Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
The beginning of the Fall of X is just weeks away (in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #1, on sale July 26). But in comics — and especially X-Men comics — there’s always more room for dark futures, right? Before the Fall of X, return to the X-Men’s original dark future in X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday #1, on sale July 12.
Not only does this mini-series promise to finally reveal what happened to the future X-Men in the years leading up to Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s classic story, but it also marks X-Men Gold writer Marc Guggenheim’s return to Marvel’s merry mutants. Did I mention this is also Marc’s very first X-Men Monday appearance? Let’s see what he has to say!
Courtesy of IMDB
AIPT: Welcome to X-Men Monday, Marc!
Marc: Thanks for having me!!!
AIPT: How did the opportunity to return to the X-Men and tackle this important story come about?
Marc: I got an email from X-editor Mark Basso asking me if I was interested in writing a four-issue mini-series revisiting Days of Future Past. I may have responded with an email to the effect of “‘interested’ is too small a word.”
AIPT: Nice. As a reader, what did Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s original Days of Future Past two-parter mean to you?
Marc: Well, here’s the funny thing. Uncanny X-Men #141 — the first part of Days of Future Past — was only the third X-Men comic I’d ever read. Suffice it to say, it completely blew my young mind. I still have a vivid memory of plucking that issue off the rack at my local stationery store (I would later buy the rack and it sits in my home office) and being completely intrigued by the cover.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Because this was only my third exposure to the X-Men, it’s hard for me to overstate how strange the reading experience was. A huge part of the appeal of Days of Future Past is seeing the futuristic depictions of these familiar characters — except these characters weren’t yet at all familiar to me. My reading experience was, suffice it to say, very strange. Nevertheless, there was something iconic in those pages. You could sense that this wasn’t your average comic book story. The whole endeavor had an imprimatur of “this is a future landmark” about it.
AIPT: Marvel says X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday is “the thirty-year descent into this iconic dystopic future.” How is your story structured? Will we be jumping around in time throughout, or is each issue set in a different decade maybe?
Marc: The “cold open” of the series is set late into that three-decade period. We then jump back to “Year One” and the remainder of the story unfolds in linear fashion until we’re overlapping quite directly with the events of Days of Future Past. And who knows? We might even jump even further into the future to the days beyond the two-parter.
AIPT: Marvel has revisited the Days of Future Past timeline many times since its debut. This week’s first X-Fan question comes from @Jean_RED_Grey, who said Chris Claremont’s 2021 prequel to Days of Future Past, Uncanny X-Men #140.5 (”Prelude to Future Past”), showed Jean Grey as White Phoenix guarding Rachel Summers’ psyche. Does your story regard that issue — and other assorted tales — as canon?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Marc: The “Prelude to Future Past” opens up a huge can of continuity worms (continuity can of worms?). Originally, I had a plan to resolve some of the incongruities with the Days of Future Past timeline that have presented themselves over the years, but getting into it would have violated my rule for writing this series that one need not be familiar with any other Days of Future Past-related issues (particularly one like “Prelude” which was made available to a very select readership). But, wherever possible, I treated any DoFP-related stories as canon. The very first thing I did was to go through all the issues and stories I could get my hands on and wrote up a detailed chronology of events up to, including, and even after what we saw in Uncanny X-Men #141 and 142. Actually, I created two chronologies: One exists as a Microsoft Word file with clips of specific panels and sequences. The other is a spreadsheet that attempts to lay out events year by year.
AIPT: Hopefully we’ll get to see those chronologies in the eventual Doomsday collection! Your mini-series offers a chance to answer so many questions readers have about this dark future. Was there a particular mystery you always wanted to see explored that you get to tackle in Doomsday?
Marc: There absolutely was. I can’t speak for other fans, but the big question I had when I first read Days of Future Past was: Why do the denizens of the Marvel Universe seem to be totally fine with super heroes and Inhumans, yet “hate and fear” mutants and the X-Men? For that matter, how does the average citizen of the Marvel Universe even know who’s a mutant and who got their powers by, say, being bitten by a radioactive spider?
Another question I had was what gave the X-Men the idea to try to fix the present by changing the past in the first place? When you think about it, it’s kind of an outside-the-box way of solving the problem posed by the Sentinels. Our fourth issue will shed some light on this.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: X-Men Gold gave you a chance to explore present-day Rachel Summers. How does it feel to get to go back to her early years and flesh out her past?
Marc: I love Rachel. She’s one of my favorite X-Men and the events surrounding Days of Future Past make her a terribly tragic figure. Consequently, she looms very large in this series — particularly in our third issue.
AIPT: Of course, you can’t have young Rachel without young Franklin Richards, right? X-Fan James asked if Franklin plays a role in Doomsday.
Marc: I can answer that in one word: Absolutely. Like you said, you can’t have Rachel without Franklin. Specifically, you can’t have Rachel without her being in love with Franklin — and vice versa. Theirs is a beautifully tragic love story. Franklin loves Rachel even though she was responsible for the deaths of his parents. No, really.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: X-Fan Mario B. asked how you’ll tackle the Kitty/Piotr dynamic in this timeline. Obviously, those two went through quite a lot together in X-Men Gold.
Marc: They certainly did. And we make direct reference to it at the end of our second issue. Obviously, we’re dealing with a different timeline here than the “main” chronology we saw in X-Men Gold. But I’ve written this series with the philosophy that, when it comes to alternate timelines, there are moments when “history rhymes.” That’s definitely the case with Kate and Peter.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: X-Fan William Rose asked if there’s a character in Doomsday you were excited to write who wasn’t heavily involved in the original Days of Future Past.
Marc: Oh, there were a few, William. Throughout the series, I found little moments for various characters to shine. Among them, characters like Professor X, Spider-Man, Forge, and Steve Rogers (who isn’t Captain America, by the way).
AIPT: Finally, it’s been several years since you wrapped your run on X-Men Gold. Looking back, what about your time with the X-Men are you most proud of?
Marc: Well, it’s funny, but when I was first offered the Gold gig, I knew it was for a limited time, that Jonathan Hickman was going to be coming in with an all new, all different (see what I did there?) take on the franchise. So I knew I was pretty much just a custodian, although Gold ended up running much longer than any of us had expected. My point is that I saw my job as telling some evergreen X-stories which would be compelling without upsetting the apple cart. I wanted those stories to harken back to the original Chris Claremont-scripted tales which made me an X-Fan to begin with. Whether we succeeded in that endeavor isn’t for me to say. But if you’re asking what I’m most proud of, it’s probably X-Men Gold #30, the extra-sized ill-fated wedding of Kitty and Peter. There were a lot of narrative needles to thread there and I think we pulled it off.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: It was quite the twist! Definitely one of the more iconic and talked-about recent X-Men stories. But on that note, that’s all I have for you, Marc. Thanks for stopping by X-Men Monday!
Remember to pick up X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday #1 when it goes on sale July 12, X-Fans. Here’s an eXclusive look at the first issue’s lettered preview.
Writer: Marc Guggenheim
Artist: Manual García
Inker: Cam Smith
Colorist: Yen Nitro
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
A brutal end for Uncle Scott.
Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!
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