With Bryan Singer returning to the X-Men franchise and bringing the band back together for a massive new X-Men film, Days of Future Past, it seems as good a time as any to see what the film is based upon. Well, after struggling through 176 pages of classic Marvel fare from 1980, I have to say that the source material is pretty damned awful; from a story perspective and from a writing standpoint, Chris Claremont and John Byrnes Days of Future Past is a great concept but their comic is disappointing and boring. Surprisingly, Days of Future Past is a two-issue story. Thats right, even though the trade paperback is 176 pages and youre expecting the whole book to be about this huge dystopian X-Men story, its really only 44 pages long! The rest of the book is taken up with a series of really mediocre X-Men stories. For example the first issue is Cyclops literally re-telling the entire history of the X-Men! Then theres an extra-long story about Nightcrawler being sent to Hell so the X-Men go to Hell to save him, followed by a two-issue story about Wolverine hunting the Wendigo (a mythical woodland creature in Canada), until we finally get to Days of Future Past, and then the book closes with a story about Kitty Pryde left home alone at the mansion with an Alien-esque monster trying to kill her. It's a very uneven short story collection. A few words about these other stories before getting into DOFP - they are terrible and boring! Thats it. Ok, Ill say a few more words because I hated them so much. First off, having the first issue to this book being the entire history of the X-Men starts the book off at a turgid, slow pace. I realise this is the epilogue to the Dark Phoenix Saga and concludes with Cyclops leaving the X-Men to walk the Earth, but its so unnecessary! Nightcrawler in Hell - more like what the hell! And the Wendigo? Who cares about any of this? Certainly not the reader whos expecting Sentinels! The reason these stories fail is Chris Claremonts writing because while these stories might seem interesting - and in the hands of a competent writer they might be - Claremont completely sucks out any excitement with his dreary, pedantic writing style. So when you get a panel of Wolverine fighting a demon, it cant remain unremarked upon with the reader simply enjoying Byrnes art. Claremont has to clutter up the panel by putting in a thought bubble of Wolverine thinking something redundant like Boy, these demons are tough! I sure hope Kurts ok! as if wed forgotten why they were in Hell to start with. Then theres a caption saying something equally dumb like Wolverine fights the demons - but will they reach Nightcrawler in time?. This happens in every panel, on every page, for nearly 200 pages. Its exhausting to read. Comics these days can be read in a single sitting and its not because theyre shorter, its that most writers and artists understand that they can function effectively as a tag team - the artist showing the action which usually doesnt need any commentary, while the writer eliminates the captions and thought bubbles, tightening the dialogue and plot so theyre not needed. Comics have become far more sophisticated than they were in 1980 and much more can be accomplished effectively if the creative team speak the language of comics well and give their audience more credit, trusting that they dont need everything spelled out for them. Claremont just over-eggs everything so, while the pages are packed with words, most of them dont add to the story and in fact hinder the pace. It became so tiring that I couldnt read more than an issue at a time before setting it down and doing something else to recover. And so we get to Days of Future Past which, like the other comics collected here, has the same problems as the others in terms of Claremonts writing, though the story is definitely the most interesting one here.
The year is 2013 (in the comics) and the relationship between humans and mutants is like the Nazis and the Jews during WW2 with mutants forced to live in internment camps, their powers suppressed with special collars they have to wear. Sentinels - giant purple robots with human faces! - police the world having defeated the X-Men long ago and continue to keep the mutants down. The fight is all but lost for mutantkind but while many X-Men are dead, a few remain for one final, desperate push to defeat the Sentinels. Wolverine leads the remaining X-Men in a last ditch effort to destroy Sentinel HQ based in the Baxter Building, and Kate Pryde travels back in time - just her mind though, not her body - to possess her younger self in 1980, in an effort to change the past and make sure this hellish future never happened. How that future came to be is that, in 1980, Senator Robert Kelly was assassinated by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (yup, they really called themselves that) and that this was the trigger for ordinary Americans calling for a clampdown on mutants by commissioning the Sentinels to keep them in check. These Sentinels in 2013 will go on to cause worldwide nuclear destruction so its especially important that Kate succeed and prevent the assassination from going ahead. The only parts of the story I can say I really liked were the dystopian future parts where we saw Wolverine and the Resistance fight back against the Sentinels. In fact they did a damn good job of it - I began wondering how the mutants were ever defeated by these tinpot tyrants in the first place! But it was ruined by the clunky dialogue from Claremont. Heres a direct quote from the story - Storm has broken into Sentinel HQ and this is her thought bubble after shes picked the lock: It was a lifetime ago when I was a street urchin in Cairo, being trained as a thief by Achmed el-Gibar. Those were hard days, but happy ones - though I was happier still years later in Kenya. The urchin became the goddess, Ororo - the weather witch who used her mutant powers to help the local villages. I... I wish I was there. I wish I was that child again. I might as well wish for the moon. Bear in mind Storm is attempting a daring break-in to the Sentinels HQ at the Baxter Building and speed is of the essence - she has time to think all of that?! Not to mention, why is she repeating her life story? It grinds the action down to a snails pace.
The attack on the Baxter Building is the best part of the book, let alone the DOFP story, but its just a few pages. The bulk of the story takes place in 1980 (back then, the present) which has Kitty trying to convince everyone shes from the future which takes too long but of course they believe her - and then were off to Washington as the Brotherhood, led by Mystique, prep their dastardly plan to kill Robert Kelly. You have to wonder at their motives though - they want to be left alone, so they decide to kill a US Senator. And that will accomplish their goal, how exactly? The rest of the story is simply an overlong fight between the X-Men and the Brotherhood. A superhero fight back in 1980 consisted of the unbelievable corny method of a superhero actually saying their powers as theyre using them, so you have Storm wittering on about how the evil mutants will feel the awesome power of her weather powers as shes manipulating the weather, or Pyro telling you he can control fire as hes controlling fire, or Wolverine telling you hes got adamantium claws as hes using his adam... you get the idea. The finale is maybe the most idiotic part, in a book filled with idiotic moments. The Brotherhoods goal was to kill the Senator and yet when one of the Evil Mutants - Destiny - has a crossbow pointed at his chest, she literally talks at length to him about why theyre there and what theyre trying to do instead of simply killing him - why not just pull the damned trigger? Its like that James Bond villain-trope where they explain their insane plan to Bond instead of getting around to killing him. Destiny and the Senators extended and pointless dialogue gives Kitty the time to thwart the assassination thus changing the future and saving the world. Days of Future Past is an incredibly tedious comic that spawned a slightly better (but still terrible) two-part episode on the early 90s X-Men animated series and a big budget movie currently in production. I can only imagine that Bryan Singer and his crew will create a far more interesting story from the scanty imaginative detritus of Claremont and Byrnes original because Singer seems to be a more natural and gifted storyteller and his second X-Men film was really something. It looks like Singer and co. are definitely going in a different direction just by looking at the cast - Blink, Warpath, Bishop and Sunspot arent in the book - and Claremont has been nowhere near the script so its bound to be better written. Im rarely with Cher but I wish I could turn back time and not bother with this comic (that was part of the song, right? I never heard it in full). Definitely avoid it and wait for the movie next year instead.