I think we can firmly put X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday into the category of prequels/sequels that no one was asking for. And yet, the X-office felt like catering to the large number of X-fans who are longing for the good ole days. So, in the name of nostalgia and capitalism, Marvel produced this four-issue mini-series.
Writer Marc Guggenheim and penciller Manuel Garcia – along with inker Cam Smith, colorist Yen Nitro and letterer Clayton Cowles – must have known they were getting into a difficult project. The original Days of Future Past storyline – from the original Uncanny X-Men #141 & #142 – is widely considered one of the top five X-Men storylines of all time. It was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne at the height of their run together, shortly after finishing The Dark Phoenix Saga.
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Now, Marc Guggenheim is a capable writer with a large fan base. I’d never heard of Manuel Garcia before. He shows signs of being a good artist, but the art here is inconsistent – too many pages look rushed.
And, well, they aren’t Claremont and Byrne from the ’80s. So, there was never a possibility that this miniseries could live up to the story it’s based off of. That was never the goal. Comparing the two isn’t really fair, but also hard to ignore. Maybe the most amazing thing is that X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday isn’t all that bad.
Guggenheim and Garcia are both obviously huge fans, who did their homework to create this prequel/sequel. The result is at times more homage than original work. It’s almost like an Easter egg hunt: Oh, that image is an homage to Jean’s death at the end of The Dark Phoenix Saga. That image comes from the next issue at Jean’s funeral. It goes on and on. The hunt can be fun at times, especially seeing how Guggenheim adapts well-known story-arcs from Marvel’s 616-Universe into the Days of Future Past timeline. Oh, that’s a riff on Fatal Attractions; that’s Civil War, etc. Unfortunately, it is also very derivative.
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The greatest strength in the story may be how Guggenheim details the string of events that turns America into a fascist state, driven by hatred. It’s a little too unnerving how well those plot developments apply as political commentary on America’s current political state.
Very telling is a sentence out of a letter from the editor – Marc Basso – that appears at the end of issue #4. He comments that Guggenheim painstakingly created an overview of the events that would make up the story. Unfortunately, that is exactly what much of the miniseries feels like – a series of events, documenting everything that happens in between the past and future sections from the original Days of Future Past.
In other words, the story is very much plot-driven, which only made me realize the strengths of the original and the weaknesses of this miniseries. The original Days of Future Past was only two issues long with a plot that wasn’t basic, but also not overly complicated. At its heart were the characters that Claremont had been developing for years.
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This prequel/sequel has too much plot, too many events, too many characters – many only cameos. The characters aren’t developed in this miniseries. Instead, Guggenheim relies on our nostalgia of these characters and stories that we know from comics gone by. He is at times very good at pushing the nostalgia button; but that also reveals how little the miniseries can stand on its own.
In conclusion, X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday lives and dies on the nostalgia it’s built upon. There was never a chance it could live up to the original Days of Future Past. Instead, it feels like a mixture of a homage and a cash grab. Parts of the story and art are interesting and well done. Others are just there.
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