X-Men: Marvel Snapshots #1 is a perfectly crafted comic. It tells a concise, poignant story that sees Scott Summers when he was a kid living his life at State Home for Foundlings. Unaware of both his powers and the family he has lost, except for haunting dreams that lead to him shouting his brother’s name, Scott suffers from brain damage and is often picked on by the other kids. Still, he has ambitions to help others. To do good. That ambition is fed when the world becomes aware of Super Heroes due to footage of the Fantastic Four being broadcast on television. Scott finds intense purpose when he sees Reed Richards in the midst of battle, making last-second decisions that risk it all but save lives in the end. This becomes an obsession for Scott and leads him down a path of self-discovery with a poetic ending. Edidin’s script is a perfectly standalone that avoids the trappings of origin stories and instead dives deep into Scott as a character. It finds a through-line between who he was as a child and who he is now as Cyclops and using that through-line to tell a tightly-plotted, character-driven story about one of the most underrated Mutants of Marvel.