Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-61022-20131218190201

Hey guys,

So I've been reading All-New X-Men and I've seen how these events are currently being chronicled on the Wiki and that everything is being delegated to Earth-TRN240 and I don't think assigning a TRN to the All-New X-Men stuff because of a number of reasons I'll itemize below. With some discussion, I'd like to recommend condensing all the All-New X-Men stuff from this TRN and apply it to the appropriate Earth-616 character/team. Here's why...

The Primary reason would be the way Brian Michael Bendis is writing the series. Each time one of the young X-Men from the past are in peril it is seen as a serious problem, that if one of these young X-Men dies in battle at the very least their future self will cease to exist.

The other reason I think this should all be delegated back to Earth-616 proper is due to precedence when it comes to other alterations of the time line due to time travel. I can cite at least four different examples that spring immediately to mind:

(1) in this issue Tempus tricked Willie Lumpkin into going back in time where he changed history at various points that caused Earth-616 to cease to exist. The Fantastic Four were sent back in time by the Watcher to prevent these changes in order to restore the Earth-616 universe. As a result, Willie's changes diverged to Earth's 78420 and 82074 respectively.

(2) The created of the Age of Apocalypse universe at the end of. Legion went back in time to try and kill Magneto but killed Xavier instead. As per this issue, when Xavier was killed by accident Earth-616 was temporarily erased from history by the M'Kraan Crystal and replaced with Earth-295. Earth-616 did not return until Bishop went back to the past and stopped Legion from killing Xavier in.

(3) The entire Avengers / Invaders series, and the most specific argument I present to you: When the Invaders were brought to the present day, they were the Invaders of Earth-616. While they were operating in the present it had a rippling effect, which was kept at bay by Dr. Strange. The risk of Earth-616 being erased continued exponentially the longer the Invaders remained in the present. However things went full tilt in when Paul Anslem took the Cosmic Cube back in time and it ended up in the hands of Red Skull. Skull used the Cube to take over the Earth and this caused the Earth-616 universe to be briefly erased from existence again. It was not until the Invaders and some of the modern day New and Mighty Avengers used the Cube to return everything to normal did Earth-616 return.

(4) Lastly, the Age of Ultron event. When Wolverine went back in time and killed Henry Pym to prevent Ultron from being created, the universe diverged into Earth-26111, but when he went back and stopped Pym from being murdered and helped devise a means to stop Ultron from succeeding in decimating the Earth in the present it restored Earth-616 and diverged Ultron's take over of Earth to Earth-61112.

This all said, I think we can safely assume that the young X-Men featured in All-New X-Men are from Earth-616's past (and thus should all articles be combined) because of the following principals of Marvel time travel:

(1) Divergence only happens once someone from the past is in the future for too long, this length of time appears to be arbitrary based on creative license of the writers... But if you wanted to observe it on a logical scale, it would seem that the opportunity to prevent changes to the past would be dependant on (a) access to time travel and (b) the ability to put things back on their normal course in the past. Technically the X-Men can do this when it comes time to return the original team to their own time: Beast has a time machine, and they have enough telepaths that they could erase the young X-Men's memories of their time in the future. As it stands right now, the only thing that could really cause a definite change is if one of the young X-Men were to be seriously crippled or killed while in the future.

(2) When it comes to the past and time travel, it appears that the only time a divergence happens when someone changes the course of history in a drastic way. When this happens the Earth-616 universe ceases to exist until the change in the past is corrected. By that point the changed history diverges from the natural course and Earth-616 is restored back to its proper course. So unless the young X-Men are returned to the past and do something to change the course of history with their knowledge of the future only then would a divergence happen. Knowledge of the future does not necessarily mean that the past has changed either. In Age of Ultron, Pym put himself under a hypnotic suggestion to insure that Ultron lost in the future. In Avengers / Invaders, everyone from World War II was made to forget the future, also when Bucky used the Cosmic Cube to insure Toro lived in the present, he did so by having him come back to life in the immediate present so as not to effect history that passed.

That said, as I posited above, the X-Men of the present have many telepaths who could erase the memories of the young X-Men. More over, Jean Grey of the past is learning how to use her telepathy and could do so herself, or even the Xavier in the past. Technically, Jean Grey could actually insure that the past remains the same because she knows how her entire life is going to go, and knowing what dangers there are to tampering the timeline, she could even insure that events happen the way they do.

So that all said, I think we should consider combining all the All-New X-Men stuff to their Earth-616 counterparts because it is part of their history and not an alternate timeline.

I say this based on the above evidence and also because it seems unlikely that things aren't going to be put right after Bendis is finished with his run, because that seems to be the status quo with a lot of these time travel stories. Things in the past always get put back in their proper place while any real changes are effected in the present.

Thoughts? 