Days of Future Present: The Summers/Richards family reunion

Days of Future Present is a story told a format less commonly-used these days: it runs through four series's annuals (Fantastic Four, New Mutants, X-Factor and X-Men). Each issue gives prominence its respective titular characters, with a thread linking them.

That thread is Franklin Richards. We've mentioned him in passing before, as the son of Reed and Susan Richards. He's a mutant, one of the prophecised Twelve, whatever that is.  More directly he appeared with Power Pack in the Mutant Massacre issues, with a kind of limited visions power.  This story is about Franklin's two other potentials: as someone killed by the Sentinels in the Days of Future Past, and the ongoing idea that he will develop very strong mutant powers, so dangerous that their early manifestation must be avoided.

The appearance of an adult Franklin from the future is always worrying. Does this Franklin have matters under control, and more to the point, how can we tell? There's not much doubt this time: the first two issues both involve him messing around with timestreams in an attempt to recreate his youth: both at the Fantastic Four Headquarters and at the Xavier School.  So, not a stable Hyperstorm, anyway, even if he's well-meaning.

Reed and Sue have dealt this this sort of thing before and for them this is a runaround. It's the third issue, the X-Factor annual, that things start to develop both X-relevancy and actual interest, as Rachel Summers - fellow time-refugee and indeed Franklin's partner in the future - pops in. Franklin wants to try and fix things so his future can never happen or that it will assuredly happen; the contradiction tears him in two. Rachel keeps saying she's from "the future" but she knows that's a lie. She's from somewhen else's future: the existence of young Baby X (Christopher Summers) proves that. For a while, Franklin looks like he's going to destroy Baby X to make it come true; but our Phoenix can stop that - he's no match for her.

In the end, we get a reset to the status quo: Franklin is revealed to have been a shadow of his future self, leeching from Rachel's powers; Phoenix fixes it. We're all back to normal. Except: the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are on really good terms; and Scott and Jean know who Rachel is exactly and why the fuck she dared to put on the Phoenix powers. Now this has all happened, it's hard to imagine the splintered X-Men storyline going on much longer.

With hindsight one of the funnier parts of this little story is the appearance of Cable. Cable is right there when Franklin says that Baby X will grow up to be more power than any of them, and keeps a straight face. There's surely no concept that Cable is Baby X at this point, no teasing to be had at all.

Further note: Ahab is not possibly a name that inspires confidence in underlings. Also, if you are in Gambit's to-be-retconned-in-position perhaps saying that you "like the name" Mr. Sinister on learning that he ordered the mansion be trashed is not very smart. (Gambit put together the group responsible for the Mutant Massacre, we will find out in some years time, you see.  Again, not even a hint of that here.)

Excalibur #6-#7: Inferno

Excalibur #6-#7 is the crossover with Inferno. Because what this new British team title really at this relatively early stage while it's still establishing its own identity is a trip to New York.

Ray, in what I can tell is going to become a pattern, provides our entry into the story, through her psychic link with baby Nathan. She bolts, and the rest of Excalibur go follow: Cap carrying Nightcrawler and Meggan taking Kitty. One of Claremont's more successful attempts at outright humour follows, as the practicalities of a multi-hour flight over the Atlantic and what this mean for bladders are considered. ("Can't you just phase?", says Cap, to Kitty's disgust.)

When they arrive in New York, stuff is weird, in a way similar to and yet more lighthearted than the Inferno issues of the other X-Books. Ray has been nobbled, and a demonically-influenced Meggan provides our main antagonist. There is some fighting. Cap goes bad too; Kitty has to use the soulsword to free him. Oh. She has the soulsword. That was probably a bad sign, right?

The basic premise of Excalibur: i.e. that Kitty and Kurt think that the X-Men are dead, necessitates that there can't be any crossover with the other titles, so once they're here, all they can have is a different viewpoint of the same apocalypse happening, not meet any of the other teams, and not then contribute towards the overall resolution (because that's already being taken care of in too many titles already). Should have stayed at home, really.

Excalibur #1-#2: Warwolves

Excalibur had what was basically a Marvel Graphic Novel (complete with more sophisticated colouring) to launch it. I found it kind of dull. For one thing "Some Left Over X-Men, but in Britain" isn't really a premise; not when Uncanny has already demonstrated its ability to shift its setting at a whim (Scotland, New York, San Francisco, Australia, lately.) And the special protectors of the Omniverse (by appointment to Roma) shtick that you can do with the Marvel UK stuff is already being done in Uncanny. What? It's rather haphazard, this integration of Marvel UK with the X-Men...

#1-#2 is much more to my taste, though. Excalibur fight the Warwolves, who never had been properly defeated in that Special Edition. These Warwolves are much better antagonists: they steal skins and can carry on a conversation. They're looking for Rachel still, so Kitty cosplays as her, which leads to all sorts of hilarity. Well, if you think being et by a warwolf and then have it gradually transmogrify into you is hilarious. Which I kinda do.

