By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 35 seconds ago
Now that everyone can check out the Avengers: Doomsday trailer featuring the X-Men, something downright uncanny is happening: even the most jaded fans are excited about an upcoming Marvel project. While it was cool to see Professor X and Magneto being elderly bros, most of the excitement comes from the showstopping final moments of the trailer, in which Cyclops takes off his visor and unleashes a more powerful optic blast than we have ever seen onscreen before. But here’s something most of those excited fans don’t know: this awesome moment very directly adapts a similarly crowdpleasing scene from an X-Men comic written by canceled geek icon Joss Whedon.
In case you haven’t seen the Avengers: Doomsday trailer with the X-Men in it, here’s a quick recap: the vast majority of the trailer showcases a seemingly abandoned Xavier mansion, and the only two people we see inside are a very elderly Professor X and Magneto playing chess. At first, Magneto seems to be the primary character…not only is it a shock seeing him with a big, grey beard, but he provides some ominous narration about how “death comes for us all.” At the very end, we see Cyclops battling one or more Sentinels, and he rips off his visor to unleash the mother of all optic blasts.
Cyclops Unleashed
For longtime X-Men fans, this is a moment that makes you want to stand up and cheer. Cyclops has often been written as either insanely boring, the butt of the joke, or both, so it’s cool to see him finally showcase how powerful he can truly be. But for us older fans with longboxes full of comics, this was also a very recognizable moment…after all, it’s exactly what happened in Astonishing X-Men (v. 2), #8, written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon.
The X-Men As Written By Joss Whedon
This issue begins with a psychic attack knocking out the X-Men’s various psychic characters before the team is attacked by a very unique Sentinel, one who refers to serving an unnamed “Lord” and mysteriously claims that “the children will pay for the father’s sins.” Wolverine wants to charge in and take out the robot’s mainframe, but Cyclops tells him, “There isn’t time…I want this thing off my lawn.” At this point, he takes off his visor, unleashing a huge optic blast that leaves a giant crater and a Sentinel that can only mutter (right before it dies) about its master having ambitious plans far beyond a simple robot attack.
To this day, it’s probably the coolest Cyclops moment in X-Men comic history. Even Wolverine is impressed, telling the team leader that “Every now and then, Summers…I remember why you’re in charge.” This was one of many great plot points in Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run; he began writing the comic in 2004, one year after Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended and eight years before he directed The Avengers, changing the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever.
Leaving Them On Red
Obviously, we don’t know exactly what is going on with Cyclops or anyone else in this Avengers: Doomsday trailer, but the general beats remain the same as what we see in this fan-favorite comic. The X-Man seems to be fighting at least one Sentinel (look closely, and you can see the giant robot walking in the background), and he notably takes off his Visor (typically used to restrain his power) to unleash a huge blast that is seemingly meant to end the battle, just like what happened in the Astonishing X-Men comic.
It’s impossible to know exactly how much canceled geek king Joss Whedon has inspired the X-Men scenes in Avengers: Doomsday, but I’ve got a very good feeling about this visual homage. No matter how you feel about Whedon, he is a great writer, and his Astonishing X-Men run is one of the best modern mutant comics ever made (second only, perhaps, to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men). If this preview accurately reflects Avengers: Doomsday, then we’re going to hear something from entire generations of superhero fatigued fans we never thought we’d hear again: “Make mine Marvel!”
