Plenty of comic books have had the ol’ “alternate future” story, usually post-apocalyptic/dystopian in nature. One of the most famous of these is the “Days of Future Past” story in The Uncanny X-Men, which depicted a future in which mutants were hunted down like rats and exterminated. However, all of these possible futures and whatnot are always avoided one way or another, often via time travel or some other nonsensical reset button that stops a single event from transpiring, therefore avoiding that terrible future.

What I’d like to see is some publisher have the balls to make one of these events unavoidable and permanent. In other words, the world becomes a shithole, and no stupid tampering with the timeline will fix it; the population just has to deal with it as best they can and try to survive. WildStorm‘s done just that with their contiguous Armageddon, Revelations, Number of the Beast, and World’s End events, but I’ve got a feeling that it’ll all be undone by the time the whole thing is finished.

In the same vein, Marvel Comics’ X-Factor: Layla Miller is a side story that takes place in the same future that Bishop comes from. Layla and Jamie Madrox (aka Multiple Man) took a trip there, and got those trendy “M” tattoos over their eyes, but only Madrox was able to return to his own time. Layla’s stuck in the future, and I think that Marvel could do a lot with that.

Of course, they won’t. Even with the ramifications of Civil War still permeating the Marvel universe, it’s still the same ol’ generic formula. There’s rumors of a post-Secret Invasion event known as Dark Reign, which many interpret to be the result of the Skrulls “winning” their invasion war. But again, like everything else the major publishers do…it’ll be back to normal in no time. Do you honestly think Marvel would make a Skrull-overrun Earth the status quo?

It would be nice to see one of these big companies really rock the boat for once. Shake it up! We can take it!