Is Days of Future Past Claremont's best comic book story concept?

it is fair to say Chris Claremont is among the top 5,maybe top 3 most celebrated Comic writers of all time and maybe even Marvel's most celebrated writer. we can talk forever on how Clermont changed a lot of things about comic books, female characters and story telling and incorporating many themes to the genre, but I was just recently talking about the DOFP story in comic/movies and there is something I have picked up that never did before in a big big way.

Usually comic books were known for their standard stories of [B]hero good, villain bad. hero beat villain up , Hero win and goes home and be happy[/B]. However I find it very amazingly -awesome that when Claremont came along, he destroyed every stereotype of comic books and I think maybe the best of this example was his DOFP 1981 story.

Now although The Sentinels had been introduced in the 60s by Stan Lee as already dangerous villains to the X-Men, Claremont rewriting them from dangerous to[B] unlimited in power and unbeatable stakes in DOFP [/B]changed a lot of things of how I see about comic book story telling and I think this was after his ground breaking dark phoenix saga where jean, a hero corrupted by this dark phoenix blows herself up or something.

The DOFP story was one of the few maybe the first to push a different narrative that comic books are not about the heroes fighting a villain and winning because Claremont established, that the villains in the story could never be defeated by our expected ideas of a comic book story. Genius.

After almost 40 years or more I sort appreciate this kind of more sophisticated story telling and I am glad the movie actually had this, I am not even sure it would have happened post 2017, when Disney got the rights back to the X-Men because had this movie been made in the 2020s under marvel studios, no doubt DOFP would have been watered down to a limbo, where the x-men will actually fight the sentinels and win fairly or even easily, which would have erased the main purpose of the book's point.

I liked that back then in the 80s comic stories felt very indifferent and made you look at things beyond a wrestling match of super human characters. Also are there any xmen comics in 2021 with this kind of superb narrative? One of the reason why I have never stayed 100% faithful to reading comics anymore is because I felt the genre no longer has talented original writers like Claremont or interesting stories like DOFP.

Not to derail the topic at hand, but Crankypants John Byrne would probably insist that DoFP was his story. To this day, he still whines about Claremont's caption about Kate 'kissing her younger self' and how Chris made it ambiguous how much of a win it was.

[QUOTE=Castle;5484519]The DOFP story was one of the few maybe the first to push a different narrative that comic books are not about the heroes fighting a villain and winning because Claremont established, that the villains in the story could never be defeated by our expected ideas of a comic book story. Genius. [/QUOTE]

What I liked in Claremont’s stories was how much he was a writer of the intimate: it was about the characters felt, their realizations about themselves, their victories on their weaknesses, how their relationships revealed them. His characters grew, evolved, become more sensitive to their role in their chosen family… Claremont was intimate with them and, through him, we were intimate to them. The rest was less important.

Starlin’s stories about Adam Warlock had also the same effect on me.

I mean, it's definitely a contender. It's among my favorite of his work that I've read, and it makes me wish we had shorter epics like it more often.

The Phoenix/Dark Phoenix saga would like to say hello. Second best though, sure.

1. Claremont's greatest story was the Dark Phoenix saga which saw them going into space adventures for the first time and Scott's emotional love for Jean's sacrifice.

2. Second best was Proteus saga.


Days of Future Past is over-hyped as it's just two issues except for the introduction of Rachel.

Does anybody know the relationship between Days of Future Past and Terminator? A lot of Claremont's concepts seem to be plagiarism. ;) or very closely "inspired" by other genre media.

When it comes to Claremont I always wonder what was first? Alien or Brood? Days of Future Past or Terminator? Carrie or Dark Phoenix? Inferno or Ghostbusters?, etc. etc.

I love the Phoenix Saga/Dark Phoenix Saga to death. But I also think it is a little overhyped.

[QUOTE=Exodus;5486267]Does anybody know the relationship between Days of Future Past and Terminator? A lot of Claremont's concepts seem to be plagiarism. ;) or very closely "inspired" by other genre media. [/QUOTE]

According to Wikipedia:

[QUOTE][I]The Terminator [/I]is a 1984 science fiction film…

[I]"Days of Future Past"[/I] is a storyline in the Marvel Comics comic book The Uncanny X-Men issues #141–142, published in 1981…[/QUOTE]

[I]Terminator [/I]has inspired a lot of creators afterwards…

I think if either DoFP or the DP Saga would be published now for the first time, that we would have a lot of criticism on them on this board. I think it is mostly nostalgic why we love these stories, as those are the stories that made the X-Men popular in the first place.

If you ask me, AoA, The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire and Supernovas are way better written and impressive stories. But it might take a decade or so more for the latter two to become nostalgic, I guess.

From the ashes and dessolution and rebirth for me are the best script

[QUOTE=Master of Sound;5486325]I think if either DoFP or the DP Saga would be published now for the first time, that we would have a lot of criticism on them on this board. I think it is mostly nostalgic why we love these stories, as those are the stories that made the X-Men popular in the first place.

If you ask me, AoA, The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire and Supernovas are way better written and impressive stories. But it might take a decade or so more for the latter two to become nostalgic, I guess.[/QUOTE]

I disagree that those stories are better written...

[QUOTE=Master of Sound;5486325]I think if either DoFP or the DP Saga would be published now for the first time, that we would have a lot of criticism on them on this board. I think it is mostly nostalgic why we love these stories, as those are the stories that made the X-Men popular in the first place.

If you ask me, AoA, The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire and Supernovas are way better written and impressive stories. But it might take a decade or so more for the latter two to become nostalgic, I guess.[/QUOTE]

Well, of course. Anything will get a lot of criticism, anything written and drawn like a book from 1981 would get a lot of criticism, and because those stories have been duplicated, those stories being written now would just feel like they have been done before.

I think the only 'fair' criticism looking back at them is that they were written for a much different audience than now using much simpler technology then now. What I will say about DoFP is that the idea and story are so big, that all it took was those two issues to make every single reader's imagination go wild and fill in so much more of that world. Every once in a while Claremont would do something to tie in to it somehow and it just became big automatically. It pretty much is why Marvel has ended up having to establish it's time travel rules and an actual multiple universes/timelines and such, because every writer wanted to copy it and readers were fascinated by the idea.

Terminator may be a 1984 film, but it had to (after a lawsuit) give credit to the works of Harlan Ellison and his 1957 short story "Soldier" which was featured on the Outer Limits. Ellison was a close friend of comics writer Peter David also IIRC.

Likewise, any mention of DoFP surely has to include a nod of the hat to the 1972 Dr Who serial "Day of the Daleks".

DofP is great, but it has it's influences.

No, not the best.

The Best is The Phoenix Saga!

I'd say it's turning Marvel Girl into Phoenix. That decision early on, to give an established hero a cosmic-level power-up, is probably the biggest source of story material for the entire franchise, and it's pure Claremont in its combination of feminism and fetishism.