X-Men's Cyclops Once Beat Captain America... With A Frying Pan
The X-Men's Cyclops once beat Captain America up... with a frying pan. The relationship between the X-Men and the Avengers has long been a troubled one, and Cyclops and Captain America, in particular, have rarely seen eye-to-eye. Steve Rogers considers Cyclops a smart tactician but a flawed man, while Cyclops resents Cap for failing to support the mutant race in their hour of need. In 2012, the two led their various teams into head-on collisions.
In the aftermath of "Avengers Vs. X-Men," Marvel launched a spin-off anthology series called A+X. This allowed writers to imagine team-up scenarios between different members of the X-Men and the Avengers, with the heroes sometimes at crossed purposes - Hawkeye and Gambit competed for the attentions of a model - and sometimes working together. One of the most amusing stories was a six-part adventure that launched in A=X #13, in which Cyclops and Captain America were forced to team up.
Andres Mossa's story saw Cyclops and Captain America recruited by a Skrull who believed rogue agents had infiltrated Earth. He had initially come looking for Charles Xavier, the world's foremost telepath, but had been unable to locate him; the Skrull was unaware a Phoenix-influenced Cyclops had killed Xavier at the end of "Avengers Vs. X-Men." He decided instead to recruit the leaders of the X-Men and the Avengers, unaware of the bad blood between the two, and teleported them up. Cap was scooped up while he was riding his bike; Cyclops was in the middle of cooking pancakes. When they were freed from stasis to the Skrull's horror they wasted no time going at it - with Cyclops using the frying pan as a weapon.
Of course, it didn't take long for the shield to start swinging, and soon Cyclops was unleashing his optic blasts as well. The terrified Skrull desperately attempted to calm the two heroes down, all the while wishing he hadn't come to Earth to warn the heroes of what he believed was an impending invasion. "'We must help the humans,' I said," he grumbled. "'They'll kill you,' my friends warned." His friends were almost proved right; neither Cyclops nor Captain America had realized they were fighting aboard a spaceship, and they caused enough damage to knock it out of the sky.
Andres Mossa's six-part story is full of humor, and he captures his central characters perfectly. Over the course of the adventure, Captain America and Cyclops were forced to put their past behind them and work together against Skrulls and - ultimately - Doctor Doom, who was seeking to learn the secrets of Skrull shapeshifting. At the same time, neither was willing to truly let go of the past, and the end scenes made it abundantly clear they were about to come to blows once again.