What’s Covered?
Fantastic Four Annual # 23, X-Factor Annual # 5, New Mutants Annual # 6, X-Men Annual # 14
Synopsis
Days of Future Present - Fantastic Four Annual # 23
Writer: Len Kaminski
Penciler: Grep Capullo
The fantastic four head home to Four Freedom Plaza only to find it missing and the old Baxter Building in it's place. I personally didn't know that the Baxter Building wasn't around anymore so this didn't strike me as odd. As they go inside the building, they find all sorts of people working in there who haven't been around for years.
Once inside their old headquarters, they run into an older version of the Fantastic Four. Once again, I'm out of the loop. The current team actually has a female Thing named Shary and a human Ben Grimm no longer as the Thing.
We end up finding out that an older Franklin Richard has shown up and may be causing these problems. Forge and Banshee are the first ones to find him and he seems to know them well.
We get the first shot of the villain for this series. Ahab is the head "Houndcho." Just kidding, I made that up. He's from the future and he's in charge of the hounds. He was the one controlling Rachel in her future and he's here to collect Franklin (and maybe Rachel).
X-Factor Annual # 5: Rachel meets her parents
Writer - Louise Simonson
Penciler - Jon Bogdanove
Franklin sees Ship and recognizes something is wrong. Ship wasn't there in his timeline.
Ahab releases a bunch of Cyborgs and hounds to capture Franklin.
The Fantastic Four was following adult Franklin. They ran in to Forge and Banshee (of the X-Men, lol) and all of them came across X-Factor as Franklin had discorporated Ship and the team went falling to the ground.
Let me fill you in on what's going on here. During Days of Future Past, Rachel and future Franklin were dating. Future Franklin died shortly before Rachel coming to our timeline. However, Rachel hasn't had her memories since coming back from Mojoworld, which is how she was able to be slightly less annoying during Excalibur.
Now what's happening here is that Franklin is siphoning off Rachel's phoenix power for some reason (we'll find out later) and that's what drew Rachel here. Franklin has full memory of Rachel, but doesn't understand why she has these Phoenix powers.
OH SHIT. Finally, Jean and Rachel talk to each other! The scene cuts away after this, so I'll nerd out more soon.
Ahab is sending Sentinels after anyone who gets in his way of apprehending Franklin, which happens to be the FF, X-Factor, and Forge and Banshee of the X-Men (lol).
Alright so Rachel explains that she's her daughter from the future. She's a little tone deaf being like "It's the Hound Marks, isn't it?" No dumbass, it's not the hound marks, it's that someone who likes like Jean is saying she's your daughter after she barely got over the emotional trauma of Madelyn, the Phoenix, and resurrection.
Now we're starting to see some of that annoying Rachel angst. I know this is tough for you Rachel, but you should have been expecting Jean to take it hard. Even if Rachel didn't know about all the Madelyn stuff (which I think she did), they did just get done fighting Ahab's minions so it's a poor time to spring this on them. Lol, Scott shows up and is like "Oh Hey Rachel, what's going on?" Dumbass never figured it out.
It's not always about you Rachel.
Oh, in typical Marvel fashion we'll take away any chance for the emotional resonance by hurting Rachel and having everyone focus on saving Rachel.
Ahab takes control back of Rachel for a while, but she uses her Phoenix power this time to avoid staying a hound and kills a bunch of the other hounds. Ahab escapes, of course.
More angst...
Punch punch, kick kick.
New Mutants join for some shoot shoot, punch punch.
Archangel and Iceman get messed up. They'll be fine because this is an Annual and that means we probably won't feel the after effects of this.
I'm being negative, but I do love finally seeing this interaction.
Ahab takes baby Christopher Nathan. Cyclops doesn't take it well.
New Mutants Annual # 6: Future New Mutants
Writer - Louise Simonson
Penciler - Terry Shoemaker
Cover art by Rob Liefeld.
So Franklin shows back up at the X-Mansion and manifests a future group of New Mutants. Young Rachel and Teenage Franklin are there. Look who else is there, it's Doug Ramsey. Oddly he still looks like a teenager, but he should be in his 30's like Kate Pryde was during DoFP. There is also two lazy characters with a female Nightcrawler and a slightly different Gambit looking character. At least the dark skinned brute looks new.
Oh yea, Doug Ramsey could look young because he's actually Warlock. Forgot about that, lol. Also, they are led by Banshee. From what I understand, this has some foreshadowing because I think Banshee leads an X-Team in the future. I'm not sure which one because I've literally never read ANYTHING between 1992 and 2019.
Ahab sends more drones and hounds after the New Mutants.
Present tense baby Franklin is talking to teenage Franklin. Franklin starts to freak out a bit as we head into the final chapter.
X-Men Annual # 14 - Conclusion
Writer - Chris Claremont
Penciler - Mark Heike
Cover Art - Art Adams
A bunch of shenanigans ensue leading to Sue Storm and Cyclops to be captured by Ahab. These two have significance because they are the parents of the two time fugitives he is after. I wonder if Jean Claude Van Damme will show up?
They are turned into Hounds. Ooooh, I was so worried about their long term prognosis.
All of the teams (XF, NM, Forge and Banshee) are now joined by baby Storm and Gambit as they face off against more of Ahab's hounds. I should also mention that they try to hint that Ahab might be Cable from the future, but I know that never goes anywhere so I won't even play along.
It turns out that Franklin wasn't real, we had only been seeing a psychic shadow of himself that he sent back in time at the moment of his death.
Ahab is defeated and Rachel wonders what this means for her. She's still there, so what does that mean? She was hoping maybe that future would be destroyed and she would cease to exist. Does she need to go through it again?
Rachel whining.
Jean is also trying to decide whether she should marry Scott right away or wait until X-Factor rejoins X-Men. (That last part was me projecting).
Jean's just in a bad place in general. It was cool for them to finally talk and I would expect it to be hard at first, so I guess it's the NEXT time they talk that will be interesting.
Everyone leaves as friends.
This was a cool piece of continuity. Remember when Rachel found out her mom was dead and added herself to cool snow globe in Jean's parents house? Jean went and found it.
My Rating - 5/10
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