[net.comics] Rachel's past = our future?

boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (08/17/85)

> From:	harry@ucbarpa

>>(1) In the issue in which Rachel first appears in the present (#184, I think),
>>she freaks out when she sees a news report on the tv about Senator Kelly and
>>his Mutant Control Bill. In *her* time stream, Kelly was killed by the Evil
>>Mutants, whereas in "ours", the X-Men saved him.
>
> I had forgotten about that, BUT, the Evil Mutants are nothing if not
> persistant, and could yet do him in.  In fact, Our Heros are becoming
> increasingly disillusioned about the rest of the world hating them.
> Next, time they might say the h*ll with it, and let the Evil Mutants
> kill Sen. Kelly.

That *still* wouldn't make Rachel's past "our" future. In her past, Kelly
was killed at a specific point in time --- at the Congressional Hearings
on Mutants that took place in X-MEN #142. Since the X-Men stopped that
assassination, our future *can't* be Rachel's past. It's as if someone
went back to 1865 and stopped John Wilkes Booth from shooting Lincoln at
Ford's Theater, only to have Booth try again and succeed a month later.
Lincoln would still be dead, but it wouldn't be the past as we know it.

>>(2) In the same issue, she has a flashback 
>>in which she recalls the death of Xavier in a govern-
>>mental (?) attack on the mansion. In the current time stream, Xavier is
>>(from rumors ... ) going to bite the big one in #200.
>
> I'd forgotten that too.  I suppose I could invent a scenario to get around
> this, but it would have to be pretty far-fetched.

Exactly, it would have to be far-fetched. And Occam's Razor suggests that
the most likely explanation is the simplest. In this case, the simplest is
that Rachel's world is an alternate future from the rest of the X-Men's.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA)

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