Years of Future Past #5

By Marguerite Bennett, Mike Norton and FCO Plascencia

The original Days of Future Past ended with essentially everybody dying and no hope for mutants. With this tie-in series, we’ve seen some dire consequences and some major characters die before the finale. As we approach the end of the book, we hope there will be a little bit of a better ending for mutant kind than in the initial story.

Marguerite Bennett has done a great job with this mini-series. It’s always hard to re-imagine a classic storyline and have it come anywhere close to being good. What works here is that Bennett takes time to flesh out the new characters in this story so we like them as well. The older characters like Kitty and Colossus are still kept in character and still awesome; not to mention this time around we get a giant Lockheed too. The final battle between Cameron and Christina may have been a bit predictable and not liked by everyone, but Bennett does handle it well. She comes up with a creative way to solve it and that’s not something we see everyday in comics. Bennett leaves us with some ambiguity as to where our surviving mutants will go moving forward. Time travel and alternate realities are never very kind to mutants.

The pencils this issue are handled by Mike Norton with colors by FCO Plascencia. Mike Norton has done a good job on this series, and this issue he continues that trend. There are many splash pages and most of them look great. Anytime a gigantic Lockheed attacks anything, that’s pretty awesome. Norton also gives us a sweet panel of most of the gang getting ready for their final fight. Wolverine and Nightcrawler side by side, just like in the old days. While most of Norton’s work is excellent, there are a few off-panels where characters bodies seem a bit disproportioned; it’s nothing that will ruin the book for you though. The colors by FCO Plascencia are on point this issue. His use of blood is slight, but effective when it shows up. Plascencia also makes great use of shadows in a lot of panels, which allow the book to have a dramatic feel in many panels.

As we wrap up yet another tie-in, we continue to wait for the main series to make any progress. Marguerite Bennett has had her hands in several books for this event and has been very successful. Years of Future Past may not wow you, but you will walk away feeling fulfilled.