The Warwolves are rounded up in the end, and are donated to London Zoo. And we also say hello to a significant new character from Marvel UK: Courtney Ross, Brian's ex. I'm surprised how much tie-in there is with the first few issues of New Excalibur there is here (Ross, the warwolves escaping from the zoo): suddenly New Excalibur almost makes sense.

BritWatch

A new regular feature where Abigail notes minor details of Britishness that Excalibur gets wrong and right, to keep that from overpowering the rest of the entry.

A caption has "Fraser's Bank, Thameside", which is much more plausible as a place name than the "Thames-side" it had mutated to by 2005. It still isn't anywhere in particular in reality. Perhaps it's just because "Fraser's Bank, Bankside" would sound stupid, or perhaps it's supposed to be a fictional place.

The backgrounds and locations are fine. The tube station is dead on.

A policeman says "strewth", which appears to be Claremont mixing up his English and Australian slang again. (The policeman could be an Australian immigrant, I suppose. We'll come back to this later for #4.)

The story is partly set at the fictional Hob's End tube station, a reference to the 1967 Quatermass and the Pit film. The plot of that bears a strong resemblance to the 1971 Doctor Who story The Dæmons, also namechecked here with the improbably titled "Loch Daemon".

Meggan suggests watching various television series: Coronation Street, EastEnders, Doctor Who, Star Trek, or Wildways. Ignoring the scheduling issues, if we assume it is set on cover date to the issue (October 1988), then the Who she'll be watching is Remembrance of the Daleks, which is popularly regarded as a good one. It was written by Ben Aaronovitch, who recently wrote the urban fantasy police procedural Rivers of London/Midnight Riot (and its sequels), which you should read. His next Doctor Who was "Battlefield", which is based around Arthurian mythology and inter-dimensional travel, which is a funny coincidence if nothign else. Ben Aaronovitch and Paul Cornell both wrote for the Virgin New Adventures, and Aaronovitch provided Cornell with a nice quote for the front of his London-based police procedural urban fantasy, "London Falling" which you should also read, and is about as different a book as you could get while still having that label. Cornell, of course, will write what is essentially a renamed Excalibur (Captain Britain and MI-13) in 2008. In case you are wondering, yes, there are only actually about 100 people here in the UK. The rest of us are props.

Excalibur Special Edition #1: Welcome to London

And now we come to Exalibur Special Edition #1, also known as "Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn", by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis. Here is what I wrote about New Excalibur in September 2007, when I was first getting into Marvel.

I got hold of the first trade of New Excalibur, but it was hideously non-authentically British. Captions included "Thames-side", and "Dockland, London". Erk. However - Paul Cornell's recent miniseries Wisdom does one of these characters, Pete Wisdom, excellently. He even manages to have Wisdom call Captain Britain "You tosser!", and invents a few new characters for Wisdom's team, including Captain Midlands (hehe) and, rather oddly, a Skrull duplicate of John Lennon. Cornell takes over New Excalibur soon, and I'm looking forward to this.

New Excalibur ended up being called Captain Britain and MI-13, and surfaced in May 2008. That's one hell of a gestation period - I'd first seen him talk about it in May 2007 at a BSFA meeting. He had two major projects on the boil there: the other being the adaptation of his Doctor Who New Adventures novel, "Human Nature", for the screen. Neither of these had been officially announced, which must have been frustrating, especially since everyone in the crowd knew. He was forced to resort to answering hypothetical questions about Human Nature.

Enough of that, anyway. We're obviously going to be talking a lot in the posts about Excalibur about Claremont's relationship with these islands. He was born here. He appears to have a fair amount of affection for it, which is expressed through his writing. He uses British characters lots. But the time that Uncanny X-Men has spent in the UK has been in two particular touristy areas: the Highlands and Islands, and Edinburgh, and our British and Irish characters have a tendency towards owning islands or castles or being aristocracy. What we have here is a mild case of exoticisation, that he thinks he's exempt from having to do research about these islands and can just idealise it, like he has a blind spot or something. This is why I responded so well to Kieron Gillen's "Manchester Gods" arc in Journey Into Mystery, I think. I'm going to try and squeeze that into the remit of the blog later on, I expect.

So, excluding that backup in Classic X-Men, I believe this is our first actual appearance of London in an X-Men comic. What sort of London do we get? Page 27 provides a hint. There's an Odeon Cinema close by Palace of Westminster, showing the Ipcress File (1965), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and advertising the arrival of National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Not Thatcher's Britain, then. But visually, it's fine: there's a street entrance to an Underground station that could have been drawn from life, and then an almost spot-on drawing of the Victoria line's 1967 stock †, both inside and outside. Sadly both of these things have been let down by miscolouring, but there you go.

Oh, and some plot happened as well. So Rachel Summers came back from MojoWorld and has teamed up with Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler (who are better now, finally), along with Captain Britain and Meggan and formed a new superhero team now that the X-Men are dead. They have decided to call it Excalibur, which is a pretty neat coincidence because it's a Britishy mythological thing that starts with an X already!

Despite my concerns, it more than justifies the $3.50 cover price with the first double-page spread with Wolverine having his nails done and reading a book on flower arranging, though.

