Days of the Future Past is one of the most iconic and influential arcs in X-Men history. In two issues Chris Claremont and John Byrne took us to a dark future in which mutants were hunted, caged or killed by giant Sentinel robots.
An adult Kitty Pryde (with the psionic help of Rachel Summers) went back in time to prevent the assassination that would lead to this nightmare future.
But what if?
Years of Future Past by Marguerite Bennett and Mike Norton shows us a very different future in this upcoming Secret Wars book.
What if Kitty couldn’t travel back and was forced to stay in future and fight for the surviving X-Men?
Bennett reveals what’s at stake for the adult Kate Pryde and the last mutants on this future Earth.
“The two major new players are the big change. The first actually came from something that troubled me all the way back when I was a teenager — it’s almost a throwaway line Kate makes to Colossus, where she references having been a mother, and something terrible having happened. In this future dystopia, Kitty is not an optimistic young girl with nothing left to lose — she is a mother and wife with more to lose than ever before. No single battle rests on her — her entire people is dwindled down to near extinction. All survival hinges on her choices,” Bennett told Comic Book Resources in an exclusive interview.
“This is a very different story from the source material. As much as I love the original story, it is perfect as it stands, and to try and repeat it would be just that: Repetitive, if I pulled it off, or diminishing, if I didn’t. I wanted to explore that world without fumbling to mimic the same beats and parrot the words of masters. We’ve gone off the tracks.
“Years of Future Past” is bombastic and ’80s in tone, but is as much about youth as age, about the search to be a force of good as much the consequences of evil. A part of me set out to write an adventure story, and instead I wrote a coming-of-age in the post-industrial military complex. And you know what? Mike [Norton] and FCO [Plascencia] killed it. We’re into something wild, weird, and new.”
Bennett confirmed Wolverine, Storm, Rachel, Colossus, Mystique, Magneto, Blob and two new characters will appear in her story.
Travel to the world of Years of Future Past this June.
By Editor