45 Year Later, This Is Still the Best X-Men Storyline of All Time (And Marvel Has Ruined It)

The X-Men reached their turning point in 1974, when Giant-Size X-Men #1 came around and gave readers a book starring the once-failed team that they wanted to read. This would lead writer Chris Claremont to X-Men (which would get changed to Uncanny X-Men as the years went on), and did something that I’m pretty sure no one ever expected: made the X-Men popular again. While it didn’t become the bestselling comic right away, it was a book on the rise throughout the late ’70s. The dawn of the 1980s saw the team get the story that would go down as the greatest X-story ever, that classic “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, but that wasn’t the last great story Uncanny X-Men would give readers in 1980.

“Days of Future Past” dropped in Uncanny X-Men #141-142, and proved to be a gamechanger for the entire comic industry as the years went on. The story saw the creative team of Claremont and co-plotter/artist John Byrne bring readers to a future where the Sentinels had taken over, slaughtering every mutant they could find. The X-Men made a last-ditch attempt to stop the mutant hunters, both in their present and the past, sending someone back to undo the whole situation. Claremont was always a revolutionary writer, and he and Byrne were amazing together; they gave readers a best of all time story that changed comics forever. And it’s one that Marvel has ruined in the last 45 years.

“Days of Future Past” Was an Exciting Change to Superhero Stories That Has Been Played Out

One can’t downplay the impact of “Days of Future Past”. It wasn’t the first time that a dark alternate future that had to be fixed with time travel appeared in fiction, but it was the first time that we got to see it in the comics in this way. It took all of the darkness of a future where the heroes had been slaughtered and put it on display in the starkest possible terms. We even got to see the death of the X-Men’s most popular member, Wolverine, to show readers just how wild things had gotten in this alternate future. Byrne’s near flawless pencils were able to bring Claremont’s script to life and the story remains impressive to this day; there’s a reason it’s numbered among the best X-Men comics in Marvel history.

The story ushered in a new age in comics. It was merely the first dystopian superhero future, but it definitely wasn’t the last. Pretty much every major superhero team you can name has a future like “Days of Future Past”; the X-Men now have several of them, the one introduced in this story (with the timeline revealed to have survived a few years down the road) and others. Marvel and DC have both shown dystopian robot-ruled alternate futures for their entire universes. Heck, there’s a good chance that James Cameron might have read this story in 1980, and it played some role in 1984’s Terminator.

However, all of that (well except the James Cameron hypothetical) is part of the problem. Superhero comics work on taking popular ideas and finding ways to repackage them over and over again. “Days of Future Past” was too good to just be a two-part story, and it introduced a fun sandbox to play in. So, Claremont went back, introducing Rachel Summers and giving us stories like “Days of Future Present” and the villain Ahab, as well as the recent X-Men: Days of Future Past — Doomsday. The problem comes when an idea is used to the level of cliche and the Days of Future Past-type universes are now cliche.

Sure, we can get cool ones like those created by Jonathan Hickman for the Krakoa Era. We can get cool modifications on the idea like “Sins of Sinister” or Omega Sentinel’s future in Inferno. However, we’ve also gotten, well, “Days of Future Present”. We’ve returned to this alternate future so many times that it’s kind of boring. We expect these kinds of futures now, and it’s become a problem. Recycling an idea over and over again becomes a problem because everything about it gets played out. Revolutionary stories can quickly become played out, and eventually, everything great about those stories like will become tired and boring.

“Days of Future Past” Was a Double-Edged Sword

“Days of Future Past” was a shocking story that grabbed readers 45 years ago. Can you imagine walking into the supermarket with your mom and seeing the cover to Uncanny X-Men #141 or #142? Thumbing through thosee issue and seeing the madness of the story. It was a singular moment in comic history and it led the comic industry to entirely new places.

Of course, like any thing that takes a thing to new places, eventually those places are no longer new and that’s what happened to “Days of Future Past”. The revolution was sold out and became a new product, with everyone creating their own version of it. None of that changes how great the story is — it’s honestly one of the highlights of the Claremont/Byrne years, which was a time full of highlights — but it was so good that it eventually became yet another plot line you expect from the X-books.

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