† I went on the last in-service journey of 1967 stock, on June 30th, 2011. It was late.

Uncanny X-Men #207-#209: Party in the Park

Uncanny X-Men #207 starts with the X-Men staying with the Morlocks. They're using the services of Healer, on Wolverine, who was pretty beaten up after #205. Rachel goes off to kill someone. She does that. Possibly she should get it looked at. In this case, the target is Selene, who she still has a grudge against and reckons she ought to be able to beat up with her shiny new Phoenix power level. She's tracked by Wolverine, who she's been bringing into her dreams, and knows exactly what he's going to have to do. You'll have to kill me, to stop me killing her, says Rachel. Snikt, says Wolverine. Wolverine goes downstairs to debrief. The X-Men are, well, not exactly keen on what he did, but agree to search for Rachel, to help her if necessary.

Meanwhile, Selene goes to her Hellfire Club buddies, who soon agree that it should be the policy of that club that this action should be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet UnionPhoenix.

The X-Men, with the help of Caliban, trace Rachel to Central Park, where she's been able to use her TK to keep the bleeding in check, but is in a bad way. This is of course the best possible time for the Hellfire Club to find her. A general fight emerges, only ceasing when Nimrod arrives, who wants to kill all mutants, which after a bit of three-way causes a truce between the two factions of mutants.

During all this, Rachel has slipped away quietly, to Spiral's "Body Shoppe" (now actually spelt like that), in hope of healing. This is a rather different and more mystical Body Shoppe to the cyberpunk one which we saw in #205, and I think I needed to have read the Longshot miniseries for this to have made any sense. Oh well.

After the battle's done Tessa offers the X-Men sanctuary at the Hellfire Club for a brief while. I think this (or rather, her battle analysis earlier in the arc) is the first clear indication we get that Tessa is actually important. First appearance: Sage?

Uncanny X-Men #203: Redeeming the Phoenix

A significant life event happened for one of the X-Men in San Franscisco, as Uncanny X-Men #203 reminds us. We see in flashback the Rogue/Ms. Marvel fight, mentioned in Avengers Annual #10 and passim, which has the odd implication that Rogue apparently stripped Ms. Marvel naked and redressed her in civvies, while on the Golden Gate Bridge (and removed all labels, as told in #10). I know they have fast costume changes in comics, but this is ridiculous. She helpfully exposits this, and reminds us why the X-Men are in New York (the Beyonder), before catching up with Kitty.

Kitty has been bequeathed Illyana's armour and soulsword (which we saw in New Mutants #36 would devolve upon her if Illyana gave up her responsibilities). The Beyonder has supposedly made it as if the New Mutants had ceased to exist, but apparently that power doesn't extend to Limbo and its workings, so Kitty has not only the equipment, but also the memory of the New Mutants. Rogue denies that Colossus even has a sister.

Rachel has remembered that the Beyonder never took the power back at the end of #202, and figures on an excellent idea to kill him: if she destroys the entire universe, she'll also destroy the Beyonder. As a plan, this would seem to have one obvious downside. Rachel goes around collecting personas, like she's suddenly got Rogue's ability. She grabs Kitty, Rogue (erm), Ms. Marvel, Jessica Drew (who is just randomly popping by), Colossus, Wolverine, Magneto, Storm.

She then becomes a giant fiery space bird, and goes via the Starjammers to the M'Kraan crystal. Here, she sees the totally of existence, and we learn the exact type of fiery space bird she is: chicken.

This successful attempt to control the Phoenix power by Rachel, appearing in March 1986, can be read as a direct attack on the Phoenix-related flashbacks from Fantastic Four a couple of months ago, that sought to blame the Phoenix for everything. In a couple of years we'll get to see Claremont's take on the Jamaica Bay incident in Classic X-Men: I'll be sure to cover that when it comes up.

Uncanny X-Men 202: brb killing beyonder

Uncanny X-Men #202 starts with a message from Rachel: she's gone to kill the Beyonder. Fair enough. I'm sick of him too, as you might have been able to guess.

She finds him in San Francisco. She can't kill him, of course, because it's not yet time for that to happen: but the way that happens is more interesting than I was expecting. She's given the power to kill him, sure, but wouldn't sure rather use the time saving her fellow X-Men from the giant mutant-killing robots that have been brought through time from the distant future year of 2013?

Yes. Yes, she would.

There's a lot of property damage to deal with, and the X-Men decide to stay for a while to clean up the mess - starting their long association with that city (well, after a flying visit in #49).

This is Magneto's first official mission with the X-Men now that Xavier has gone. He is able to operate Cerebro to try and find Rachel - but it's not working too well because of him earlier messing around with the Earth's magnetic field. (I suppose that's how there got to be so many mutants without the X-Men noticing?)

New Mutants Special Edition #1/X-Men Annual #9: For Asgard!

