There's been a bit of a meme going around, one I've seen argued in a few different places: that in
Avengers Vs. X-Men, "
Cyclops was right, Captain America was wrong."
The paraphrased argument goes like this: "Cyclops was right that the
Phoenix Force was coming to Earth to possess
Hope and restore the mutant race; the
Avengers screwed this up by causing the Phoenix Force to be split up into various members of the
X-Men; those members did good works whilst waiting for Hope to be ready until the Avengers
kidnapped Hope, and only then did they go off the deep end; and once Hope had the Phoenix Force,
voila, it restored the mutants.
Ipso facto, Cyclops was right, Cap was wrong, and if the Avengers hadn't interfered, this all could have happened right away and
Professor X wouldn't have died and everyone would be eating buttered popcorn and listening to 80s New Wave music in a brilliant utopia. So,
despite what the authors seemed to intend, Cyclops was the
hero of the piece, and Cap the
villain."
I've also seen more than one person suggest T-shirts be worn declaring "Cyclops was right" and "Cap was wrong."
Pardon my French, but
what a load of fetid dingo's kidneys.
Not to necessarily defend AvX, because
Uatu knows, that series was
predictable,
overlong, rife with
poor storytelling and
poor editorial coordination, based inexplicable attempts to link the Phoenix to
K'un-L'un and
chaos magic and gosh knows what else, the "
power corrupts" moral was trite, and on the whole the story was generally unimpressive.
But to
deconstruct its theme to "Cap was the villain" is something I cannot let stand unanswered, not when such a reading can only be supporting a very selective reading that leaves out the most salient facts.
So, begin
FANBOY ENTITLEMENT RANT:
A) The very
first pages of
AvX #1 give us this:
Secret Avengers #26 shares this moment with us:
And in
AvX #4,
Thor watches as yet
another planet is eaten:
So let's be clear: saying "Cyclops was right" was saying that
several planetary genocides are justified, as long as the Phoenix is heading to Earth to restore mutants. The death of billions--
trillions?--of sentients is
no problem, because Cyclops' race is more important than yours, or any other. As long as mutants don't "go extinct," well, other entire planets going extinct is collateral damage. Screw the rest of the universe!
Cyclops is "
right" only if he's
history's greatest monster.
B) And let's remember: Cap knew of at least
two of these
Alderaans, as we saw that they were witnessed by Avengers who would have tweeted their status to him. So against Cyclops' theory--which had absolutely
zero evidence,
zero precedent, and
zero sense--Cap had to balance the
CERTAINTY that the Phoenix was destroying every planet it came across. To say "Cap was wrong" is to say that Cap should have said, "Well, we'll just cross our fingers and pray Cyclops' delusional ideology is right and the Phoenix Force is not at all like what we saw 30 seconds ago."
Cyclops theory may have proven to be correct, but only in hindsight. I could say I know what the
Powerball numbers will be tonight, and bet all the food and rent money on it. But even if I win, that doesn't mean I was "right"--I was a
damn irresponsible fool who got lucky.
And anyone who didn't see the risks and say, "Cyclops, let's discuss this first" isn't fit to lead the Inferior Five, let alone the Avengers. If that says Cap was wrong, I don't wanna be right.
C) The Avengers
didn't start the fight.
Cyclops struck the first blow, and (as told in the pages of
AvX #2) the X-Men
immediately followed up by attacking the
Helicarrier. The whole mess perhaps could have been avoided, but responsibility lies with Cyclops,
not Cap.
D) Hope
wasn't going along with Cyclops' plan. She fled
BOTH the X-Men and Avengers, hiding from everyone. And once they got to the moon, she decided she couldn't handle it, and asked
Wolverine to kill her lest she run amok, and she
rejected the Force :
This was before
Tony Stark "
disrupted" the Phoenix Force, so it
wasn't the Avengers' fault--Hope wasn't ready (and doubtless the consequences of the Phoenix possessing her at this point would have been at least as disastrous as what did happen...see more below).
And let's be clear--it
wasn't that the Avengers interfered:
Hope rejected the power, as Cyclops likes to taunt her with:
E) The narrative of the meme simply isn't true. The Avengers did
not kidnap Hope, the "Phoenix Five"
did.
As seen above, she rejected the Phoenix, and she
wanted to stay with the Avengers. Cyclops said no.
Hope herself said she was a victim here--she doesn't think she was rescued:
She was their
prisoner. And despite Scott's promises that she could leave when she wanted, the second she wanted to:
So, again, the Avengers did
NOT kidnap Hope. She was a prisoner, chose to leave with them, and Cyclops used force to try and make her stay, and upturned the world trying to get her back.
F) And as for the "
preparing her," "
making her ready for the Phoenix," the Phoenix Five promised? That's exactly what they
didn't do:
It was the
Avengers her took her to K'un-L'un, and gave her the
training necessary to master the Phoenix Force. If you think the ending of the series was right, it was
100% the Avengers doing, not Cyclops. The Phoenix Five
imprisoned her,
berated her,
mocked her, and did nothing that they promised to do. If the Avengers
hadn't taken her away from that, mutants would
never have been restored.
G) When Hope finally did get the Phoenix Force,
guess what?
She wasn't any
different than when Cyclops
et. al. had it. She has the power, she knows how to use it right, etc.
This is undoubtedly what would have happened had she gotten the power initially instead of the X-Douches: the
EXACT same arc, "ooh, I've got the power, I'm gonna do good, ooh I'm the god, oh, I'm gonna squish you now." It would have turned out precisely the same.
Nope, it was only the intervention of the
Scarlet Witch--which Scott so strenuously opposed--that enabled the happy ending:
You may interpret that last panel how you like, but it sure looks as if Hope couldn't have done what she did without Wanda's assistance, both emotionally, and perhaps with some of Wanda's power, too.
Regardless, if Scott had had his way, this could
NOT have happened.
H) Even if you disagree with
everything I've written,
why blame Cap? Yes, he lead the Avengers. But he was hardly alone in his opinion. Wolverine was
far more gung ho against Scott than Cap, and he drove events during the crisis just as much as Cap.
Hank McCoy opposed Scott.
T'Challa.
Iron Man. Everyone in K'un-L'un. Wanda and
Pietro. Charles Xavier, for heaven's sake.
To summarize it as "
Cap was the villain" is ridiculously over-simplistic at best. Gratuitous Cap-bashing does a disservice to the story (as feeble as I thought it may have been). This wasn't
Civil War...it was a
vast majority of the world's heroes (including many mutants) who feared Scott was going to destroy the world based on a foolish dream.
So if the Avengers hadn't intervened, Hope wouldn't have been able to master the power, and the world would likely be in just as much trouble as it was under the Phoenix Five--she was ready to be just as corrupted by absolute power. Even though Scott turned out to be right, he went about it the wrong way, didn't listen to anyone, and ignored the only steps that could have made his plan succeed. That's not the "hero" of the story, by any reasonable definition.
END OF EXTENDED FANBOY RANT