It's the 50th Anniversary of the X-Men. So of course Marvel has a cross over event planned this year. This one is X-Men: Battle of the Atom. I love the X-Men so I can't wait to see how this event shapes up. I probably won't pick up all the titles. Personally I think it's great that we will have more time travel involved. The X-Men from the past have already arrived in the present with some help from Beast. Now the X-Men from the future will also arrive in the present. Time travel is something I love. Whether it's a time travel movie, TV show, book or comic count me in.

But I wonder if all this time travel and 2 or 3 of the same X-Men running around will be too much for most people. I even explained this to a friend of mine who used to read X-Men comics back in the day and he thought that Marvel might be going a little overboard with all the time travel. I'm not even sure how much hype/excitement there is for this event. I think a lot of people are enjoying All New X-Men. But I don't know if that excitement will carry over to X-Men: Battle for the Atom or not.

Im extremely mixed on this issue for some very good reasons, to me some good old Claremont time travel was great. See i love characters like Bishop, Cable, Rachel Grey, ect. I think they add to the story and give it a whole knew dimension that isn't seen in alot of places

HOWEVER!

we don't need 3 wolverines, or cyclopes or anyone else for that matter running around. I love the All New title but still having two of each (with the exception of course of jean) is really silly (and 3 beast, DARK BEAST GO!) they could use that time in titles to push characters they under use and that is frustrating. Why rehash Iceman (who i love in all new btw) when you could add Hellion, Anole, Rockslide, Cannoball, Chamber or countless others laying around with just as much if not more potential.

so yea if not right it doesnt bother me, but more and more of the same character (oh and an old beast will be in battle of the atom so that will make 4 <.< ) is a waste imo

I don't think they abuse it, but maybe they overuse it a little bit.

@mcklayn: I love Bishop and Cable as well. I guess since I started reading comics in the 90's and I loved the time travel stories in the X-Men cartoon I'll always have a soft spot for these characters.

@mcklayn: Bishop and Cable werent Claremont.

I agree with you on your point, but then again, lets see where Bendis has to go with it. I have to say, he's definitely walking a path not walked before. If it fails and crashes, then I guess Marvel would have to do what the fans have been asking for for the longest period of time.

I don't mind time travel as a theme in X-men, but I sort of prefer it in stuff like X-force or X-factor. Firstly because, while it is a pretty classic X-men theme, it's not really a theme that seems very central to the X-men specifically; but also because it seems like that's where it's been done best. Not-X-men books can explore it as a more central theme in a story (as it's used for characters like Cable,Layla Miller, etc) where in actual X-men stories it often seems distracting to the main themes.

Days of Future Past is a good example. It's the original. Thing about that story is it has a lot of firsts; first story for Kitty as an X-man, first time we see Magneto on the side of the X-men, first time Storm leads the team instead of Cyclops, first time the X-men face Mystique's Brotherhood, and the first glimpse of many possible (not actually, but) futures. Claremont weaves these themes together with the future to foreshadow the significance of these firsts. We see Kitty in both her first adventure and as the hero she's destined to become, we see how Wolverine learns from Storm's leadership to be a smarter and less savage combatant, we see the effects of the threat posed by Mystique's Brotherhood, etc..

-and we see all of that in a two issue arc! It's half theme-half plot device, but despite it's economy of style, we're never lead to believe that it's thematically anymore important to what the X-men are and do than any of the other weird stuff they do all the time. And I don't really think it should be. Time travel in itself can be the basis for some great stories (and ways to tell stories), but there's nothing about it that seems especially interesting compared to the more central themes the X-men have that do make them special.

There is certainly a lot of it. It fits the mission statement of the X-Men pretty well: They want to effect a societal change to help their people, so the best threat is "proof" that the future sucks for everyone and especially mutants. They've had a lot of success with "evil future" plots, either as actual glimpses of the future, alternate realities, or both:

• Days of Future Past
• Days of Future Present
• Fall of the Mutants
• X-Cutioner's Song
• Age of Apocalypse
• Apocalypse: The Twelve
• Ages of Apocalypse
• Age of X
• Earth X
• Here Comes Tomorrow
• House of M
• Messiah War/X-Men Second Coming
• Age of Ultron
• GeNEXT
• X-Men Forever
• Wolverine: The End
• The entire Exiles series and the recent X-Treme X-Menseries
• Pretty much anything with Rachel Summers, Cable, or Bishop
• etc

I understand why they do it, but honestly I think Marvel has gone to this well too often, especially recently.

There's a reason Marvel is doing so much time travel - it's very intentional and part of the fallout comes from the ending to Age of Ultron...

...where the space-time continuum ruptures due to all of the manipulation caused by time traveling. Wolverine and Sue Storm killing Hank Pym and then Wolverine going back AGAIN and literally killing his other self was the final straw, causing all types of crazy stuff like Galactus popping up in the Ultimate Universe. It plays a part in Miguel O'Hara (Spidey 2009) popping up in the present day 616 and more stuff we haven't heard about.

Remember AoU was not an alternate universe, it took place in the very near future - which means it hasn't happened yet in many of the books we're reading right now.

I don't really mind it.

I definitely agree with all this! I personally don't mind the X-Men time traveling, but I also feel that it's not really essential to the themes explored with the X-Men. The main theme with the X-Men is that they face prejudice from humanity for being mutants and they are trying to find a way to unite humanity and mutant kind. Sure, the current stories are proving this goal to be even more difficult to attain, but that was pretty much the whole goal of the X-Men. The time traveling aspects are usually used to explain about what would happen if the X-Men don't achieve their goals.

Yeah they probably do but I love it.

( + )

Exactly! It's a theme that can be used to great effect, but it's hardly central, and could be seen to be used more than is actually effective. I can see why it's a neat thing to be exploring so much this year, since it's their anniversary, but I do think it's maybe already been a bit overused in recent years, so I'm hoping this season will be their last encounter with it for a while.

I will say that I hope for one more time traveling experience by the new Xmen (Surge,Hellion, X-23, Rocjslide,Dust, Mercury, Armor, Gentle, Pixie and Prodigy) in which they actually become THE Xmen fighting for mutant rights

You mean a story where in the New X-men travel to the future, or a story with the New X-men set in the future?

I think I'd be more interested in the latter, really, but that one doesn't really need to have time travel.

Oh my yes- far too much time travel. It was amazing once, then kinda neat the next time... but by now it is so old hat and convoluted that there is hardly a solid foundation to stand on- fragmented history is not good m'kay

I think it would be cool for it to be set in the future. Either in a setting where the other Xmen have lost their powers or have died because of some catastrophic event ( no time travel) or I always thought it would be kinda cool to have them travel back in the past to try and stop the Scarlet Witch from taking away everyone's powers. Instead her saying No More Mutants she says something like: No More Xmen or Death to the Xmen or All Xmen Die or something to that effect. And as she says it the New Xmen are either shielded by being teleported to Limbo by Pixie or they are snatched back to the future so to speak but either way they are mutantkind's only hope now. But I don't know that may be a little corny. I also thought it might be interesting for them to go into the past and take place of Xavier's original team being that they are in All new and in the present

Me too. I think I have enough time traveling of the X-Men to last a lifetime. It's just that when Days of Future Past came out, the time traveling aspect of the story was actually used well as Kate Pryde had to travel into young Kitty Pryde's mind to prevent a tragedy from happening. But nowadays, it seems like they are using the time traveling aspect to these stories because it seems like they are running out of ideas for new X-Men stories that doesn't involve time travel (at least, that's what I'm thinking anyway).