How I Got From Cyclops to Michael Pointer

Bear with me on this one as I'm not a comic geek, and whatever limited knowledge of the Marvel universe I have was communicated to me by that long-defunct TV cartoon classic X-Men and the films thereafter.  I'm just tracing a process, so if you're an expert, please don't rub it in.

Anyway, I was wondering the other night how Cyclops' strength measure up against all the others' in the Marvel universe.  Obviously he's no Thor or Silver Surfer, but still...

1. Cyclops' powers are: Optic energy beams and intuitive spatial geometry.

2. But what the heck is intuitive spatial geometry?  A good sense of direction?  Apparently, Cyclops can manipulate his energy beams with surgical precision, and can even reflect his beams and bounce them off many different surfaces in rapid succession.

3. Then I read about Cyclops' beam being able to pierce through the Blob.  What?  The Blob has unpierceable skin?  Well, I guess he's not a blob for nothing.

4. So off I go reading about the Blob.  And sure enough, he's got Superhuman strength, endurance, durability and resilience, and a personal gravity field.  Currently, the Blob is depowered though.

5. What's a personal gravity field, you ask?  Apparently, having your own personal gravity field, like the Blob, can make you practically immovable as long you have contact with the ground.  A nice skill to bring to a football field.

6. Those strong enough to make the Blob budge an inch though are the Hulk, Juggernaut, Strong Guy, and Colossus, who burrowed underground and lifted the ground on which the Blob was standing.

7.  But wait, he's currently depowered?  Is this a sort of on and off thing?

8. Turns out in the Decimation storyline, on the fateful day called M-Day, the Scarlet Witch (power:Reality warping, Hex energy) strips off all the power of every mutant in the planet, which includes the Blob.

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada reveals the need for the Decimation storyline: it was a way to keep the number of mutants at bay because after forty years of publishing just about every imaginable mutant power for all occasion has been devised, and things have gotten out of hand.

9. The result millions of mutants lose their power, and only a few hundred (198 to be exact, or if U.S. Government Liaison Henry Peter Gyrich is to be believed) around 300 still.

10. But since the Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, all that stripped off superpowers must have gone somewhere.

11.  True enough, all those powers amalgamated into one, and spent a time hovering above earth until it bonded to Michael Pointer, a humble mailman in North Pole, Alaska, with the ability to absorb and manipulate Mutant energy. 

Having siphoned off everyone's power, Michael Pointer thus becomes known as the Collective.  As the Collective, he kills members of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight but was later subdued by Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, and the Sentry who dispatches him to Genosha.  Spider-Man later discovers the true nature of the Collective.


And that is how I got from Cyclops to Michael Pointer.