In 2012, Hank McCoy went back in time and brought the original five X-Men from their past to his present. As a result the five time-displaced X-Men have been stuck in the present for the past six years. But the question I pose is this: what time did they come from?
So, as you may know from my posts and podcasts I have been following these time-displaced X-Men in "X-Men Blue" as well as Cyclops in "Champions" and these two titles could not be more different in quality. But we're not here to make pieces of paper fight, we're here to determine what year this X-Men come from. We know they are from the early years of The X-Men, they're all still teens, they all arrived in the classic yellow and black training suits, and they are the only members of their X-Men team. But we can narrow it down further. In "Champions", Amadeus Cho asks how many villains Cyclops has even fought with The X-Men in the past. Cyclops recounts The Vanisher, The Blob, Unus The Untouchable, Magneto, and Namor The Sub-Mariner as foes. Using the power of the internet we can find the exact date of each battle. The latest of these enemies was Unus The Untouchable who they fought in issue #8 of the first X-Men run in 1964. So question answered right? Welp, no.
See, the same comic that gave us that helpful list of villains also provided us with an interaction between Cyclops and Amadeus in which Amadeus asked what TV shows Scott used to watch in the past. Scott's only show of reference was "Seinfeld". For anyone not from the US (or a teenager in 2017) "Seinfeld" was a sitcom following the fictional life of comedian Jerry Seinfeld that aired from 1989-1998. But that's not the same year! Nani!? Well, now we hit the sliding time scale of Marvel Comics. You know how Spider-Man was sixteen in 1962 and is supposed to be like thirty by now? Kinda weird, but the truth is Marvel Comics likes to pretend the events of the past move up as the years go by. So instead of Peter being a teen in the 60's, now he was a teen in the 90's. Instead of Captain America being unfrozen in the 60's, he was unfrozen in 2000 or so. Time scales up as the years go by to keep the characters from getting too old. So, by that logic, our scaling of time for The X-Men applies about the same. Think of it this way: Spider-Man appears as a teenager in 1962 and The X-Men (who were teens) appeared in 1963. This could mean adult versions of the characters are about the same age, so if Peter Parker and Scott Summers were teenagers around the same time in the 60's, they were scaled up once more to say they were teens in the 90's.
So the safe bet is to say the OG X-Men were operational around 1994. What makes this weird and kinda genius is that the X-Men got their popularity in the 90's. By the 90's they were a household name and it seems every retooling of the X-Men is trying to get back to those days. So if the time-displaced X-Men were to go back to the 90's, could we see the X-Men comics regain that popularity? Marvel Comics could try to test that theory, time will tell if that's their secret goal.
Thanks for reading.
See, the same comic that gave us that helpful list of villains also provided us with an interaction between Cyclops and Amadeus in which Amadeus asked what TV shows Scott used to watch in the past. Scott's only show of reference was "Seinfeld". For anyone not from the US (or a teenager in 2017) "Seinfeld" was a sitcom following the fictional life of comedian Jerry Seinfeld that aired from 1989-1998. But that's not the same year! Nani!? Well, now we hit the sliding time scale of Marvel Comics. You know how Spider-Man was sixteen in 1962 and is supposed to be like thirty by now? Kinda weird, but the truth is Marvel Comics likes to pretend the events of the past move up as the years go by. So instead of Peter being a teen in the 60's, now he was a teen in the 90's. Instead of Captain America being unfrozen in the 60's, he was unfrozen in 2000 or so. Time scales up as the years go by to keep the characters from getting too old. So, by that logic, our scaling of time for The X-Men applies about the same. Think of it this way: Spider-Man appears as a teenager in 1962 and The X-Men (who were teens) appeared in 1963. This could mean adult versions of the characters are about the same age, so if Peter Parker and Scott Summers were teenagers around the same time in the 60's, they were scaled up once more to say they were teens in the 90's.
So the safe bet is to say the OG X-Men were operational around 1994. What makes this weird and kinda genius is that the X-Men got their popularity in the 90's. By the 90's they were a household name and it seems every retooling of the X-Men is trying to get back to those days. So if the time-displaced X-Men were to go back to the 90's, could we see the X-Men comics regain that popularity? Marvel Comics could try to test that theory, time will tell if that's their secret goal.
Thanks for reading.
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