DAYS OF FUTURE PRESENT: ANNUALS (1990): Fantastic Four, X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants; 1st Ahab

Days of Future Present ran across four 1990 annuals: FF, X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants. Rather than use the 1990 annuals for linewide events, Marvel bundled them into groups. Smart strategy. If all the annuals are in one event and you don’t care about it, you won’t buy any. This way, they can lure you into several events.

It starts in Fantastic Four Annual #23, when the FF return home from a family outing and Franklin senses something is wrong in their headquarters…There’s an alternate reality version of the team there!

There’s also an older version of Franklin, who will be a key player in this event. He freaks out when he sees his younger self and teleports to find Banshee and Forge, who he calls his “teachers” but they, too, are younger than he expected them to be.

This pulls in the X-teams, and they team up with the FF to look for the older Franklin, while dodging a mutant killer from the future called Ahab, who has sentinels and hounds he uses to hunt.

The New Mutants are being led by Cable, who seems to recognize Ahab–a hint that Cable comes from the future.

To get to resolution, Rachel Summers meets Jean Grey for the first time and is revealed to be her daughter.

The story is titled after one of the best future-meets-present stories ever, Days of Future Past, but it is nowhere near as good. It’s not bad, it’s just mediocre and doesn’t have much of a lasting effect–other than the introduction of the character Ahab, who will be back.

Oh, and Gambit. He shows up and meets Storm–and knew her when she was really a kid (now she is an adult in a child’s body due to Nanny’s interference), as they were together in the Thieves Guild.

The back-up story in Fantastic Four Annual takes place after Secret Wars II. It shows Beyonder merged with the Cosmic Cube, and now he’s with Kubik (who is a female entity now), exploring the universe. Yes, he’s back and it’s going to be awful. Oh, and he’s going by the name Kosmos now.

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