Empire Magazine revealed its covers promoting the film X-Men: Days of Future Past Monday, showing off numerous characters from the upcoming Marvel Comics movie. Starting at approximately 3 a.m. Eastern, out director Bryan Singer began tweeting the magazine's covers, beginning with the mutant-hunting Sentinels.
Included in the array are versions of the characters from both the past and the present, such as actors Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen portraying Magneto, James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier, and two starkly different pictures of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. When all assembled, the covers present a panoramic view of a ransacked Washington, D.C. This also is the first time that a director has been featured on the cover of Empire: Singer is seen in front of a crumbling White House holding a camera.
Days of Future Past marks Singer's return to the X-Men franchise, a series he started in 1999 with the first X-Men feature, along with its follow-up X2: X-Men United in 2003. Based on a critically acclaimed storyline from the 1970s, Days of Future Past follows a group of mutants who travel into the past in order to save their own future.
Since the early 1960s, the X-Men have repeatedly been used as metaphors for minorities facing adversity and how to work with (or against) those in power, which has occasionally led to a nod at queer fans in the audience. For example, X2 contains a "coming out" scene, where Iceman must confront his parents about his burgeoning special powers. While there seems to be little chance of explicit LGBT romance in this entry, one can hope Singer will be more inclusive in his already-announced sequel, X-Men: Apocalypse.
Take a look at a sample of Empire's 25 limited edition covers below and see the full collection on Twitter.
