediately all the faculty strip off their business suits, revealing awkward spandex costumes. I raise an eyebrow questioningly, and a furry blue German demon-elf tells me they tried switching to leather costumes for the movies but changed back when they discovered the spandex breathes better. He also whips out two swords and mutters something about how stupid it was that he didn't get to use them in the movies.

The wall to our left crumbles and Gandalf flies in wearing a red cape and helmet. He is followed by a nasty toad-man, a big fat guy, a guy with a flamethrower, and a bigger surly Canadian with sharp teeth and long fingernails (great, now I have to keep track of two animal-themed Canadians). Unfortunately, they're also wearing what look like spandex outfits. After recovering from the shock I catch a whiff of body odor that convinces me their outfits must be made of a cheaper material than spandex as it clearly does not breathe well.

Gandalf and Captain Picard start debating whether humankind would be more tolerant of mutants if they were vigilantes or terrorists. Before I can ask for his autograph and ask how Bilbo is doing Professor X uses his telepathy to insist I stop calling him Captain Picard and explains that his debate partner is Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, who is far less friendly to short people than Gandalf. At that moment, Logan (the "good" Canadian) busts in and jumps toward the helmeted guy, whose name I've already forgotten. The magnet guy (Magnesium? Magenta? Magna Carta?) flicks his hand and sends him crashing into the wall. Everyone shakes their heads awkwardly like this has happened before. Logan then brushes himself off and joins our side, and each team forms a line on either side of the room. Just as I'm convinced there's going to be an epic battle with lasers and explosions and cool guitar music in the background, Magnolia flicks his hand again and a foosball table rolls into the center of the room. Everyone cheers as Captain Pic.... Xavier proceeds to narrowly defeat Magnetroid 5-4. After a bunch of robots come in to magically repair the wall (just like always happens off-screen in '90s TV shows), we all stop for a photo:

2:30pm - After our harrowing adventure with Magna-Doodle and his henchmen, we get a call from the local police station about a bank robbery. We pile into a Humvee and head off to intercept the robbers. Within a half hour we've foiled the bank robbery and a few cars who cut us off may or may not have ended up smoking on the side of the road with optic-blast-shaped holes in their sides.

3:15pm - Jessica and I spend a half hour brainstorming battle cries and one liners. We discard most of them, but decide to keep "Well apparently," *puts on sunglasses* "looks can kill." (yeeeaaaahhhhh!)

6pm - Dinnertime. As a special treat, the Avengers are our dinner guests. Iron Man tries to get me to do some welding until the unfortunately credible Dr. Banner steps in and explains the difference between optic blasts and heat vision. I commit some kind of faux pas by asking Captain America to sign some trading cards I got from Gambit. The room gets really quiet and Thor mutters something about the son of Cole. Jessica spends most of the meal chatting with Black Widow about where she gets her boots.

7pm - We get a flight home in the X-Jet. The in-flight movie is The Wedding Planner, starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. By the end Storm and Shadowcat are asleep and Wolverine is bawling. Apparently it's his second favorite movie after Hitch.

10pm - We have some trouble putting Tori to sleep as she keeps levitating a foot above her crib for some reason. After the day we've had we're too tired to care, so we just drape a blanket over her and she falls asleep that way.

11:45pm - Tori wakes up crying. For some reason her voice is different, everything in the room is levitating, and her shadow is shaped like a bird that's on fire. I change her diaper and she falls uneventfully back asleep.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip to the depths of nerdiness. I'll leave you with a discussion question: If you could be any of the X-Men, which would you be? How would you change your costume, if at all? Let us know in the comments.

Also, since no one has submitted anything for our Baby Avengers challenge, here's my version of the Baby Justice League in the hopes it will garner us some submissions:

Optic Blasts are not the Same as Heat Vision

First of all, I want to warn my Mom: Mom, if you're reading this, you may want to just skip this post. There's no pictures of Tori, and it's pretty nerdy even by my standards.

Since the last two posts worked out so well I thought I'd continue allowing our friends to choose my blog topics. This weeks requests comes from Kevin V.:

As you can see, at first I thought he meant lazy eyes, which like any red-blooded child-of-the-Western-United-States-married-to-a-Texan I associate with the classic film "An American Tail: Feivel Goes West".

