What If? Classic editions

The “What If?” comic were cheesy ponderings of alternate realities, hosted by the Watcher, probably the dullest character from Marvel Comics’ classic golden era. The stories speed through the lives of key Marvel characters (and some not-so-key characters), sometimes turning up with interesting scenarios. They occasionally also twist reality quite unpredictable – like in one alternate future, Odin has no wife so he marries… Jane Foster?!?! Crazy stuff, man…

The original stories now come in bundles of six, I’ll review the ones I’ve read here:

WIC1

WIC1

What If? Classic, Volume 1 – The one that kicks it all of is “What if Spider-man had joined the Fantastic Four”, and it launches not just that story, but also the concept of alternate realities (and sets the standard that the first four pages of any “What If?” comic is completely skip-able. Spiderman approaches the Fantastic Four, fights them, and then joins them. Nice. Things come to a head with an encounter with the Puppet Master and the Sub-Mariner. Not sure why this story needed to be told, although there’s at least a pleasant little twist ending. Another unnecessary tale is “What If the Hulk had the brain of Bruce Banner?”, a silly tale about… something that eventually happened for real in the Marvel Universe! Boring. The art by Herb Trimpe is better than what we get from the overly-busy Jim Craig in issue one. There’s a weird story of The Gargoyle, an ugly Russian who has a change of heart and becomes the Hulk’s friend. Huh? Banner becomes friends with Reed Richards and Charles Xavier, and events take a different course when Galactus shows up and the three brains combine as a psyho warrior called X-Man. Crazy.

Mr and Mrs Hulk's domestic bliss

Mr and Mrs Hulk's domestic bliss

“What If The Avengers Had Never Been?” is drawn by Gil Kane and goes into hyper surreal land with nutty deaths and new Iron Men. Most of the story is a depiction of a battle between the new Iron Man Legion versus the Hulk and Namor. I guess those two are pretty powerful together, because they make mince meat of the Iron Man Legion. Nice. “What If The Invaders Had Stayed Together After World War Two” is a groovy tale that doesn’t involve the Hulk! It focuses on Captain America, of course, and digs up a dozen forgotten heroes from the early days of comic books. Nice… sorta. The death of Adolf Hitler is shown, and the tale bounces all over recent political history. The Invaders fight weird robots, led by Adam-II (who?), and save John F and Robert Kennedy from some sort of yucky fate. Whatever.

The Invaders and Truman

The Invaders and Truman

The Invaders meet JFK

The Invaders meet JFK

Cap’s back in issue 5, “what If Captain America hadn’t vanished during World War Two” is a weird tale of battle with the Red Skull, dynamics with Bucky, a world with out Nick Fury (who is killed in Korea), and Cap and Bucky trading roles as the head of SHIELD. Okay… Here Sharon Carter falls in love with Bucky (dressed as Cap), rather than with Steve Rogers. Interesting… and a few more plot twists.

Cap and Truman

Cap and Truman

“What if the Fantastic Four had different powers?” is a bit more fun and speculative – and weird. Ben becomes a dude with bat wings, Susan gets stretchy, Johnny becomes a living metal-man (kind of like Colossus of the X-Men), and Reed is turned into… a disembodied brain. Crazy, right? It gets even crazier when they meet Doctor Doom!

These adventures contain a lot of Captain America, a lot of Hulk, and plenty of presidents!

WIC2

WIC2

What If? Classic, Volume 2 – Starting off, like the last one, with Spider-man, this is a three-in-one tale that speculates what would have happened if Betty Brant, Flash Thompson or John Jameson had been bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker, who is nonetheless still involved (and at the end of one of the tales he does manage to still become Spider-man). The tales are short, fairly interesting, and give more hint at a larger message than and of the earlier “What If?” speculative stories did – that only one individual was suited for making Spider-man a hero of note and influence. Funny how in one of the stories Betty Brant gets the powers and becomes… the Amazing Spider-Girl… with the worst costume in comic history!!!

the not-so-amazing Spider-Girl

the not-so-amazing Spider-Girl

“What If the world knew Daredevil is blind?” is not one of the better tales, although it does have a nice Spider-man tie-in. Funny how Electro proves that Daredevil is blind: “all right – what colour is my costume then?” Spider-man then actually backs Electro up, making fun of the gold-red combo of the old Daredevil costumer. Ha ha… The Owl fights Daredevil, taking advantage of his blindness; Daredevil then goes to the kingdom of Liechtenbad (???) to be treated to an operation that will help him recover his eyesight at the cost of his other powers (makes sense, right?), where he fights the baron, his old classmate, now a vicious tyrant in Crusader gear with a robot army at his control (no holds barred on silliness here). This issue contains the first piss-take at the What If? silliness (this concept would be immortalized in issue 33, which is in What If? Classics volume 6, reviewed below), namely “What if the spider had been bitten by a radioactive human?” This naturally leads to titles like “The ‘mazing Man-spider”. This great hero fights animal-themed villains like King-pig (Kingpin), “Octo” Doctorpuss, the cat o’ nine tails (Doctor Octopus, with nine robot tails instead of four robot arms), the Green Gobbler (a turkey made out to look like the Green Goblin), the Incredible Hog (the Incredible Hulk), etc. That’s followed by “What If the Avengers had fought evil in the 1950s”, meaning “what if the Avengers had been formed 10 years earlier from obscure costumed heroes of that era” (kind of like the Watchmen, maybe?). This one involves an FBI agent named James Wu, Nazis (of course – must have Nazis), the Yellow Claw, and his beautiful niece Suwan. The members are 3-D Man, Gorilla-Man, Venus (yes, the goddess of love herself!!), the murderous Human Robot (re-programmed to be kind and loving – well, maybe a bit too touchy and temperamental to be really “loving”), and Uranus’ own Marvel Boy himself! WOW!!! Uhhh… who are these people, and why do we care enough about them to read about their alternative reality? Well, they’ve been assembled, and battle they must – the Yellow Claw, his evil Nazi partner Fritz, the sinister Skull-Face, the Soviet villain Electro (another Electro, obviously – but he has green skin, instead of a green costume), the Great Video (one of his abilities is “the power to kill with my prolonged stare!”) and the icy Cold Warrior. Not all that memorable… nice scene with Ike, though.

