Cyclops's Visor

Created by Professor X specifically for his first X-Man, the visor is made of a lightweight alloy housing supporting a colored but transparent unit of ruby quartz, the only known material that can stop or reflect Cyclops's eye beams. Cyclops has had a number of visors in his career as an X-Man. The first was fairly narrow, and may have been controlled by simply looking above or below the ruby quartz plate. A later visor had ear cups that contained a firing stud that opened the visor. In this case "opening" meant rotating an inner layer of polarized ruby quartz to allow the eye beams to pass through the outer layer (see diagram 2). Cyclops used this version for most of his tenure following Phoenix II's birth and through all his time with the original X-Factor.

More recent versions of the visor have both a ear-side firing stud as well as firing studs that connect to Cyclops's gloves, so that he only has to make a fist to fire his blasts. His current visor is again a slim-line version, going over the ear like glasses, without ear cups.

In almost all versions, Cyclops has had limited control of the size of the aperture, allowing him to finely tune his blasts for spread area and power. Combined with specific eye motions he has trained with, the visor gives Cyclops a vast range of settings for his main offensive weapon.

In addition to the visor, Cyclops has ruby quartz glasses for civilian wear, ruby quartz goggles for night wear (so they don't fall off), and emergency ruby quartz contact lenses.


Diagram 2