Battle of the Atom

"Battle of the Atom" is a 10-part comic book crossover storyline published by Marvel Comics that debuted in September and October 2013 and ran through multiple X-Men books.

The story involves the X-Men of the future traveling to present time in order to force the time-displaced X-Men to return to their rightful time, as their presence in the current timeline will result in disastrous consequences.

Battle of the Atom was announced in April 2013. The story involves the X-Men of the future traveling to present time in order to force the All-New X-Men to return to their rightful time, as their presence in the current timeline will result in disastrous consequences.

Brian Michael Bendis, writer of All-New X-Men, stated that the use of time travel in the story is less important than the theme of characters exploring how the choices they make early in life affect them later on in life, in a manner similar to the 1986 feature film Peggy Sue Got Married. Musing on the nature of fate, and how these ideas inspired both his previous comics work, and "Battle of the Atom" in particular, Bendis explained:

I get a lot of questions about this: Where would you see yourself in 10 years or what do you think the 12-year-old version of you would think of this? It seems to be on a lot of people's minds. When the X-Men are faced with all of this, you can't help but second-guess or really take hold of the choices you're making in life, and some people don't. They don't really think about the choices they're making, or you see someone in a relationship with someone and you go, 'Really, that's what you want in your life?' The X-Men can really show that to people in examining your future and such. It's about your own legacy and being the best version of yourself, and if I go down this road, will I be the best version of myself or will I derail completely? I've been writing about that since Jinx. Literally, Jinx says, 'I'm on a road and I have no idea how I got here and I don't even know where the road I was supposed to be on is. I can't even see it.' When I was in college, I saw people not even sure why they were in the major they were in. I'll never forget, one of my neighbors was an astrophysicist, and he was sitting on the porch and he goes, "I hate astrophysics. Why am I doing this? I don't like it." And he was only a year away from graduating. The guy's haunted me all these years.

When Kitty Pryde’s group of time displaced Original Five (O5) X-Men and Cyclops' Uncanny X-Men are forced to team up to stop an out of control new mutant, young Cyclops is killed by a Sentinel. He is resurrected moments later by one of Cyclops' recruits, who is a healer. However, in the brief moments that Young Cyclops was dead, the adult Cyclops blinked out of existence and the world around the two groups suddenly began to shudder and shake, as if reality was collapsing from the time paradox.

This causes another round of debate from Wolverine's X-Men about returning the O5 to their proper place in the timeline. The debate is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a group of older X-Men led by an aged Kitty Pryde, the grandson of Charles Xavier, and an adult Jean Grey (the time displaced O5 Jean Grey, having never returned to the past), dressed as the new Xorn. They seek to force the X-Men to go back to the past.

Realizing that something does not seem right, O5 Jean escapes with O5 Cyclops. The X-Men and "Future X-Men" pursue, with Xorn ambiguously explaining that a catastrophe will soon befall the X-Men if the O5 do not return to their original place in the timeline.