One of these suspended animation or lost time plots would add a Captain America "man out of time" element to Cyclops. That could be a neat way to highlight his role in the mutant community and his strong moral center.

I think you're partly responsible for that one too. :-)

There's a broader dilemma here of writing for characters that have been in continuous publication in a continuing narrative for decades.   If you stick to the character's main traits, motivations, and desires you'll inevtiably end up treading ground that other writers have walked (and sometimes writers do this to themselves, either by accident or design).  Trying to do something 'new' with established characters doesn't require you to take things off model but that increasingly seems to be the standard now -- it sort of falls into the "If the only tool you had was a hammer..." way of thinking.   The longer a character has been published the greater the changes the writer feels they have to make to present the current story as fresh.   We are at the point where almost every popular character, be they villian or hero have switched to the other side of the moral compass and/or have been dead and revived at least once.  Jean Grey's been dead longer than alive in publishing time -- so long that 'being dead' has become her defining trait to the generations of readers who only know about her from the reactions of the other characters to her death.

I don't think there's inherently anything bad about writing a character off model if it serves a purpose within the context of a story.  People in the real world sometimes do irrational and illogical things that run counter to their previous behavior.   Within a narrative though you have to resolve or address this inconsistency in some way quickly or else you'll run the danger of the off-model becoming the new model.  'Cyclops, the dick' is a natural extension of his being thrust into a leadership role at a young age and having to act as an authority despite being insecure on the inside -- and likely many of the leadership-y things he's said are just him parroting things that Professor X would say (there's a creepier alternative but I'm not going to go there).   'Cyclops, the villian' should not be the logical extension of 'Cyclops, the dick' but the latter characterization has stuck around for so long that new writers see that as the next step.

As our forum namesake has pointed out many times the continuing narrative was not specifically written with a continuous audience in mind.  The fact that we as fans have stuck around means we are going to see the broader inconsistencies that should probably be left forgotten and ignored.   If the little things like that bug you then you should have given up reading the current comics long ago.   You're not the audience anymore and you get no badge of honour for having discovered and enjoyed these characters first.   

At some point Marvel might be better off cutting their losses and cease tending the shared comics universe garden and just make everything be tie in books to the current popular and familiar versions of the characters in other media.   The current MCU popularily will churn over and everything in the films will be rebooted at some point too.

"(I was musing on this the other day. If a reader’s reaction to the latest appearance of Doctor Doom is “Not him again!” it’s probably time for that reader to move on, not to start demanding an end to Doom stories.)"

In that vein, a few weeks ago I was wondering how many Magneto stories there were during my buying time ('75-'80). It seemed like a good amount but really he had only 4 storylines thru those years;

-Return from infancy (1 issue)

-A one off Captain America annual story with his new Brotherhood.

-The unforgettable 2 issue story where he traps the X-Men under his mountain lair.

- ..and the Super Villain Team-Up/ Champions crossover with Dr. Doom (2 issues).

That's it, other than a couple of panels here or there, and that's 6 years worth! Yep no way to repeat storylines if you get out in a timely manner.

Ignore his history and you run the risk of fans pissing and moaning that he hasn't redeemed himself and is no hero.

This has led to us not being able to get a good Hank Pym characterization. Mark Millar got it started again with The Ultimates but I remember Chuck Austen going off about how Pym hitting Jan shouldn't be swept under the rug and went on to have Jan have a FWB relationship with Hawkeye which Bendis then turned into Jan making an offhand comment to The Scarlet Witch which led to Avengers Disassembled. They managed to ruin 4 characters (Henry Pym, The Wasp, The Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye) mainly because Chuck Austen couldn't get over a bad story idea that happened 20 years before. He blew up a great deal of character reform for Pym in stories by Roger Stern, JB, Bob Harras, and Kurt Busiek.