In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just one of the five examples that I chose. Today, we look at times when Cyclops used his heat vision in comics.

The joke, of course, is that technically Cyclops does not HAVE heat vision. His eye beams may appear like heat vision, but they're actually force beams. This is why he can actually ricochet his beams off of hard surfaces, since they are basically solid beams of force. However, over the years, Gail Simone has helped people discover a secret conspiracy where comic book writers have tried to reveal to us the truth about Cyclops' heat vision (well, either that or they simply made mistakes. Either or).

We begin with Cyclops' creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who had Iceman jokingly cover Angel's wings with ice in X-Men #2 (inks by Paul Reinman) and Cyclops is shown to melt the ice off Angel's wings...

Almost the exact same thing happened in the next issue by the same creative team!!

The next time around didn't occur until the X-Men had actually lost their ongoing series. It had become reprint only, so the team made only occasional appearances in other titles during this "lost" period (a period that John Byrne famously later "filled in" with his excellent X-Men: The Hidden Years series).

One of their more memorable appearances during this time period came in the pages of Captain America. This one was a mess right from the cover, as the Gil Kane/John Romita/Frank Giaocia cover shows Cyclops melting a soldier's gun...

Then, in the comic book itself (by Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema and Vince Colletta), Cyclops sets the ground on fire to hold off the soldiers who are trying to arrest the X-Men and Captain America and the Falcon (the Secret Empire has turned the world against both the X-Men and Captain America and the Falcon)...

Okay, so the All-New, All-Different X-Men debut in 1975 and take over the X-Men series from the reprint-only status.

However, artist Dave Cockrum was having trouble with deadlines on the series, which helped to keep the book at bi-monthly status despite a strong reaction to Cockrum's work on the series with writer Chris Claremont. So Marvel had a couple of fill-in issues ready to go. Artist John Byrne took over the book and Byrne was very fast, but because Marvel did not want to let the fill-in issue go to waste, editorial had a fill-in issue plug right in after Byrne's first issue, so Uncanny X-Men #106 had a framing sequence but then went into a Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown and Tom Sutton fill-in issue and Mantlo did not seem all that up to date on Cyclops' powers, as he had Cyclops' eye beams "burning" Colossus when an evil version of Angel pulled off Cyclops' visor...

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Now, this is technically in an alternate reality, but the alternate reality is based on "What if Wolverine killed the Hulk?" and not "What if Cyclops' powers were different?"

So What If...? #31 (by Rich Margopoulos, Bob Budiansky and Mike Esposito) should not have Cyclops burning Jean Grey's name into metal...

Or burning through metal floors (see the smoke)...

Finally, in a fill-in issue of X-Factor (#32, by Tom DeFalco, Louise Simonson and Steve Lightle), X-Factor fights alien versions of the Avengers and Cyclops burns the Black Knight alien with his eye beams...

Feel free to write me at brianc@cbr.com with suggestions for future Drawing Crazy Patterns!