I'd known that the New Mutants share some vague sort of link with Asgardian stuff for a while - Dani goes and asks for that boon in Utopia if nothing else. And then of course Exiled happened. But it was always a bit obscure. Those stories were rather taking the relationship as read, but it wasn't the type of character background you can absorb through osmosis. Dani has Valkyrie powers and a horse, yes, but the effect that has on her character is not something that can be easily expressed in a one-sentence potted summary. It's an complex event that happened to her, and it's I suppose the same problem that legacy characters have. Mind, it's a sorry state of affairs when having complex chararacter motivations and background is a problem.

So, New Mutants Special Edition #1 and X-Men Annual #9 - which together consist of over 100 pages of comics - gave me my answer, and I feel better for having read them, in much the same way as I have a fuller understanding of Magik from reading Magik: Storm and Illyana.

There's too much plot to summarise sensibly, especially as the nine New Mutants are spread throughout the Nine Worlds (although seemingly not one per world - I think they missed a trick there). Consequences that matter are: Dani is a Valkyrie, with a pegasus, but doesn't understand the full implications of that yet. Karma loses weight. Rahne makes a friend, in Hrimhari, a more mythological wolf shapeshifter. And Rachel Summers new identity of "Phoenix" becomes known to the group, although she still hasn't told Scott who she is yet. He thinks it's a bit tasteless, which is a fair point. And Loki's plan, to make Storm a new thunder goddess and take control of Asgard, fails, as it must.

Uncanny X-Men #196: Welcome to the X-Men, Magneto

Some things happened in Secret Wars II 1, but I'm not going to read that miniseries, because it can't get any better than Luke Cage misunderstanding monetary theory and the Beyonder turning a building into gold (as my favourite comment on that post points out, he's not called BUYING POWER MAN).

So, let's look at our tie-in issue in isolation. Uncanny X-Men #196 starts with Dr Xavier (hrm, had it actually been confirmed he had a PhD beforehand?) lecturing at Columbia University, and getting the impression there's someone in this room who is intent on murder. Who, exactly, he doesn't know, because since he was mugged he's been taking telepathic-suppressant drugs (which he is, incidentally, lying about). He brings the X-Men to him (and Magneto and Lee), and asks them to go check on the various students.

Anti-mutant prejudice has reached the status of a moral panic. Our bad guys are turning on Kitty Pryde and declaring her to be a mutant just for being a student at the School (I guess the secret of what "gifted youngsters" is a euphemism for is out, then). Kitty loses the moral high ground by comparing mutie with her favourite shocking word, to someone's face, before then getting chloroformed, in the face. We then discover that the murder that the students were planning was... of Xavier! They've left a kind of mindbomb, which Xavier doesn't trigger on account of his drugs, but Rachel does.

That sends Rachel raging, and showing her hound-face to the other X-Men. She's ready enough to kill Phil and his gang, but Magneto, of all people, talks her out of it. Magneto's development here is rather sudden. Is this still all building out of the moment in #150 with Kitty, or is there other stuff that we're not privy to? I suppose the Lee Forrester stuff was working toward this.

Meanwhile, Nightcrawler is visiting Father Bowen, Marvel New York's go-to guy if you need a Catholic priest. He's Tandy's uncle (I think what's happened here is that Claremont has noticed there are two characters with the surname Bowen and then decided they should be related?), aided Karma and her siblings, and now now makes his first appearance in Uncanny, and now helps Nightcrawler deal with a crisis of faith. Kurt has been a believer ever since that Brood arc, and here we see what that actually means for him in a world of marvels and miracles. Is there a room for the Christian god when your team is on first-name terms with Thor?

It's been a while. Have a chart. This is an important one, as it marks the first interlinking of two previously separate groups.

X-Men & Alpha Flight: A Bit More Complicated Than That

X-Men/Alpha Flight is a two-part limited series by Claremont, with Paul Smith returning briefly. It is about unintended consequences, and wears its influence proudly on its sleeve: a character talks about the book The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.

In that book, a man, George Orr, has "effective" dreams, which can change the world. To begin with, little things happen. He imagines the wall decoration of his psyschiatrist, Haber, is different, and it becomes so. Haber becoms aware of the power, and directs Orr on a series of dreams to eliminate the world's problems. These wishes are seemingly fulfilled by a Literal Genie. He eradicates racism by everyone becoming a monocultural grey; overpopulation by a plague; and causes peace on Earth by an alien invasion. The original timeline is thought to have had a nuclear war. Better George Orr than that, though.

X-Men/Alpha Flight covers similar ground. A geological research expedition has chartered a plane, piloted by our Madelyne Pryor and her husband Scott Summers. It falls into a situation set up by Loki, who is trying to curry with Those Who Sit Above In Shadow, which are some kind of metagods. Loki has set up a sweet fountain from which the unpowered people get powers (Maddy becomes a healer named Anodyne; Cornucopia can provide for their material needs and so on). Anodyne fixes various Alpha Flighters and X-Men of their problems - Rogue and Scott gain control over their abilities, Aurora becomes more stable, and Wolverine becomes a man. (Happily, this does not seem to include whatever is troubling Northstar - that's society's problem, not his.)

