This week, on the Major Spoilers Podcast, the MS Crew takes a look at one of the more important X-Men stories, Days of Future Past.
Days of Future Past
Days of Future Past deals with a dystopian alternate future in which mutants are incarcerated in internment camps. An older Kitty Pryde transfers her mind into the younger, present-day Kitty Pryde, who brings the X-Men to prevent a fatal moment in history which triggers anti-mutant hysteria.
As always, the Major Spoilers Podcast is nothing without comments from great readers and listeners like you. You can use the comment section below, drop us a voice mail by calling (785) 727-1939, or record your comments and send it as an MP3 file in an email to podcast@majorspoilers.com.
Here’s your chance to be heard on the show! Give us your thoughts on this book, or if you want to share your thoughts on the state of the comic book industry, or anything else that might be on your mind drop us a line. Only the most awesome comments (positive and negative) make it on the show, so get your stuff to us right away!
Want to get the jump on the next Major Spoilers trade discussion? Check out our Upcoming Episodes Page.
9 Comments
I have to say I wasn’t particularly a fan of this storyline. But I have to admit that it has more to do with the painful stories that followed: [i]Days of Future Present[/i], [i]The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix[/i], [i]X-Cutioner’s Song[/i] and all the other tie-ins (with Bishop, Gambit and everyone else)
This was yet again tying into the “in the future, we will all DIE!!!!!” stories. To me, the best stories have a feeling of hope to them. Even the ones with foreboding–even the ones where you see something horrible on the horizon–the idea that there still exists some hope is essential for it to be enjoyable (the Terminator movies are a great example).
While this story was actually done pretty well (and [SPOILER] we get to see Wolverine die! what a plus!), it made bleak, downer stories cool and laid the groundwork for a good deal of bad story-telling 10 years later.
While this story was actually done pretty well (and [SPOILER] we get to see Wolverine die! what a plus!), it made bleak, downer stories cool and laid the groundwork for a good deal of bad story-telling 10 years later.
That’s what I’ve found. While the story itself is an excellent piece of work (especially when you consider it was done in two issues), its legacy has been so questionable that the original work has been hurt by it.
The thing that gets me the most – why do so many writers take it as gospel, even though [SPOILER] the ending of the original story made it clear that the “present” timeline was now destined to have a different, unknown future? Is it that usual failure to “get” the nature of time travel in fiction or just another case of later writers going, “Gee, I really loved that story. I’m going to structure my entire run around it” like you see so much today?
Did this storyline follow or help spawn the Terminator movies? Which (of these and others) came first?
Days of Future Past came out in 1981, three years give or take before the creation of Terminator(screenplay, concepts, etc.), and years before Quantum Leap which had Sam Beckett mind/soul/spirit jumping back in time to right wrongs.
(After my failed attempt to phone this in, here goes try number two.)
“Days” was a showing of how one death, at a choke point in time would cause a shift that would end up with a majority of the X-Men dead, and those alive scavengers in a world that once feared them, yet now has them under it’s boot heel.
Wolverine being reduced to nothing more than a Adamantium Skeleton Paper Weight was something that shocked me at the time, but now is something that I would love to happen. But as with most stories from this era in X-Men lore, Kitty is the focus, after Rachel transports her to the past and that splash of Kitty in the X-Men rookie costume looking up at all her friends that have been dead for years yet now alive is a great piece of work from Byrne.
Days of Future Past is a relic of a bygone era that will never return. It’s concept of the mighty Marvel Mutants failing to win big in the end has made them so much more human, though Kelly lived, that didn’t stop that Sentinel. I give this 4 out of 5 slices of Moms nostalgic Meatloaf, I suggest you dust off the cobwebs before consumption.
How many riffs have been done of that cover? I recently saw the “ST:TNG” version in the back of an old Doctor Who comic (A Grant Morrison 6th Doctor story w/ Frobisher).
Here is my recent comment from elsewhere:
“I look forward to hearing the podcast on DoFP…I will simply say that my thoughts are what should have been a little more than a “What If?” story became the Marvel equivalent to original sin: hopelessly corrupting every great, almost-great, not-so-great, and throw-it-past-the-sewer-grate X-run since by requiring *every* creative X-team to do their own “dark future that intersects the uncertain now” story….and many of them more than once.”
Blew my mind back in the day when I was a lil Wolvie-Fanboy. All my alternate realitie experiences in comics had been “What if Superman and Lois Lane had married” kinda things. I felt so miserable and sorry for the characters that got killed.
Anyway, please do some talking about why JB is nowadays regarded as a catankerous coot. I spent more than 4 hours recently listening to two podcasts about his work where his rumored strange behaviour was not touched upon. Come on, you could sum it up quickly in regards to Dave Sim, just recently. Speaking of whom, hope your digging Glamourpuss, it’s just awesome.
It’s not my place to throw accusations around about JB, but he had long-ago semi public disputes with writers (Claremont, PAD, probably others)…these were mostly shook out (IMO) prior to the mid-90s.
Dave Sim experienced (at least) one bitter (that is putting it mildly) break-up of a relationship, and he essentially used the last third (or more) of Cerebus to describe how women destroy everything good in the universe. Again, this is in many ways ancient history. I dropped out of Cerebus sometime around “Rick’s Story” so I suppose it might have really turned around…
DoFP also falls victim to the postmodern view of infinite realities progressively spawning off a single one. On one hand, it makes for interesting stories…to a point. But it is unstoppable, because SOMEONE always wants to know: what if _______ died/became good/did a small thing different, how would things change? WE DID have such a venue to explore these options, in the ‘what if’ series.
DoFP established that these ‘what if’ continuities actually exist, which Marvel (like DC before) began to number to keep track of. The problem is what DoFP also established: that MANY individuals have the power to reach back and contact/invade the ‘prime’ continuity. With this being true (and ‘ours’ being the ‘good’ reality), it is surprising that the 616 world is not CONTINUALLY barraged by other worlds even more than it already is.
Here’s to hoping that Kang and Apocalypse and Bastion and Earth X all show up at the same time just so we can watch the fireworks.