Cyclops does not have a conventional family and trying to explain it is the bane of any X-Men fan. Heck, his father is a space pirate and that's not even the weirdest part.
Scott's first wife was Madelyne Pryor, a clone of his dead girlfriend Jean Grey (she wasn't actually dead though, more on that later) who eventually became evil. Together they had a son named Nathan who was sent to the future to save his life from a deadly virus. He eventually travelled back to the present as the gun-toting Cable (now older than his own father) to fight his own evil clone Stryfe.
There's also Rachel Grey, Scott and Jean's daughter who travelled to the present from a completely different future and decided to hang around.
Scott's final child, like some sort of horrible car crash between the other two, is a teenage version of Cable called X-Man, who was grown in a lab clone from Scott and Jean's DNA in an alternate universe.
Pretty much the only normal relationship Scott has is with his brother Alex, the hero Havok. However for years it was teased there was a third brother neither knew about. Apart from Adam X, he was hinted as being everyone from Gambit to Apocalypse before it was eventually revealed to be a brand new character named Vulcan.
And they say EastEnders is convoluted.
8. Worst - Death Is Meaningless
It's one of the most common complaints for any comic fan, there's no point to death. In a world where there are countless ways for a character to come back, it's impossible to see the death of even the most beloved hero as anything more than an inconvenience.
This certainly holds true for the X-Men, and they've been hit with some pretty unbelievable retcons and resurrections over the years.
Even their most well-known death has been undone. Jean Grey famously sacrificed herself after being possessed by the Phoenix, only for it to be revealed that the Jean who died was actually a copy made by the Phoenix Force and the real Jean was found fine and dandy in a cocoon at the bottom of the ocean.
Things have only got more egregious since. Magneto seemingly died in the destruction of Genosha, but then returned, having infiltrated the X-Men as new member Xorn before dying again. Unfortunately, Marvel then decided they wanted Magneto back so it was quickly retconned to Xorn pretending to be Magneto, pretending to be his good twin brother (also called Xorn), pretending to be a coherent story.
And it hasn't stopped. Fan-favourite Nightcrawler came back to life after literally teleporting out of heaven and now Old Man Logan has replaced Wolverine after being dead for all of five minutes.
7. Worst - Your Favourite Characters Will Probably Be Forgotten About
The X-Men are more than just a team, they're an entire community. Along with the main group, there are numerous spin-offs and a school full of young mutants. All of this adds up to a whole bunch of characters.
With so many mutants running around, it's inevitable that not everyone is going to get a fair share of the spotlight. Unfortunately, it often seems like it's the best characters who are hit the hardest.
Cult favourites like Moonstar and Doctor Nemesis will just up and vanish. Even major characters like Nightcrawler (who is the best X-Man as a matter of objective fact and definitely not just personal opinion) aren't immune, enduring long periods stuck in the background, that is if they're lucky enough to appear at all.
It's more than just these characters not appearing, it's that they'll vanish for months or years at a time with no explanation. Fans are robbed of any kind of fitting send-off and forced to accept that their favourite characters are just somewhere doing something.
This is especially silly when certain situations seem built for specific characters. For example, the X-Club is a group of Mutantkind's greatest scientists and yet the X-Men apparently didn't feel the need to ask them for help with the whole giant death cloud business.
6. Worst - Xavier's Dream Will Never Become Reality
At the core of everything the X-Men do is the vision of their founder, Professor Charles Xavier, that one day mutants will be able to overcome the prejudice of the world and live in peace with humanity.
The X-Men have fought tooth and nail (and laser-eye and adamantium claw) to uphold this belief, going up against threats like Magneto and the Sentinels. However, they've never even come close to beating their real greatest enemy, comic books.
The long-running nature of mainstream comics means that things will always return to the status quo, and for the X-Men that means protecting a world that hates and fears them.
That is the single worst part of being an X-Men fan, the knowledge that all their struggles are mostly irrelevant. Again and again they make some progress towards making the world a less terrible place, only for to be sent right back to square one by Scarlet Witch depowering 99% of them or the Inhumans releasing a giant murder cloud because they're the absolute worst. It's heartbreaking to watch the world once again turn on them while they're down and sometimes uncomfortably close to real life.
But that's enough cynicism for now. There's plenty of great things about the X-Men that have kept fans hooked for decades, here are five of them.
5. Best - Great Characters
The X-Men have some of the best characters in comics. They are complicated and nuanced, fighting with their own flaws as often as they fight supervillains.
A great example is Magneto, a character who always straddles the line between hero and villain. Often described as the Malcolm X to Xavier's Martin Luther King, he's someone who is willing to go to extreme measures to ensure the survival of mutant kind. In Magneto's mind, he's every bit as much of a hero as Professor X. That and his tragic backstory growing up in a WWII concentration camp make him an incredibly compelling character.