They are initially quite taken by the idea of fixing all the world's ills through powers (partly direct - but also the notion of forcing everyone to have powers will remove their prejudice), and don't wholly reject it when part of the price - the death of magic - is made clear to them, despite the chance it will lead to the passing of Michael and Elizabeth Twoyoungmen (Shaman and Talisman). But they've obviously not been keeping up on their Alan Moore, otherwise they'd have remembered that art is magic. Faced with a world without creativity, they don't see that there's much of a choice, and spurn the "gift", enraging Loki, and causing him to vow his revenge upon the X-Men.

I did this series now as this is when the Chronology Project reckons it happens, but in fact, it was published a bit later. This is unfortunately timed, as Scott will go from learning the news about the pregnancy (in December 1985) to abandoning his wife and child for his dead girlfriend two months later (in February 1986). Still, despite the oncoming tragedy, there are good moments for Scott in this with Rachel, who is still slowly coming to terms with being in the wrong past. She doesn't quite acknowledge Scott is her father, but it seems he knows it anyway. Let's see how long they milk that one for.

Uncanny X-Men #192-#193: If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be X

Things have got very dark, very quickly.

Uncanny X-Men #192 follows two strands. Some of our X-Men wait for Kitty and Wolverine at the airport, where Xavier and Rachel survey passing thoughts and are shocked at the extent of anti-mutant prejudice which has erupted recently. Meanwhile, the others fight Warlock's father, Magus, at the mansion, and drive him off (again, if you hadn't been following New Mutants this would be very opaque).

Several months later, Xavier is finished with today's lecture at Columbia, musing to himself how he's enjoying his new part-time job. As he is presented with a good-will card, he is beaten to a bloody pulp - as a "mutant lover" - by some of his students, no less. Callisto saves him, outfits him in bondage gear, and spirits him away through the underground tunnels that we learn spread even to Westchester.

There, they find a ransom demand from James Proudstar, younger brother of the deceased X-Man John Proudstar, a Hellion and calling himself Thunderbird. He's taken Banshee captive, and hidden him somewhere bitterly ironic: Cheyenne Mountain, the place that John died. He blames the X-Men, and in particular Xavier, reasoning that Xavier must have been using mind control to get James to die. He's unaware that Xavier simply used cheap reverse psychology.

The X-Men are faced with a dilemma, in the truest sense of the word. James has set them up. They can rescue Banshee and render themselves outlaws, or let him die. Wolverine doesn't think they've got much choice, but he lays it out clearly for them. What they probably should have done (as I pointed out for #158) is have a deniable dirty ops squad that wears different costumes, but that'll have to wait a while.

The raid goes badly. Thunderbird has been trailed by three of his classmates from the massachusetts Academy: Empath (Manuel), Roulette (Jenny), and new girl Angelica Jones/Firestar (originally invented for the TV show Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, being brought into the comics for the first time here), who cause all sorts of confusion. Also, they'd hoped to be able to use Rachel to track, but she's having flashforwards to her days as a hound (and also, to how she got taken back in time in the first place - Kate triggering a post-hypnotic suggestion when all was lost on a mission). Instead, this is Kitty's job, and she gets him to safety. But much of the rest of the team is left in there, and Thunderbird has gone after Xavier.

This is Nightcrawler's first real mission as field leader (Storm has gone on a second attempt to go back to Africa, again by ship. Maybe she's developed a thing about flying now she's depowered), and in the true tradition of X-Men leadership skills, angsts about botching it.

Ultimately Thunderbird can't make that killing blow, and matters are patched up. But he's done his real damage: the X-Men are now clearly implicated in an attack on NORAD. And remember, the government knows where they live. The Hellions are evacuated back to the mansion, and are offered places at the Academy, but decline. The X-Men agree to let them leave, which is a bit curious when you consider Emma Frost's previously established recruitment tactics, but hey, I guess they've got some considerably bigger fish. The X-Men certainly seem to have abandoned the strategy of pre-emptively visiting every new mutant they find on Cerebro. Apart from the Hellions there are also the Morlocks, so perhaps sometime since the #120s (when they went after Kitty and Dazzler) mutants have become common enough that this is impractical? Which would also tie in nicely to the increased mutaphobia.

On the other hand, the Hellfire Club are involved in a naked power play at this point. They want control, not material social change for mutants in general - and they "pass" as human and know their money will protect them if they can't. So - a rich elite throwing a minority (which they are a part of) under the bus to gain power! Pretty cutting stuff. May as well make the senator be called Larry Craig and be done with it.

That dystopia that Rachel comes from is not just something that might happen in the future. It is happening, now.

Uncanny X-Men #190-#191: X-Manhattan

Uncanny X-Men #190 is another fantastically weird one.

New York has gone a bit odd. Specifically, it has been turned into a giant Ren Fayre, by the wizard Kulan Gath (who escaped from a piece of jewellery in #189), with the Morlocks as minions. Buildings, people. Outside, in DC, they're having a crisis meeting about this, as people in DC tend to do. Val Cooper is forced to put her faith in those people in brightly coloured costumes and capes.

