Days of Future Past
- Not to be confused with the Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed.
Days of Future Past is the name of a popular storyline in the Marvel Comics comic book Uncanny X-Men. The storyline alternated between the present day, in which the X-Men fought Mystique's new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and the future timeline caused by the X-Men's failure to prevent them from assassinating Senator Robert Kelly, in which robot Sentinels ruled the United States and mutants were forced to live in concentration camps. The X-Men were forewarned of this tragedy by the future version of their teammate Kitty Pryde, whose mind travelled back in time and possessed her younger self to prevent this future from ever coming to pass. She succeeded in her mission and returned to the future. Despite her success, the future timeline from which she hailed still exists, but as an alternate timeline rather than as the actual future. The storyline was very popular at the time and was produced during the franchise's meteoric rise to popularity, which was largely due to the "Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past" writer/artist team of Chris Claremont and John Byrne. As a result of this popularity, the dark future seen in this story was revisited later on several occasions. Rachel Summers, who was a key player in the original storyline, travelled through time to the present day and joined the X-Men. Nimrod, the "ultimate Sentinel", followed her to the present and became a foe of the X-Men and the Hellfire Club. Another supervillain, Ahab, later followed her to the present in the "Days of Future Present" crossover. Ahab kidnapped the children Franklin Richards (son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, and in the future timeline Rachel's love) and Nathan Summers (son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, and as an adult the mutant hero named Cable), but was defeated by the X-Men, X-Factor, the New Mutants and the Fantastic Four. Rachel meanwhile joined the European mutant team Excalibur, whose series twice revisited the "Days of Future Past" timeline. The first time was in a story by Alan Davis, in which a time-travelling Excalibur and several Marvel UK heroes overthrew the Sentinel rulers of the future America. This storyline also revealed that Excalibur's robotic "mascot" Widget had been possessed by the spirit of the future version of Kitty Pryde. The second revisiting was after Rachel was lost in the timestream, and was only seen in a vision by her teammate Captain Britain. This story, "Days of Future Tense", revealed the final fate of the "Days of Future Past" timeline's Excalibur team.
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