CYCLOPS

Grief made the X-Men's field leader sign on as a deckhand aboard a trawler called Arcadia. Jean Grey's funeral closed the Dark Phoenix saga, and Scott Summers walked away from the only family he had left, drifting until his wandering reached Shark Bay on Florida's west coast. There he asked Aleytys “Lee” Forrester for work, having assumed the captain of the Arcadia must be a man, and was hired largely, by her own cheerful admission, for his face.

Six weeks into the job, Uncanny X-Men #144 (1981) shows a leader of mutants hauling nets, dodging questions about why he never removes his dark glasses, and quietly using a sliver of optic force at a pub pool table. Scott told the crew the eyewear was doctor's orders for light-sensitive eyes — technically the most honest lie available to a man whose unshielded gaze punches holes in mountains.

The shore leave ended in horror rather than healing. A call from Lee's father drew them to Citrusville, where the demon D'Spayre, wearing Jock Forrester's shape after driving him to suicide, forced Scott to relive his worst memories in sequence. Scott beat the creature by refusing despair itself, and the months that followed pulled him from the Arcadia's deck to a Bermuda Triangle island and Magneto's new base in Uncanny X-Men #145–150 (1981), and only then back toward the X-Men.