But the heroes are affected, too. Well, most of them. Not Spider-Man, and not Warlock (making his first appearance in Uncanny only a few months after being introduced in New Mutants). Storm and Callisto are able to escape to New Jersey (not a phrase anyone uses much), and are contacted there by Selene, who has hijacked Rachel's powers, and wants to stop this madness as much as anyone else.

Together, those that remember anything persuade those that don't that Kulan Gath needs overthrowing, while they remain suspicious of Selene's motivations. And so the X-Men are included in that rallying call: "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE", and help defeat the evil wizard.

It's just the X-Men's luck that they were an essential part of the solution which winds back time so that none of this ever happened, and nobody remembers it. Not even Val Cooper, who was looking like she might be turnable. Captain America is going to remember it, though. Shouldn't he be doing something against this anti-mutant hysteria that's being whipped up? Mutants must lead the struggle, but they need allies, especially when they are in such urgent danger. Topical!

New Mutants #22/Uncanny X-Men #189: Young Females Desire Simply Revenge. Failing That, Amusement.

I remember reading Uncanny X-Men #189 before. It actually makes sense this time, particularly in the context of New Mutants #22. At this stage, the interlinkings between the two have become so close that reading just Uncanny makes no sense. In fairness, it does have captions to explain the characters it needs here, so one can get the sense of it, but it didn't have any emotional resonance for me the first time.

A team-up story with Amara and Rachel, and the X-Men only the background is a pretty radical thing to be trying at this stage. Claremont is nine years into his run, and he's still shaking things up. New Mutants has become the home of the more trad stuff, and meanwhile every issue of Uncanny since Scott left has been off-format in some respect.

At the mansion, everyone is quiet and training. Rahne is trapped in her perpetual self-loathing interspersed with moments of loathing other people. Nightcrawler is her target here, and he sadly doesn't try and talk to her in terms she might understand. Moira and the Professor, who might be able to help, are busy trying to figure out how Warlock works.

Cutting away, Selene arrives in New York city, and finds her local High Priest, Friedrich von Roehm (is she supposed to be an actual Olympian at this point or is there another Selene wandering around the Marvel universe?), who suggests she join the Hellfire Club's, and presents her as a candidate.

Going on to the issue of Uncanny, Rachel and Amara - two fish-out-of-water - have a date in New York City. Rachel is from the future, and recently in #188 found out that her mother is dead, which means she's not going to exist in this timeline. Amara is from some colony of the Roman Republic that was set up 2000 years ago, during Julius Caesar's time.

The issue contains large swathes of Rachel's future dystopia, and one can't help but shudder at the panel where she remembers seeing the Twin Towers fall. But more personally moving is her experiences as a hound, seeking mutants, and the tale of how the mansion fell (flashbacked from New Mutants #18). They watch in the distance the boat that Storm is about to leave for Africa on.

Rachel takes them to the MoMA where the architecture reminds Amara of home. As they bond, they detect Selene (who Rachel notes they both faced as an enemy. Amara reacts almost violently against this intrusion into her thoughts (something that she was also very firm on with Xavier), and Rachel apologises.

They agree to follow Selene and take revenge, and track her to the Hellfire Club, where (as shown in New Mutants recently), she's being put forward as the new Black Queen - or rather, more or less blackmailing them. Rachel and Amara infiltrate the place with fishnets and maid outfits, get captured, and have expository flashbacks.

Never fear, Nightcrawler is here to save the day, along with Colossus. Shaw suggests a truce - Rachel and Amara had started it, after all - and they accept. Rachel uses Phoenix's old trick of molecularly manipulating their clothes back into street clothes, and they're away. From Selene's point of view the events here appear to take place between New Mutants #22 and #23, but the ending doesn't quite match up. The internet would be very upset.

Uncanny X-Men #185: Powerless

Uncanny X-Men #185 continues our thread with Mystique/Gyrich/Cooper thread. Somehow, Gyrich has got hold of the neutralizer gun, and plans to test it... on Rogue!

Mystique, for all that she's estranged from Rogue, is horrified by this, and very nearly breaks her cover by vehemently demanding that no such thing be done. Back with Destiny, in their secret base (which they've had the cheek to build under the Pentagon... she'd good!), they discuss what to do.

Meanwhile, Rogue has picked the worst possible time to take an unplanned holiday - to the fictional Caldecott County in Mississippi. They'd thought she was doing better, and then #182 happened. Storm catches up with her (Mystique tells her where to find her off-panel, or rather in Marvel Fanfare - so Gyrich's accusation that the X-Men and Brotherhood are working together isn't far from the truth), has a civilised conversation in which she explains her origin story for the first time (she'd kissed Cody Robbins, which put him in a coma, oops). Storm has repented from her judgemental stance as of #171, and offers herself willingly to Rogue.

Just at that moment, the government attack. After some confusion, Storm ends up taking a full-strength shot meant for Rogue, and is depowered. Forge is as aghast at this as Mystique was earlier. Storm has bottomed out.

