Avengers Vs X-Men #11 pg 27 (Coipel art, Bendis story) - Cyclops kills Prof X

CYCLOPS KILLS PROFESSOR X!!!

This story-line is a long time coming and is an age old story between “father” and “son”, power struggle, corruption and eventual patricide. From the original impetus of Xavier banding together the original 5 X-Men and having Scott Summers step up as their leader, in 1963, this eventual storyline was bound to happen (even if it took almost 50 years to come true, 2012). One of the things I love most about the X-Men is it’s rich history telling complicated stories and when you dive into this one it’s like telling all the leading events of a soap-opera between two characters with a 50 year history (now 60 years, as I am writing this).

The main history points leading to this “written in the stars” event, were:
-Prof X forming the X-Men and Scott Summers (Cyclops) becoming their leader
-Jean Grey (Phoenix) getting taken out by Magneto/Xorn
-Wanda casting the mutant chaos spell of “No More Mutants”, leading to the loss of 99% (if not more) of Mutant-dom
-Hope Summers (Nathan Summers adopted daughter, Scott’s “granddaughter”) becoming the Mutant Messiah and bringing back “Hope” for Mutant-kind by giving resurrection to the X-gene within them
-Phoenix Force coming back to inhabit someone, now that Jean is gone, Avengers assuming it’s going to be Hope (causing the conflict of AVX), but ultimately gets spread out into the Phoenix Five (Cyclops, Magik, Colossus, White Queen and Namor)
-Power corrupting Cyclops as he eventually takes it from the other Phoenix Five
-Professor X begging Cyclops to stop, “Scott . . . Look around you. I’m begging you, son, stop this now”. Cyclops responding “ You are not my father.” Professor X screams with his full force, “That is enough” and Cyclops responds “It is” as he snaps Prof X neck with the Phoenix Force in full effect.

This action has consequences that we see for many years after. It tears apart the once leader of the X-Men to his core and he suffers over the following years til at some point he gives up and goes into hiding, eventually loosing his will to live and riddled by the terrigen mist effects from the Inhuman conflicts and dies.

So much drama!!! And I eat it all up. Things have a way of coming back with the X-Men but this pivotal page that breaks one of the core characters in X-Men history and has “son” killing “father” (the founder of the X-Men) is monumental and so thrilled to have this page in my collection. The history, the characters, writing and above that the magnificent art from Olivier Coipel. The pencil and detail shading and lighting on these characters with your “awe” expressions of seeing what just happened is perfectly on point. It’s a horrific quiet still moment, what you would see after a horrible climax of someone driven to madness and doing a complete 180 to their core character beliefs. It’s that moment after the explosion of sounds and wild visuals in a movie where everything goes silent and you just have static visuals of what remains. That moment you can’t take back, no matter how hard to try, but what is done is done and there will be horrendous consequences.

The visuals Coipel delivers for Bendis’s story is phenomenal. The top panel of the Phoenix force alive in full force, to the bottom panel of the fires burning behind Cyclops as he stands over Prof X’s limp body. The death of Prof X from his beloved son, is a huge “X” on my list and so happy yo have in my collection. Thank you very much Jason, for letting this wild piece of X history go into my home of X art, and Kahlil for pointing me the way.