Random Happenstance

Timing, part six.

What the...recognize our new player? If not, relax, it'll all make sense later. Maybe.

We've talked here before about Bishop, who's future and childhood in said future has gotten progressively crappier over the last few years, until now. Now it's so bad, Bishop is basically looking at suicide, albeit a suicide that takes out his entire timeline, so some style points there. Unfortunately, even with Marvel's byzantine time-travel rules, while there's no guarantee taking out the mutant baby would prevent Bishop's timeline from becoming reality, destroying it would wreck up Rachel and Cable's timelines as well.

Wait. Going on the time-travel rule from Marvel Two-in-One #50, you can't travel back in time and change your own timeline. All you do then is bifurcate an alternate timeline, while your original path remains unchanged. So, if you travel back to assassinate some historical figure...let's say, Dante Alighieri: you kill him, but when you come back, you still have to read the Divine Comedy; but you may have the warm glow of knowing you saved some other reality's children from a lotta D's in Senior Lit.

So, long story short, Bishop's suicide solution isn't going to work. At least, for him. Reed Richards and a chalkboard could probably cure Bishop of his murderous tendency, but that doesn't sound like the most thrilling comic ever. Of course, Reed would then have to tell Cable that he's not fixing anything time travelling either.

Either they're honestly confused, or they're trying to stall until Cable can show up and shoot him; but Pool and Kurt have mixed together about half a dozen timelines. Even though the X-Men's "Days of Future Past" apocalypse timeline always pays lip service to Marvel's other characters, in the form of a big graveyard; even at the time there were several alternate, and conflicting, timelines. There was Deathlok, the original of which, as Bishop points out, was from the far-flung future of 1990. There was also the Guardians of the Galaxy and Killraven; and of course post "Days" there's Marvel 2099, the Spider-Girl future, the second batch of 2099 that doesn't really mesh with the old one, and multiple conflicting visits to "Days" again.

And of course, I do so enjoy a storyline like Avengers Forever that throws them all together. Long story short: time travel in the Marvel Universe is seemingly easy, but pretty pointless, since you can't change anything meaningful for you, and those pesky other timelines will always be out there. Just like DC and their multiple world Crisises!

Later today: who hasn't taken a swipe at Iron Man at this point.