X-Men: Days of Future Past by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.
Reviewed by Adam St.Pierre
Disclaimer: This review is written by someone who hasn’t read every single X-Men story arc, but has read quite a bit and loved every bit of the X-Men television show from the 1990s.
If you haven’t seen the newest installation of the X-Men movie franchise, Days of Future Past, you need to. Pretty much immediately. The film is a true comic book movie and does a phenomenal job of highlighting all of the characters from the highly lauded story line from Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t nitpick certain elements from the movie and compare it to the original story or talk about how certain characters were not written like that because you most definitely can do that and that kind of critique can be fun … but, ladies and gents, comics and by proxy comic book movies are supposed to be fun.
Luckily, your library has two different collected editions of the Days of Future Past story line to help you get reacquainted with or introduced to that classic tale. Why do we have two different editions you ask? Well: The first collected edition brings together X-Men #138-141, Uncanny X-Men #142-143, and X-Men Annual #4. This one is a good primer for folks that:
1.) Have not seen X-men First Class or cannot remember much about First Class
2.) Just want a short overview on X-men comics during the 1960s when it was mainly monster of the week
3.) Have not seen X-men Days of Future Past yet
4.) Don’t care about the minutiae and want the book quicker (the waitlist is currently shorter)
The only disappointing thing that I came away with this particular collected edition was that it only contains one issue that is relevant to the Days of Future Past story line.
The second collected edition is a Marvel reprint that came out earlier this year. It collects X-Men #141, Uncanny X-Men #142, New Mutants Annual #6, X-Factor #5, X-Men Annual 14, Excalibur #52, Wolverine: Days of Future Past #1-3, and Hulk: Broken Worlds 2. Which is basically every single possible issue that could deal with the Days of Future Past story arc. This is a great complete edition for folks that:
1.) Want to analyze every part of the movie and compare it to the source material
2.) Need to go back after the movie is over and fact check
3.) Want to have a protracted debate and compare it to the 1990s television show
Either collected edition is a fantastic read and honestly you could read one or both of them to get the full effect. Regardless, the T.V. show’s theme song is totally stuck in my head.