I'm planning on doing a whole post about Don Bluth animated films at some point, but for now I just want to point out how great it is even as a child I was taught to love and trust Jimmy Stewart to defend us from evildoers, and John Cleese as the nefarious Cat R. Waul ranks right up there with Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, the corrupt congressmen from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or even Liberty Valance (I hope you know which Jimmy Stewart movie he's from) in terms of being a jerk who we love seeing Jimmy Stewart beat down. (Offscreen: Wait, you mean John Wayne, Tiger the Cat, and the forces of democracy and a free market economy took those guys down? Then what did Jimmy Stewart do? Moral Leadership!? That's not a beatdown! No I'm not going to change what I said on the blog!  What do you mean the Stewart Family Estate is threatening legal action? All right I'll fix it... grumble grumble).

I've been informed by our legal staff that my previous statements were incorrect. Jimmy Stewart did not beat down any of those people, but instead inspired them by standing up for what's right and providing a blistering Care Bear Stare moral leadership. Also, the Han Solo family estate asked that I display the following image:

Getting back to today's topic, it turns out Kevin meant "laser eyes", not "lazy eyes." On receiving this clarification I became even more on-board with the idea:

Actually, there will probably be several comic-book-related entries in the future. For now, we'll focus on what my day would be like if I woke up and discovered I had laser eyes like Cyclops from the X-Men:

6:30am: The alarm goes off. Jessica shakes me lightly on the shoulder to wake me up. For some reason I'm wearing one of those frilly eye covers that people in old-timey movies wear to sleep in. Even more embarrassingly, it looks like this:

Being the morning person that I am, I take it off my to rub the sleep out of my eyes. The lasers barely miss Jessica, bouncing off the mirror on our bedroom door before adding a new window to our bedroom.

6:45am: having dressed and proverbially powdered my nose, I now turn to the task of shaving. Mistaking my laser eyes for heat vision, I decide to make the best of my new-found destructive powers and shave by looking at myself in the mirror. Instead of burning away the stubble the optic blast knocks me down. Now I'm tired and have a headache.

7:15am: After shaving the conventional way and polishing off my Honey Nut Cheerios, I decide not to risk punching a hole in my computer monitor at work and call in sick. I dig out some sunglasses and paint them with a loose coat of Jessica's red nail polish. Somehow this makes it so I can see through them without blasting anything with my laser eyes. I have Jessica dress Tori and we head to the doctor's office to try and figure things out.

7:25am: As we're getting out of the car at the doctor's office we're confronted by a paraplegic Patrick Stewart look-alike, who offers me a job as a teacher at a school for lazy kids gifted youngsters in New York. I'm hesitant to accept his offer until his surly Canadian bodyguard starts cracking his knuckles and six knives shoot out of his hands.

8am: For some reason there's a jet parked behind the doctor's office. We get in with the mysterious bald guy, who explains that they've been looking for a guy with laser eyes ever since their previous laser-eyed teacher was portrayed as a doofus in a motion picture trilogy and killed by his schizophrenic wife in the third movie, which was critically panned.

8:30am: As we're flying across the country the Canadian notices Jessica's red hair and green blouse and starts asking creepy questions about whether she's ever been to Phoenix. I stare at him pretty hard and tragically blast him out the side of the plane. When I apologize to the bald wheelchair guy he shrugs, looks out the window, and proclaims that "Logan will be fine." I'm unsure whether he means the Canadian or the northern Utah city of the same name which he landed on.

10:15am: After finally convincing me to call him "Professor X", the bald guy starts insisting he's psychic. I'm skeptical at best since the closest he comes to reading my mind is responding to my unvoiced criticism that Shawn Spencer from Psych does more productive things with his "powers".

10:45am: I've now been introduced to the rest of the faculty, who seem strangely ethnically balanced, like the cast of an early 90s cartoon. There's even a memorial in a corner for a dead Native American with the totally plausible and not-stolen-from-Pontiac name of Thunderbird, though I'm told he was an offensive hodgepodge of stereotypes and died after one issue. When I ask what they mean by "issue" the white-haired African lady stutters a bit before saying "I mean he had a blood issue."

11:45am: Lunch is catered by Cafe Rio, and I'm feeling much better about the situation.

12:30pm: I'm walking off my lunch when....

Jessica: When what? What happens next? 
Me: I'm trying to build dramatic tension. I've already bored most of our readers with an extra long post and almost certainly alienated my poor mother, so I thought I'd call it good for now and take your advice to turn this into a two part post.
Jessica: I'm telling you, if the guy who wrote the Percy Jackson books can get away with a gratuitous cliffhanger then you can too.

Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion: same laser-eyes time, same laser-eyes URL!