Rachel phones Cyclops. I like the panel layouts here - the separation between the panels with Cyclops on the left and Rachel on the right, make the curled coil of a telephone cable. He answers, but she doesn't say anything, even though he's her daddy (dramatic noise! even though it's obvs Wolverine.)

Uncanny X-Men #184: Little Lost Rachel

Uncanny X-Men #184 starts with Cooper and Mystique (under cover identity still) visiting Forge. He's a mutant who is inventing stuff for the government, unaware how it might be unethically used. He's made two things of interest to them today: a scanner for mutants, and a gun that depowers anyone. He doesn't know how they work - he's just duplicated them from technology obtained from Rom the Spaceknight. Forge, by the way, is our fourth Native American mutant character from the U.S. (after Thunderbird I & II, Psyche). Which is all well and good - even if the powers for the other ones are a bit stereotyped. But there's something funny going on when we've had these 4 (of a demographic that makes up 1% of the US) and not a single African-American (12%).

The tale of Rom the Spaceknight is slightly sad, in that because Marvel were licensing an existing toyline, they didn't own the IP. So, no Essential Rom today. (Note to Marvel and Parker Brothers: see if you can't work out your differences and sort that out! You don't want the 1960s Batman series to be released first, do you?

That done with, we go to Rachel, who is watching the X-Men on a TV covering the events of #181. She wonders whether she's not in her past, but some other past - Kelly is alive, Illyana is older than she should be, and Storm has gone punk. After a brief alteraction on the street with Selene, she flees to a nightclub, where the kindly boss, Nick Damiano, offers to put her up. Since she's a teep, she can see he has no ulteriority.

For his trouble, he is killed by Selene, who is still chasing after Rachel. She's saved by our first Professor X Machina in a while, followed shortly by the X-Men. Confronted with the reality of them - and seeing Xavier standing - she breaks down. She has made a huge mistake.

New Mutants #18-#20: The Very Long Night of Danielle Moonstar

New Mutants #18 introduces Rachel [Summers] into the 616. She pops up with an explanation in Westchester, walks up to the door of the mansion, During this sequence she has thought bubbles, and flashbacks. She's quite confused by Illyana answering the door: she's far too old! Which is true, but how does she know she's simply not arrived at the time of the attack on the mansion? She then runs off, to next appear in Uncanny X-Men #184. I don't know why this bit is even in New Mutants, rather than Uncanny, and it certain puts another nail in the idea-coffin that continuity is harder to follow these days. Another demonstration of this is the random Starjammers appearance in #183, which sets up something or other.

So, that done, we can go to our actual New Mutants content. Dani is having nightmares about the bear that killed her parents, decides she has to deal with this on her own, uses the Danger Room to train to fight bears, gets mauled by a bear and sent to hospital with bear wounds. While she's in hospital, The New Mutants first stop the bear from attacking her again, and then are transferred to the bear's realm (it's a demon bear, did I mention that?), defeat the bear, and return home.

Well, their home plane, anyway. This is all well and good, except for the small detail that the cop Tom Corsi and the nurse Sharon Friedlander have changed races. In better news, Dani's parents are alive again! For once, Claremont removes someone from the orphan list. For a Dani-centric story, it's mostly about her absence. I know this is all about friendship being magic and suchforth, but she could have had an actual role in the last couple of issues.

Bill Sienkiewicz took over the art (bar colouring) from this issue. He's far more fluid and expressionistic than the previous, rather literalist artists on the series. In particular, his painted covers are great. I wasn't expecting to see anything quite like them as early as 1984.

X-Men #141-#142: "It's 2013. Do you know what your children are?"

It's the distant future. The year 2013.¹ Yes, time has nearly caught up with Days of Future Past, the story that occupies X-Men #141 and Uncanny X-Men #142 (the series changed its formal title between issues, although we've had "Uncanny" on the covers for a good long while now).

2013 is a horrible dystopia in which Sentinels - giant robots with funny hats - have overthrown the U.S. government, and killed or put in camps all mutants and other superhumans, and spread through the rest of North America. In doing so, they've wrecked the place, - I love here the "express train" that Pryde takes, being a bus pulled by animals. Other nations aren't looking too kindly on the proposed sentinel invasion of the rest of the world, and a nuclear apocalypse is about to start.

Many of the heroes are dead or captured (as we see on the now-iconic cover: expect to see that as a movie poster in 2014), and only a few holdouts remain: Wolverine, Kate Pryde (who would be 46 by now), her husband Peter Rasputin (well, they moved quickly on hinting at that, didn't they, although this is the future and so no, I'm not putting it in the chart), Ororo (who is surely in her 60s, if we're still supposed to think she was orphaned by Suez), Franklin Richards, Rachel (surname carefully left unspecified), and Magneto (called Magnus - the first time we've got a "real" name for him). Together they have decided to do something about it, by sending Kate Pryde's consciousness back in time to 1980, to avert the assassination of Senator Kelly. The only problem is, they're not quite sure how time travel works in the Marvel universe (which is fair enough, neither do the writers). Will it change their timeline and they vanish, or just create a new one and they get to experience a fiery nuclear death anyhow? That giant robots are in charge and are treating even baseline humans badly undermines the "It Can't Happen Here" undertones a bit, but nonetheless the future it presents is quite stark.

