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If you haven't watched any of the current season of "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," you'll probably want to skip this column.
If you have, then you know Agent Coulson and company are stuck several decades in the future, trying to survive on a space station attached to what remains of the Earth.
It's a pretty bleak tomorrow, but most comics don't deal in happy futures.
The iconic X-Men story "Days of Future Past" featured an era where mutant-hunting Sentinels have eliminated most of the team. Much like in the 2014 movie of the same name, the surviving X-Men decide it's too late to turn the tide and instead focus on stopping that future from ever coming to pass.
While the movie focused on Wolverine, in the comics a battle-hardened Kitty Pryde was sent back to the body of her younger self to help the X-Men foil the assassination of U.S. Sen. Robert Kelly, which set off the chain of events that put the Sentinels in charge. It was the first -- but hardly the last -- X-Men storyline in which a character from a terrible future comes to today to fix tomorrow, among them Bishop and Cable.
The most famous, or infamous, DC futures came in "The Dark Knight Returns," which saw an aging Batman come out of retirement in an era of cynicism and decay, and "Kingdom Come," where Superman returns from a self-imposed exile to stem the tide of a more violent generation of heroes. Neither hero was exactly welcomed back with open arms by society, or each other.
Only a decade or two ahead of the real-world times in which they were published, things hadn't gone quite past the point of no return in either of these timelines. But given more time, futures tend to get worse, not better.
In the '90s, a special line of Marvel comics flashed forward to the year 2099, where new versions of Spider-Man, the Punisher, the X-Men, the Hulk and Doctor Doom navigated a future where power was concentrated in the hands of corporate conglomerates. Even after the titles gradually faded from Marvel's lineup, the franchise has been a popular one, getting a reboot here and there.
The iconic "Spider-Man 2099" got a new title a few years ago, focusing on him being stranded in the present day. And Deadpool's daughter circa 2099 has popped up several times in his series.
Earlier this month, I outlined DC's Legion of Super-Heroes and the future from which they came. It's had its ups and downs throughout the Legion's various incarnations, but in recent years, the writing team of J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen, along with artist Howard Porter, presented a different look at the DC universe in the 31st Century with "Justice League 3000." As is typical of DeMatteis-Giffen collaborations, the stories were high on comedy despite the high stakes and high body count.
In the too-short-lived series, a geneticist cloned the 21st century heroes of the Justice League to stand up against a group of immensely powerful beings, known as the Five, who ruled the core of intergalactic society. The process had its flaws, resulting in a group of heroes who believed they were the genuine articles, despite some pretty glaring discrepancies in powers and temperament. More clones and various characters who'd survived over the millenium joined the cast, battling long odds and enough conspiracies and twists to make an "X-Files" devotee's head spin.
There have been a few more optimistic futures, like Marvel's alternate timeline in which Peter Parker's daughter carried on his mantle as Spider-Girl alongside future versions of the Avengers and Fantastic Four or DC's "One Million," set in the 853rd Century, when the original "Action Comics" run would presumably reach its millionth issue.
One recent twist on the concept came in "All-New X-Men," when writer Brian Michael Bendis had the Beast go back in time to bring the original X-Men to the present to confront Cyclops, who had recently killed Professor Xavier (it might not have totally been his fault) and was becoming more militant in his fight for mutant rights. The present Marvel Universe became the dystopian future for that team, which included younger versions of the Beast and Cyclops.
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Recommended Reading
* "X-Men: Days of Future Past" -- Conceding the future to the mutant-hunting Sentinels, Kitty Pryde goes back in time to help the X-Men stop the timeline from happening in the first place.
* "Justice League 3000" -- Imperfect clones of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern are called upon to save the 31st century from the totalitarian regime of the Five and a host of other bizarre menaces.
* "All-New X-Men" -- The present-day Marvel Universe becomes the dark future for the original team of X-Men after the Beast brings them forward in time to confront an out-of-control Cyclops.