Couple of thoughts on Cypher:
Firstly, the character never worked as a jump-on point for reader empathy, in the same way that kids never empathized with Robin. Kids don't want to imagine being Batman's juniour partner, they're perfectly ready to imainge being Batman himself. The New Mutants was the first US comic I started reading, aged 10, and the characters I empathized with were Bobby (Sunspot), Warlock and Illyana (Magik). Cypher was always The Lame One, which is presumably why Weezie Simonson was given editorial permission to kill him so as to generate 10% extra sturmunddrang during the whole 'Fall Of The Mutants' thingie.
Having said that, Doug undeniably WAS a mutant and was capable of doing superhuman things. For instance, the issue where he (maybe) wins at poker by decoding his opponents' body language, or in NM #50 when he 'hacks' Magus's DNA (presumably AT LEAST) as complicated as human DNA and reverts him to a childlike state in about 5 minutes, tops. He was also a pretty likeable character and I always felt a bit of resentment at killing him off purely on the grounds that he was The Lame One when this (a) wasn't true except by the most narrow of viewpoints (the one which dictates your coolness as a superhero = the splashiness of your power) and (b) any perceived lameness could've been changed by telling more varied and interesting stories in which old Cypher would've been given a chance to shine.
On the Douglock thing: As I understand it (and this is pieced together, because I refused to read all that Phalanx tosh that mid-90's-Marvel threw together) Douglock wasn't technically the reborn Warlock-Doug-Ramsay hybrid who'd been hinted at in NM #53 and #97, but actually an entirely different member of the Phalax, with a (yawn) origin story similar to Warlock's, who'd come to Earth and decided to assume Doug-and-Warlock's identity as some kind of bizarre covers-band type tribute. (Anyone wonder WHY I wasn't into collecting these issues...?) Personally, I feel that there are interesting things that could be done with this character, but only by applying a lot of cleansing acid to the essential stupidity of its premise.
And GM already IS doing tales with characters using powers similar to Cypher's. Remember Emma downloading Chinese into Scott's head during NXM 2001? And I'll just betchya that Xorn has some pretty intense mental abilities available to him. What kind of processing could you run on a "living star" anyhow?
Why d'you think Fantomex keeps pouring water (?) on his head? |
