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Larry Bonds
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Joined: 09 July 2005
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Posted: 03 September 2007 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | 1  

Then to add further insult to injury, they had to go and say that Cable was actually there helping Xavier from the very beginning!

WHY?

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Josh Goldberg
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Posted: 03 September 2007 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | 2  

Someone help me out, here.  When I first read "DoFP" at the age of eleven, I somehow "knew" that Rachel was the child of Scott and Jean, even though I also knew it made no sense because Jean had just died and they had never had any children together.

Today, however, skimming  through the book, I can find no concrete reference to Rachel's parentage (not even her last name).  All I'm left with is a red-headed telepath.

Am I missing something?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 03 September 2007 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | 3  

There were two things I wanted to do when I plotted what became "Days of Future Past". First and foremost, of course, I wanted to do a kick-ass Sentinels story. But there was something else almost equally important: I wanted the X-Men to have a clean win. A story in which, when the dust settled, there was no doubt that they had accomplished what they set out to do. They had WON.

The story I came up with seemed pretty bulletproof. Marc Gruenwald, Captain Omniverse himself, insisted that what would happen was actually the "creation" of an alternate timeline, but I pointed out to him that Kate having been sent back thru her own "mindstream" meant there was no way that could happen. The link between Kate and Kitty was continuous, contiguous, and uncorruptable. When the past -- Kate's past -- was changed, it would be CHANGED, and the future from which Kate sprang would simply vanish.

That's what I plotted, that's what I drew, that's what I sent in. But when Chris scripted it, he included what immediately became known around the Office as "the lesbian incest scene", where Kate "leaves" Kitty's body, and "impulsively gives herself a kiss." In other words, she survives the alteration of the timeline.

I nearly exploded. I did not see this until it was published (and after this I insisted on script approval*), and I had never been so furious in my life. Roger Stern had to talk me out of quitting the book right then and there. He was no longer editor, but he was my friend, and he could see thru my anger to what was best for me and, he hoped, the book.

But the damage was done, both to my storyline and my attitude toward the book and the characters. That was when I really started to understand that, in the end, it didn't matter who I thought the X-Men were, or how I thought they should think and act, because it was what Chris scripted that was seeing print, and that was what the fans were accepting as "fact". (I did not know it at the time, but this was very much the same scenario that ultimately drove the wedge between Stan and Jack, and Stan and Steve.)

So the whole adventure did create an alternate timeline, which Chris and ^^***** have mined ad nauseum ever since. And the X-Men lost their clean win -- again.


*In the end, I didn't last long enough for this to kick in.

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Flavio Sapha
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Posted: 03 September 2007 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | 4  

...but she was too central to the story to be eliminated...
+++

Fire up the time machine.  We´re going back to turn ´er into a BLONDE!
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Philippe Pinoli
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 2:40am | IP Logged | 5  

Maybe I'm too old but I can't remember how Rachel travelled to the past (our present) ? 
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Flavio Sapha
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 4:18am | IP Logged | 6  

Did they ever show that? I think Rachel turned up in the New Mutants book,
but the trip might've been off-panel.
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Brian Mayer
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 6:54am | IP Logged | 7  

Rachel was one of the things that was the beginning of the end for me on X-men when she came to the "past".
*****

For me, that was the beginning of the beginning, or about the time I got into them.  As a kid, I found the story interesting as hell.

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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 7:05am | IP Logged | 8  

Rachel was one of the things that was the beginning of the end for me on X-men when she came to the "past".

+++

For me, that was the beginning of the beginning, or about the time I got into them.  As a kid, I found the story interesting as hell.

•••

Which basically confirms what others in this thread have been saying. The retro-introduction of Rachel was yet another over-complication of X-MEN plotlines, that longtime readers found hard to swallow. To someone new to the book, there on their own "ground floor", this was not the case.

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William Rossel
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 8:19am | IP Logged | 9  

 John wrote:
...but I pointed out to him that Kate having been sent back thru her own "mindstream" meant there was no way that could happen. The link between Kate and Kitty was continuous, contiguous, and uncorruptable. When the past -- Kate's past -- was changed, it would be CHANGED, and the future from which Kate sprang would simply vanish.

You sound like a modern day comic book Carl Sagan, JB, explaining the great X-Cosmos.

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Michael Connell
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 8:28am | IP Logged | 10  

Remember when the X-Men's biggest problem was fighting Factor Three? Ah for the good old days.
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Eric Lund
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 8:29am | IP Logged | 11  

Ya Rachel was the point at which all things sucked for the X-Men... when she was put into Exaclibur and used as Claremont's Man Bashing character in his never ending "I really wish I was a woman" crusade above and beyond how he used Storm the X-Men just died for me...

They exist in a nice little pocket world of used to be like pretty much all ^^***** characters nowadays
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Andrew Kneath
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Posted: 04 September 2007 at 8:40am | IP Logged | 12  

I confess I always kind of liked Rachel. (While not a new reader it was only around the time that she came back that I became a serious X-Men fan.)

However I agree she was the beginning of the end because of all of those copycat "back from the future X-Men", Bishop, Cable etc...

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