Berkeley Place

Just about every comic book fan remembers the “What If?” title, hosted by the Watcher, fondly.  The stories told fanciful, possible, alternative outcomes to classic Marvel storylines.  (But be warned: If you actually go back and re-read your yellowing-newsprint copies, you’ll probably wonder why you saved them in the first place.)  I recently uncovered a box of old Volume 1 issues and realized…Many (most?) have actually come true!

Over the course of three volumes, Uatu revealed a little over 200 alternate realities…And many came true.  Hit the break for more!

The first issue of What If?, and one of the better ones, told the unimaginable tale, “What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four?”  He’s joined it multiple times since then.

The very next issue asked “What if the Hulk had the brain of Bruce Banner?”  He’s had it multiple times since then.

Soon thereafter we read “What if the Invaders stayed together after World War 2?”  Two years ago, the Avengers met the Invaders in a time-travel tale that kinda told the same story.  “What if the Fantastic Four had different super-powers?” was an idea explored in Warren Ellis’ brilliant Ultimate Fantastic Four arc.

Now some of the truly alternate tales are impossible (“What if the Avengers had never been?”) and others you’d never want to see (“What if the original Marvel Bullpen had become the Fantastic Four?”).  But a large number of the others have become actual Marvel lore…

What If? volume two was basically all spin-offs from Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars maxi-series—the first publisher-wide event book in history, I believe—and since then we’ve seen a few additional, inferior volumes.  But check out this long list of “dreams come true,” mostly from Volume One:

·          “What if someone else besides Spider-Man had been bitten by the radioactive spider?” in which Flash Thompson gets spider powers.  Flash is now living that dream in the pages of Venom.

·         “What if Spider-Man‘s clone lived?”  He did, and he’s got his own comic now, Scarlet Spider.

·         What if The Amazing Spider-Man had not married Mary Jane?  “One More Day,” anyone?

·         What if Venom had possessed the Punisher?  We’re kind of going in this direction in Rick Remender’s balls-out furious Venom comic.  It’s Flash Thompson not Frank Castle, but he’s killing bad guys nonetheless.

·         What if… starring Spider-Man: Arachnamorphosis.  Spidey continues to evolve after getting powers and turns into a giant spidery thing.  See “Spider Island.”

·         What if Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s daughter had not died.  Basically, this turned into the Spider-Girl series Tom DeFalco penned for the not-Ultimate-but-not-Earth-616 Marvel series.

·         What if the gamma bomb spawned a thousand Hulks?  You mean like Rulk, She-Rulk, and all the Hulked Out Heroes in the latest Jeff Parker snoozefest?  This idea sucked when it was in What If? and it continues to suck today.

·         “What if Hulk had Banner’s brain?”  Several variations on this theme were the subject of multiple What If? issues, and we’ve seen this come to pass over and over again in the “real” Marvel U.  There was even a What If? about Banner having Hulk’s brain.  Wild!  And stupid.

·         “What if General Ross/Rick Jones had become the Hulk?”  Are Rulk and A-Bomb close enough?

·         “What if the Hulk had become a barbarian?”  In which Hulk became a king of sorts.  Just like he did in Planet Hulk, and recently with the moloids in Jason Aaron’s terrific reboot of the character.

·         “What if the world knew Daredevil was blind?”  This was the entire premise of Brian Michael Bendis’ career-defining years writing Daredevil volume 2.

·         What if Captain America were revived today/came back in 1994?  This is the very basis for Marvel’s Ultimates line.  The idea was so good, they devoted no less than three issues of What If? to it.

·          What If Bucky survived and was Cap’s Partner?  Ed Brubaker did us one better, and made Bucky become Captain America.  But this is definitely close enough to include on this list.

·         “What if the Avengers fought evil in the 1950s?”  Again Brian Michael Bendis has sort of brought this to life by introducing Nick Fury’s “first” Avengers team—a group of wild Nazi hunters.

·         What if Jessica Jones joined The Avengers.  Methinks Bendis just mined old What If? titles for ideas…

·          “What if Dr. Doom had become a hero?”  Jonathan Hickman, in the pages of FF and Fantastic Four, is currently exploring this possibility…

• What if Professor X and Magneto formed the X-Men together?  Isn’t this pretty much X-Men: First Class, the movie?

·          “What if Phoenix/Elektra hadn’t died/had lived.”  These characters have died and come back several times.  This seems like a question not worth asking…

This is one of my favorite covers of all time...

·         “What if Ghost Rider had been separated from Johnny Blaze?”  He has.  Ghosty is a chick now.

Cool, huh?

Maybe they shouldn’t have called it “What If?”  Maybe it should have been titled, “What When?”