Ike likes the Invaders

Ike likes the Invaders

The artist also got a bit cheeky with Venus’ sheer clothing – well, it’s kind of sheer in the lower half anyway…

Venus loves sheer garments, of course...

Venus loves sheer garments, of course...

Probably one of the most awesome comics in all of “What If?” history is “What if Jane Foster had found the hammer of Thor”. It becomes sort of a weird treatise on intentions, outcomes, sexual roles, brothers becoming sisters (Loki’s point of view), the weird grief of a father (Odin), men marrying their son’s girlfriends, etc. Basically, Jane Foster found the trace of Thor instead of Donald Blake, and she became… Thordis. When she goes back to Olympus, everybody laughs, Loki has a great old time, and Odin grieves for the woman that his son has become (there’s also a funny scene where Fandral comes on to Thor… Thordis). But nobody can deny that Thordis does a good job fighting villains, so Jane Foster is redeemed… and so is Thordis… and and that rascally victim Thor is revived as a boy. The explanations kinda sorta make sense… which is a challenge, considering how weird the whole Don Blake saga was to begin with.

Love Thordis’ chest armour!

Thordis rules!!

Thordis rules!!

This one is followed with another really awesome story: “What if the original Marvel bullpen had become the Fantastic Four”, drawn and written by one of the original Marvel bullpen, the great Jack Kirby! Wow!! Sadly, the story is nonsense, but it’s cool seeing Stan Lee as stretch-o Mister Fantastic, Kirby himself as the Thing, and some others as the Human Torch and the Invisible Girl.

That's the artist Jack Kirby with the muscular chest

That's the artist Jack Kirby with the muscular chest

“What If Rick Jones had become the Hulk” is less essential, although it is pretty funny hearing the Hulk talk in a shadow of Rick’s hippy-speak. There’s some sort of nonsensical connection between Rick and the negative zone, and they try to bring Captain Marvel into the picture. The plot is complicated and silly. Oh well…

Hulk, the macho hippy

Hulk, the macho hippy

Dig the bangles, though…

WIC6

WIC6

What If? Classic, Volume 6 – Collecting the original series’ issues 33-38, this one includes the classic joke issue, possibly the best What If? that I ever read (it’s up there with “What If… the Avengers became the pawns of Korvak”).

What If titles has an endearing quality that is somewhat inexplicable, since they aren’t really very good – they always have that boring intro by the Watcher, they are very text-heavy, they jump around in their plot and story-telling, they are quite humorless (with the exception of the joke issue, of course), and the art is often quite sub-standard. Oh well. There seem to be altogether too many adventures starring Galactus, the Silver Surfer, or both. What If tales tend to generally show how things would have turned out badly if events hadn’t taken the course they did in the end. Some of them dwell on generic situations that are also pretty minor (“What If Yellowjacket had died”, or in other words “what if the most unpopular Marvel character had died”).

This one includes tales of the Dazzler becoming the herald of Galactus, Iron Man being stuck in the time of Arthur, Electra never being killed off by Bullseye (she and Matt lived happily ever after), the Fantastic Four as normal humans, an alternate tale of Nova (who?), tales of The Thing and Beast becoming inhuman monsters (things and beasts), and a wild tale of Daredevil, the Avengers and Captain America in… 2013?!?!

The best story is probably the one about Electra surviving, as it’s drawn by Frank Miller, but it’s also not overly complicated and seems a bit short, considering the epic tales behind it. Oh well… The Fantastic Four one is good too; while it may stun in the ordinariness of our four heroes, it does tell a convincing story of four ordinary people who can be fantastic anyway (they went out and achieved anyway!). It’s also quite competently illustrated by John Byrne.

Worst speech to the UN General Committee: “To you [opposing nations] I say this: we wills top your evil march on civilisation. We will topple your nameless dictator! The free world will be freed!” So… if the free world is not free then why call it “the free world”?

Here are some of the highlights of the edition:

Burger Hell!!!

Burger Hell!!!

Toledo!

Toledo!

Thor Swedish accent

Thor Swedish accent

Hulk pants

Hulk pants

Black Widow married Spider-man?

Black Widow married Spider-man?

Daredevil 2013

Daredevil 2013

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