By Alex Irvine

Titan, out now

Kate Pryde is sent back from a hellish future to try to prevent an assassination…

As with the Dark Phoenix saga, the original comics that form the basis of this novel were released at the height of my Marvel Comics-reading period, and the covers, depicting the wanted poster (used on the cover of Titan’s reprint), and the Sentinel destroying Wolverine have stuck in my mind for years. I enjoyed the Fox take on the story – even if Logan was front and centre rather than Kitty – and this novel can be seen as another alternate take on the original.

It’s worth remembering the novel first appeared in 2014, so some of the references to 2019/2020 were meant to be five years down the line, rather than contemporary, as you’d be tempted to think (and the description of the President might be a little different as well had it been written since February 2017!) but overall it’s a very successful updating into the 21st century of a storyline that John Byrne has admitted was influenced by the third Doctor story, Day of the Daleks.

Alex Irvine makes a few changes to the original – one I won’t spoil at all, but the other is fundamental to his novel: Kitty Pryde is awake and conscious in the future, and takes a very active role in proceedings. The contrast of older Kate in Kitty’s body and younger Kitty in Kate’s works well, and Irvine convincingly presents them as two versions of the same personality, albeit one that has been through the wringer.

Across the board, there’s expansion of the backstories for the characters, and without going back to the original, it’d be hard to tell what’s Irvine and what’s Chris Claremont and John Byrne, they blend so well together.

Verdict: A well-written alternate take on the classic Claremont/Byrne storyline that may please purists more than the movie did. 8/10

Paul Simpson