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.)

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.

X-Men Annual #4: "Nightcrawler's Inferno"

X-Men has effectively been soft-relaunched. Scott has left the team, and has been replaced with Kitty Pryde, a new viewpoint character and somewhat a blank slate. (Perhaps Claremont could have used some of the other X-Men for this, but they've all been saddled with increasingly complicated backstories. Of which more anon.)

It's Nightcrawler's 21st birthday, and he's opening his presents. One of them is a statue of himself, which explodes and knocks him deadinto a hell dimension, which Doctor Strange, guest star for this issue, transports the rest of them to.

The hell dimension is consciously modelled after Dante's Inferno, and we, along with the X-Men, are taken on a tour of it. One of the funnier moments is when Colossus, surveying hell, proclaims that he is pleased that he was brought up as an atheist, if being a Christian means you have to accept the existence of what he's looking at.

What's this all about? Well, Nightcrawler, way back in Giant-Size #1 was being chased by a mob. But not (directly) because he looked weird. He'd been blamed for some murders, which were really the doing of his step-brother, who he later killed in self-defence. The hell has been the doing of his step-mother. And Amanda Sefton, the girl he's been dating for quite a while now, turns out to have been his step-sister, spying on him.

Eew.

This is where Kurt really shows his really-good side, as he's more than happy to forgive everyone involved, and isn't even mad at Amanda about the whole incest thing, and is in fact more than happy to continue it.

Which is strange, because Westermarck effect, so was how old was Kurt when he was adopted, anyway?

Otherdoors, Kitty is totally crushing on Peter, and I am thinking about making an X-Men Shag Chart.