Kelly was is going to be assassinated by Mystique, and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Mystique makes her first full appearance in X-Men here, having debuted as a character in Claremont's Ms. Marvel #17, 4 years ago. She's put together a team that consists of herself, her um-friend the blind precog Destiny, Pyro (described as a "Limey", which has got to hurt, considering we'll eventually learn he's supposed to be Australian) and Avalanche, all being introduced here for the first time. The Blob - who was given the name Fred J. Dukes in his prison-break scene in #140 - joins them.

Kate-as-Kitty quickly gets believed, and is sent to Washington to talk with Professor X. Now, this suffers from the a common problem with time travel stories, that Ryan North identifies in Back to the Future, in that why on Earth have they sent her back with so little time to spare? It's almost as if she's arrived close to the events in question as an artificial thing to induce drama... Oh.

So, there is a FIGHT and the X-MEN save SENATOR KELLY'S LIFE and they ALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Apart from the future-X-Men who die. Oh, and Kitty becomes herself again...

This, along with the Dark Phoenix Sage, is often pointed at as one of the highpoints of the Claremont/Byrne run, in a "you, go read that" sense. In this case, I agree. It's quick and mostly self-contained, and it has a point to it that still resonates today - this trope is by now well-worn but is usually used as disaster porn rather than politically. But apart from that, it's also a major turning point in Claremont's run of X-Men, and marks a decisive shift to a world where the X-Men are actively feared and hated.

Non-American readers may not know that the title (used as a campaign slogan by whoever won the '84 election here) is a play on the quite creepy It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are? public service announcements to be found on U.S. television. American readers may not know that the rest of world does not have such televised messages, and find them rather bizarre and unsettling. So I thought I'd mention that here.

So, this scenario, of people going back in time to stop a post-apocalyptic future where robots are hunting down and killing people? Remind you of anything? It anticipates the later Terminator films, without really appearing to be inspired by Ellison's work "Soldier [from Tomorrow]". Is it basically just "Day of the Daleks"? Well, I've not seen that, but from reading summaries, not really as similar as it is made out to be. Claremont Byrne does plenty of outright lifting from film and television, but they repay the favour from time to time, it seems. Of course, now that they're adapting this into a film (see my earlier post about is - shooting right now!), then they're going to have to be very careful to avoid comparisons to Terminator and for that matter to Transformers.

1. When I originally wrote this post I had dropped to a weekly schedule and this was going to post in 2013. But now I've boosted it to daily for September as well, so you'll just have to imagine it's 2013 and laugh.

X-Men: The Sophomore Years

Rumours have been floating around for a while that the sequel to Vaughn's X-Men: First Class would be called Days of Future Past, based on Claremont's classic 1981 story, and it's now been officially confirmed.

What can we expect from this film? Well, in the original storyline, Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants assassinates a senator, which results in a dystopian future in which mutants have been hunted down by Sentinels and killed or imprisoned. The now-adult Kitty Pryde sends a message to her past self, and the X-Men are able to prevent the assassination, avoiding that future.

So, first change: Magneto. He wasn't a part of Mystique's Brotherhood (the films basically have Mystique be Magneto's top minion, which the comics to my knowledge have never done), but they're not going to waste a chance to use Michael Fassbender. Perhaps he'll have found out the politician ultimately responsible for the "shoot" order at the end of First Class was JFK?

The temptation to have "the future" be 2014 will be very strong. We'll see a distorted version of today's world portrayed as a dystopia - mutants being rounded up and kept in camps. Think the early parts of District 9 for tone. And for the sentinels: I'm sorry, but we are not going to see giant humanoid robots with funny hats on film. Even if it weren't too silly, it's too similar to Transformers 4, which will be hitting screens less than a month before X-Men: Days of Future Past. Instead, I wonder if they'll resemble unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which is basically what they are. Maybe have them be called "sentinel drones".

The time travel in the original storyline is a mind transference, which will be too understated for a big-budget action movie. Although First Class is irreconcilable in many details with the original trilogy, they still kept a kind of loose continuity for the cast. This means Kitty Pryde is not going appear as a youngster in the 1960s era, and therefore probably won't appear as an adult in the 2014 segment, either. It might be any of our remaining cast of X-Men, but my money is on Rachel Summers coming - body and all - from the future. This makes it a personal story for Rachel's father, Alex Summers (Lucas Till). Yes. You know it makes sense.

Making Alex be Rachel's father is completely against the "canon", of course. But you know, so what? The film series has never attempted to recapitulate the original stories (the first one dealt neither with an attack on Cape Citadel nor the rescue of a previous set of X-Men from a living island), and it's often made massive changes to characters - look at Rogue, for example. And I do not think it's necessarily the worse for that, it's just different. X3 is rubbish because of its structural faults as a film, not because it failed to followed Claremont and Whedon closely enough.