"X-Men: Days of Future Past" Graphic Novel/Prose Novel Comparison

            Hey, all, you’ve entered From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin! I’m Tim Cubbin, by the way.

            Okay, let’s get down to business. You’re here because while searching on Facebook or Twitter or BlogSpot or a search engine, you saw this link that said “X-Men: Days of Future Past” Graphic Novel/Prose Novel Comparison and just HAD to check this out. Anyway, this piece is going to compare the “X-Men: Days of Future Past” graphic novel by Chris Claremont to the “X-Men: Days of Future Past” prose novel by Alex Irvine. The prose novel is an adaptation of the “Days of Future Past” comic book storyline from 1981. This comparison essay is only of the graphic novel and prose novel and NOT about the film “X-Men: Days of Future Past” by the way. Thought you ought to know. Now, I have written a review of the “X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix” epic collection by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Joe Duffy and Scott Edelman that has the “Days of Future Past” storyline AND a review of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” by Alex Irvine, so I totally suggest you read those two pieces as well as this one because they are kind of important to understanding this, but you can do what you want to do, I can’t force you, but if you do read all three of these pieces, you are THE BEST!

            Now, let’s get the plot of the story out in one sentence: The X-Men in a dystopian future send Kate Pryde to the past to prevent the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from assassinating Senator Robert Kelly and avert this horrible future from ever happening. I know, sounds a little flimsy, but I’ve heard worse, like… well we’re not here for that, we’re here for “Days of Future Past” so let’s focus on that.

            I am here to discuss some major differences between the two adaptations. I must state, for the giggles, that in the graphic novel, the future was 2013, but I guess in 1981 that seemed like a reasonable enough future. Thirty-two years was enough time to keep up credibility. It should be noted that in the prose novel, where the exact years were not specified, the future was twenty-two years from the present. And let’s face it; Magneto was in a concentration camp during World War II, and the novel even states that he was over one-hundred years old.

            A big difference between the graphic novel and prose novel was that in the graphic novel, Senator Robert Kelly, a bigoted politician, was a presidential candidate on an anti-mutant platform, but in the prose novel, he was content with just being a senator.

            Another difference between the graphic novel and the prose novel was the point of Kitty and Kate Pryde’s time change. In the graphic novel, the switch occurred when Kitty was in the Danger Room in Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, yet in the prose novel, the switch occurred when the X-Men went to the Max-X penitentiary to examine the super villain the Blob’s escape, where the X-Men got into a battle with pawns from the (sorry about this) Hellfire Club. This scene wasn’t even in the graphic novel, but I do get the point Irvine used this is the prose novel: at Max-X, a mutant hunting robot called a Sentinel showed up. Kate, having been enslaved in the future by the Sentinels, had the reaction of fear that the time swap hadn’t worked. I give Irvine a lot of credit for coming up with that, but Chris Claremont’s version of Kitty conquering the Danger Room was a lot funnier.

            Another difference was the use of Warren Worthington III/Angel. In the graphic novel, Angel had rejoined the X-Men as an active member, whereas Irvine used Angel as a way to get to Washington D.C. to stop the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from taking out Senator Kelly.

            The prose novel also explored the future in more detail than Claremont did, focusing quite a bit more about Rachel Summers and Kitty Pryde, particularly by Irvine giving Rachel a fatal injury.

            Irvine in prose also gave a hint on the connection between Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler and Raven Darkholme/Mystique. For those who only know the X-Men from the movies, in every other continuity Mystique is Nightcrawler’s mother, which Claremont and Marvel did not establish in 1981 at the time when the graphic novel was published.

            I was also surprised how Irvine managed to expand on Claremont’s story. The “Days of Future Past” storyline in the comics was just two issues. Irvine was able to produce a 375 page novel (granted the print was big and then spacing between the lines was big), which I found to be quite impressive.

            Now, you’re up to here, and you may be wondering which adaptation I preferred better. Let’s look at this carefully: Claremont wrote a great story, and I don’t just mean for the time when it was written. Sometimes when a story is published, it only holds up for the time around the publication. You could say a story was good for its time, or a story is good for all time. Look at it this way; in 2016, a thirty-five-year-old comic book was rewritten as a prose novel. In 2014, a film with the same title was released. Over the years, there were television series with the story, including in the 1992 “X-Men” animated series, “Days of Future Past” was adapted originally in the first season, and would eventually returned to in later episodes of the series. Even the entire 2008 animated series “Wolverine and the X-Men” was based on “Days of Future Past.” This is a story that has held up for forty-one years at the time of me writing this post. Is it a good story? The answer is an obvious yes. The question remains: did Alex Irvine outdo Chris Claremont? The answer to that is a resounding no. However, Irvine did not make many significant changes from what Chris Claremont did. So can I say that I enjoyed Irvine’s story better than Claremont’s original story? Yes. I loved the prose novel. If you read my review of “X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix” review, I docked off points ONLY because of the stories that were NOT “The Dark Phoenix Saga” and “Days of Future Past.” So if I were to take the issues “Days of Future Past” and “Mind Out of Time!” by themselves, I would give it a nine out of ten. If you read my “X-Men: Days of Future Past” by Alex Irvine review, you’d know I gave it a ten. So do I prefer the prose novel? Yes. But it have been written without Claremont, so I have to give him credit as well.

            Well, I guess I’ve typed up enough here and assaulted your eyeballs enough, so now you can leave, go back to social media, or your streaming, or your browsing, or watching videos or doing whatever you usually do on the internet when you’re not reading this blog. But I hope you will come back to this blog. I’ve been busy with all kinds of projects, some of them professional, some you’ll actually see on this blog, some you might see in a bookstore years down the line, some you might see on the big screen, or the television, or your streaming service, who knows. But I do have my B’ings (they’re pointless but still funny to read), short fiction and nonfiction, poetry, essays and editorials, and yes, dozens of reviews, I’ve done over eighty posts and I am nowhere near stopping, so I hope you’ll keep coming back, and if you do, you are THE BEST! So I hope you see my words and my thinking face again, and I’ll say, until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!