Marvel Comics: Cyclops was Right

A fun comics debate.

Disney's official policy to promote the Inhumans iMax release, included that Cyclops turn into a literal Hitler.

In 2016 Marvel Comics launched the limited series Death of X, during which the X-Men’s leader Cyclops is killed by the Inhuman leader Black Bolt. Following this event, the narrative thread throughout various of their comics is that Black Bolt was the good guy, and that Cyclops was basically Hitler. This debate is intended as a discussion to challenge that narrative, in which I intend to show that if either were behaving like Hitler, it would be Black Bolt.

I am hoping to debate an Inhumans fan who agrees with the narrative that Cyclops’ actions were analogous to Hitler.

The title of the debate is thematic, it is not intended to be the resolution. If a traditional resolution is needed, it would be a lengthy statement about the comparative moral values displayed by the two, and how Black Bolt is greater on the Hitleresque quotient (exact phrasing can be decided on in the comment section).

This debate is about characters within Marvel Comics, particularly Marvel’s treatment of Cyclops. As pro, I am arguing against the demonization of Cyclops following his death. The scope does not extend to his eventual resurrection or other weird time travel things to include later retcons (I don’t know of any related ones yet, but Marvel has a bad habit of doing things like declaring Magneto never would have killed innocent people, so it must have been someone else who did all that throughout the entire history of the character...).

Pro (Ragnar) has the burden of proving that Cyclops was morally superior to Black Bolt.

Con (my opponent) has the burden of proving that Black Bolt was morally superior to Cyclops.

And yes, modern morals are assumed, as in killing people is wrong, Hitler was a bad person, etc.

Generally normal English is to be used.

If there’s some important definition which you believe would change the outcome of the debate, please discuss it with me in the comments prior to accepting the debate.

In this round, I shall not discuss what Black Bolt did to anyone other than those he would claim are his own people. I consider these crimes to be paramount, but if warranted I will list even more.

 

I shall discuss major contentions in the following order:

      I.        Cyclops was a Hero

    II.        Black Bolt was a Monster

   III.        Terrigen Death Count

 

 

Scott Summers (AKA Cyclops) has stood against racism since 1963 [1], which was only about ten years ago in Marvel time...

 

Cyclops’ death was broadcast around the world. He had successfully stopped a cloud of poison gas which was killing millions of people (see Terrigen Death Count below). For this crime, and for fear he would save even more lives, he was executed by Black Bolt [2].

 

 

Blackagar Boltagon (AKA Black Bolt) has stood in favor of systemic racism since 1965.

 

He has ruled the Inhumans since age 20, when he assassinated his peoples parliament and blamed it on aliens [3], which was eerily similar to the burning of the Reichstag [4],only with a much higher immediate death toll.

 

During 2013’s event Infinity [5], Thanos decided to kill all Inhuman children between a certain age due to one or more trysts with Inhumans (Thanos is an anti-abortion advocate, he firmly believes they should be killed years later, rather than being denied the chance at life).Black Bolt detonated a Terrigen Bomb in New York City, with the intent of increasing the number of targets Thanos would have to kill... Let me repeat that, his plan to stop Thanos’ evil scheme, was to increase the body count ofsaid scheme.

 

The gas from the bomb became known as Terrigen Mists, which formed two clouds traveling around the planet, messing with people’s DNA (often fatally, for others mere sterilization).The core thing from this section is that Black Bolt did this by choice and is thus to blame for the consequences.

 

One of Black Bolt’s best friends and cousin, Karnak literally killed himself in horror of what Black Bolt had done [6].

 

 

An exact figure cannot be pinpointed, but there are reasonable ways to estimate it. Doing some massively conservative approximations, this comes to just shy of 23 million people...

 

Thane is Thanos’ son. His exposure to the Terrigen Mists caused the immediate death of the whole town he was in [7].

 

Flint lived in an Inhuman community in Minnesota. His whole town tried to flee the Terrigen Mists, but failed. The mists themselves killed all but Flint (whom was adopted) due to them not being pure (AKA inbred) enough [8].

 

That they doubted their survival, means this danger was generally known to Inhumans; such as Black Bolt who chose to gas them.

 

Worse, that they were a community of Inhumans close knit enough to maintain knowledge of distant secret heritage, implies that for every Inhuman Family without knowledge of their ancestry, there is an even greater likelihood of death.

 

An offshoot group of Inhumans called Bird People (I’m not making this up), did not do well with exposure to Black Bolt’s gas. They all died, or grotesquely mutated with insanity as a common side effect [9].

 

The Marvel Database describes the initial release of the gas causing “millions of Inhuman descendants suffer from Terrigenesis across Earth” [5]. There Are 88 named ones who survived the transformation [10], plus countless others whom are unlisted.

 

A town is considered to contain between 1,000 and 10,000 people [11]. Looking at just Thane and Flint, and assuming each were surrounded by the most conservative numbers of 1,000 each. We further assume only one million total transformations, of which only those 2 out of every 88 had such horrible results (roughly 2.27%).

 

This gives us: (88/2)*1,000,000 which equals 22,727 bad outcomes, then based on the assumed average of 1,000 deaths per bad transformation, comes to a grand total of 22,727,272 deaths attributed to Black Bolt.

 

That nearly 23 million people dead, is only if we are doing conservative underestimates.

 

There is also the possibility that of those untold millions of Inhumans exposed, most simply died due to not being sufficiently inbred enough to have more than trace amounts of Inhuman DNA (as seen with Flint’s family). Either way you go on this, those millions of the deaths are the direct result of Black Bolt’s eugenics experiment on the entire population of the planet.

 

 

[1]                  http://www.xavierfiles.com/2016/11/23/entry-053-cyclops/

[2]                  http://www.xavierfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Death.jpg

[3]                  https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Blackagar_Boltagon_(Earth-616)#Origin

[4]                  https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-reichstag-fire

[5]                  https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Infinity_(Event)#Event_Synopsis

[6]                  https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Karnak_Mander-Azur_(Earth-616)#Infinity

[7]                  https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Thane_(Thanos%27_Son)_(Earth-616)#Infinity

[8]                  https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Jaycen_(Earth-616)#The_Terrigen_Cloud

[9]                  https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Bird_People#Terrigenesis

[10]               https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Terrigen_Bomb_Activations