Professor Xavier may be known as the noble founder of Marvel Comics‘ X-Men and surrogate father to Cyclops, but he’s blurred the line between hero and outright villain on more than one occasion in the name of his goals. More often than he’d care to admit, Charles operates with the mindset that the ends justify the means. Unfortunately for Professor X, that finally caught up with him when his prize pupil, Scott Summers, ended his life – and Scott was justified in doing so.
While Avengers vs. X-Men by Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, and more treats the Phoenix-possessed Cyclops’ the murder of Xavier as a drastic step for the X-Men’s field leader, it makes logical sense when considering all of Charles’ dark deeds. On more than one occasion, Xavier’s machinations have wrought great suffering. And it doesn’t look like he’s stopping anytime soon.
Charles’ infractions begin in the earliest days of the X-Men. Ignoring his inappropriate feelings for Jean Grey – he admits his romantic love for her during an inner monologue in X-Men #3 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – the calculating Professor X enlists the teenage Sage in his schemes early on. He essentially traffics her into serving as Sebastian Shaw’s attaché just so that he can have a spy within the Hellfire Club instead of allowing her to join the X-Men’s first class.
While Charles never acts upon feelings for Jean, his teachings hardly serve her much better as he instructs her in casually invading the minds of innocents to get what she wants, which Jean still does to this day. Years later he even breaks his own so-called code by unleashing an unrelenting psychic assault on Magneto in X-Men #25 by Fabian Nicieza and Andy Kubert, thereby leaving his old foe in a vegetative state and sowing the seeds for the birth of Onslaught – a psychic energy fueled by the combined powers of Xavier and Magneto that nearly destroys the world.
But Xavier’s most undeniably immoral act is revealed during the events of X-Men: Deadly Genesis by Ed Brubaker and Trevor Hairsine, when a retcon establishes that Storm, Wolverine, and their compatriots were not the second class of X-Men, but rather the third. The second class – including Cyclops’ long lost brother Vulcan – seemingly died in the rescue attempt of their predecessors from the living island of Krakoa. Instead of owning up to his failure, Charles wipes the minds of all who knew of the team’s existence to cover his tracks, irrevocably dismantling his status as a moral center.
Fans have long known that Xavier is far from perfect, as have his X-Men. But despite Xavier’s faults and his blatant crimes, Cyclops’ execution of Charles was met with derision from more than a few of his fellow teammates – most notably by Wolverine. Even if Scott hadn’t been under the sway of the Phoenix force, it’s hard not to see why he’d think Charles deserved it. After all, aside from the horrors that his actions involving Onslaught or the Illuminati unleashed upon the world at large, many of Xavier’s most callous actions impacted Scott directly.
Had Charles been more ethical regarding her telepathic tutelage, Jean Grey wouldn’t be so flippant with her power – an unfortunate character trait that sent her down the path of the Dark Phoenix and left Scott a broken man. Likewise, as far as Professor X knew, he got Cyclops’ younger brother killed. What’s arguably worse is that he covered it up by erasing Scott’s memories and burying all evidence, thereby depriving the perennially isolated Scott of a familial connection he desperately needed.
Now that Charles is up to his old tricks in today’s Krakoan Age, it’s more than possible that Scott will be the one to put him down once again. And just like before, he’ll be more than justified. The founder of Marvel Comics‘ X-Men may have been the one to bring the team together, but when it comes to his death at the hands of Cyclops, he had it coming.
