Thoughts

In the early seventies, the BBC TV show Doctor Who featured a story where future freedom fighters travelled back in time from a dystopia to assasinate a contemporary political leader. A leader they blame for causing the Future Hell they live in.

A late night viewing of this on US TV inspired Claremont and Byrne to build a similar plot into the X-men. And so the classic “Days of Future Past” storyline was born. I mentioned before when it came to the Hellfire Club appearing in ITC’s The Avengers that its fascinating how these ideas get taken and just transformed into something very new.

A lot of the Claremont/Byrne era is built around two-part stories, and this is no execption. Indeed its still striking that this story is covered in just two issues. Everything about it feels on an epic scale. A Summer Crossover across all the Marvel titles would work on this basic concept. A future World where all the heroes are in danger of dying, while time travellers inhabit bodies in the past to try and prevent that future from happening.

In other words, you could easily tell a three/four issue mini-series for each of these characters – how they died (or were thought to have died) Instead the issue just teases this incredibly vast story.

It’s also the first appearance in the X-titles of one of my favourite ever characters – Mystique. It’s an incredible debut, she looks awesome and she seems incredibly dangerous. Magnet-who?

Fun Panel

Another in my ongoing series of just striking team panels.

That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense

The Evil English Mutant Pyro is introduced in this comic. Which was quite a shock to me when I started reading the back issues – given that the title at the time featured the Evil Australian Mutant Pyro.

Characters often go through subtle revisions between appearances, as the writers get to grips with what makes them tick. But the reworking of Pyro seems on another level, a complete reboot after his original appearance.

Now that all this stuff has enjoyed fancy deluxe reprints, its possible to spot this jarring change. But back then, I guess the ephemeral nature of the medium made it seem far more possible that the desire to create more international characters led to just changing the nationality of an existing one.