It's more than that they start off so complicated though, it's the fact that so many of the X-Men are allowed to age and develop. Characters like Rogue have grown over the years, becoming more mature as the years go by, overcoming problems and facing new ones as they become older. It's one of the most rewarding things about being a long-term X-Men fan, seeing a character grow from an angry and insecure teen grow into a kind and loving mentor, albeit one who can drop a freight train on you if you get on her bad side.
4. Best - Classic Stories
Look on any list of the best comic stories ever and you're guaranteed to find at least one X-Men story and for good reason; no other group can so expertly juggle intense and action-packed adventure with the soap-opera drama of the X-Men's home life.
A gigantic part of this success is due to the work of Chris Claremont and John Byrne, who pretty much defined the team. They started their run with the idea that a team who are an allegory for the fight against racism maybe shouldn't be full of white Americans and introduced now classic characters like Storm, Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler (who is again, the best X-Man).
Their legendary run included some of the best comics ever written, The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past. Both are intense and tragic stories that are still as good today as they ever were. They were even both so successful that they inspired the plots to X-Men films, even is one is far better than the other (hint: it isn't the one where Cyclops gets smooched to death off-screen).
That's not to say that later runs haven't been uncanny (I apologise for nothing) as well, including Grant Morrison's incredible re-invention of the team in New X-Men and nerd messiah Joss Whedon's all too brief run.
3. Best - A Rich Universe
The X-Men's corner of the Marvel Universe has kept on expanding over the years, allowing for a diverse range of stories.
Apart from the usual business of fighting evil mutants or human hate groups, the team have engaged in all manner of weird and wacky adventures. They've travelled into space to fight the Shi'ar empire, butted heads with demons in Limbo and even travelled to alternate dimensions like the Mojoverse, a world run by the TV obsessed lovechild of Jabba the Hutt and the spider robot from Wild Wild West.
Not only have these provided some excellent stories for the X-Men , they've allowed the franchise to branch out into a number of spin-offs.
Each of these teams shine a light on a different part of the X-Men world. We've seen the dramas of life as a mutant student in books like New Mutants and Generation X, the darker side of the X-Men in their covert strike group X-Force and life as a mutant detective in X-Factor. The UK even got their own X-Men team in the delightfully strange Excalibur.
There was also the Exiles, a group of alternate versions of minor characters like Blink, Morph and Mimic, travelling across time and space to save multiple universes.
Books like these and flip old ideas right on their heads and give a fresh spin on the X-Men.
2. Best - They Stand Up For The Underdog
It's already been mentioned that the X-Men's fight for mutantkind is a not so subtle metaphor for the fight against racism, showing the inherent ridiculousness in hating someone, not just for being different, but for being different in the "wrong" way.
As the team has grown though, it has become a beacon representing all sorts of minority groups in an industry still mostly dominated by straight white men (despite what some internet commentators would have you believe).
The X-Men now has members of various religions from all sorts of countries. They include Dust, a muslim from Afghanistan, the Vietnamese Karma and Wolfsbane who is from a strange and probably made-up country called Scotland. They also have numerous LGBT members and in 2012 featured comic's first ever gay marriage between Northstar and his boyfriend Kyle.
The real beauty of the X-Men though is that they stand for way more than any one group. They represent everybody who feels like they don't belong and give an important message to anybody who feels like society hates them just for who they are. They teach us that differences should be celebrated instead of punished and that no matter who you are, there are people out there who love and accept you.
Especially if you're blue and can teleport.
1. Best - The X-Men Represent Hope
The top worst thing about being an X-Men fan was the seeming hopelessness of their situation, well here's the other side of that. The fact is, that while it may seem like they'll never succeed, the ultimate message of the X-Men is one of hope.
Over the years, the team have been through some pretty rough patches; beloved teammates have died or turned evil, they've seen the mutant population decimated by acts like the Legacy Virus and the Mutant Massacre and Xavier's mansion has been blown up so many times that the insurance prices are more through the roof than the leg of the sentinel that's probably attacking right now.
However, despite all this, the X-Men never give up. They keep on going because they have a dream that's worth fighting for, even if they might never see it through.
2016 was a dumpster fire of a year and now we face a future of uncertainty, with the UK in political turmoil and the reigns of the most powerful country on Earth about to be placed in the tiny hands of a racist potato in a misogynistic wig. At times like this the message of the X-Men is more important than ever.
No matter how dark and hopeless the current situation may seem, it's always worth fighting for the hope of a better future.
Also Nightcrawler is pretty cool, don't know if I mentioned that.
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