By Anne Nocenti, Simon Furman, Mariano Nicieza, Kurt Busiek & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0194-9
Although now commonplace in regular fiction media, once upon a time parallel worlds and alternate Earths were almost unilaterally the province of comicbooks, offering tantalising glimpses of intriguingly different yet profoundly familiar characters.
DC pretty much owned the shtick in the early 1960s but kept it separate from their other exploratory narrative strand “Imaginary Storiesâ€, but over at up-and-coming Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas in particular had a notion to marry the twain…
To be clear: Alternate Earths are part of the overarching shared continuity and Imaginary Stories are just that – fanciful riffs and chimeras using established characters and scenarios, but never part of the nuts-&-bolts universe.
Thus, despite such surrogate Earthers as Thundra, Arkon, Mahkizmo, Gaard and the Squadron Supreme cropping up in regular Fantastic Four and Avengers issues, the House of Ideas followed their competitor’s lead until the launch of What If?
This was an anthological series wherein cosmic voyeur The Watcher offered peeks into a myriad of other universes where key “real†continuity stories were replayed with vastly different outcomes – the same basic idea as Imaginary Stories but with a back-handed acknowledgement that somewhere these epics were “realâ€â€¦
The first volume (48 issues from February 1977 to June 1988) posed such intriguing questions as ‘What If… Loki had Found the Hammer of Thor?’, ‘the Fantastic Four had not gained Their Powers?’ or ‘Spider-Man’s Clone had Lived?’ and when the title relaunched in 1989 for another 115 issues including ‘What If Wolverine was Lord of the Vampires?’ and ‘What if Captain Marvel had not Died?’, the tales were all back-written into an over-arching continuity and began to be catalogued as variant but equally viable Earths/universes and alternate timelines.
There have been seven more volumes since and a series of “Alterniverse†tales…
In case you’re wondering, those gritty Ultimate Marvel sagas all occur on Earth-1610, the Age of Apocalypse happened on Earth-295, everybody got eaten in the Zombieverse of Earth-2149, the Squadron Supreme originally hailed from Earth-712 and mainstream Marvel tales take place on Earth-616, whilst we readers all dwell on the dull, dreary Earth-1218…
Keep calm then, but never forget that Reality is just a plethora of differing dimensions, and if things go awry in one it can have a cumulative and ultimately catastrophic effect on all of them…
Soon after designating this publishing idiom an Alterniverse, a selection of relatively recent What If? (all from volume 2) yarns starring a selection of X-Men were collected into a trade paperback which, despite then being closely dependent on familiarity with Marvel mainstream, might now – in the wake of all those various movies – be a little more accessible to a general readership…
The extra-dimensional dramas kick off with ‘What If… Wolverine Led Alpha Flight?’ (originally published in #59, March 1994, as ‘What If Wolverine Had Remained a Captive of Alpha Flight?’) by Simon Furman, Bryan Hitch & Joe Rubenstein, wherein the Feral Mutant was imprisoned by the Canadian Government after events in X-Men #119-120.
Once the X-Men are killed trying to get him back and depressed former berserker is left to lead a Canadian team against the Hellfire Club and their Dark Phoenix…
Next up is ‘What If… Storm Had Remained a Thief?’, courtesy of #40, August 1992 and first seen as ‘What if Storm of the X-Men Had Remained a Thief?’
This is a lovely and rare happily-ending tale by Anne Nocenti and Kirkwood Studios – AKA Steve Carr, Deryl Skelton & Rubenstein – which describes how instead of becoming a pickpocket in Cairo and weather goddess in equatorial Africa, the orphan Ororo Munroe is taken under the wing of benign grifter Herman Hassel. Years later when she meets the X-Men it is not as a friend…
‘What If… Rogue Possessed the Power of Thor?’ (#66, August 1994, by Furman, John Royle & Bambos Georgiou) takes a sharp left from a critical point in Avengers Annual #10 wherein the power-leeching mutant battled the team and Spider-Woman.
This time/space, however, Rogue doesn’t let go until the Thunder God is dead and drained and soon finds herself cursed with his might but still a pawn in a cosmic war between eternal Asgard and Loki‘s forces of Ragnarok…
From #69 (January 1995, by Mariano Nicieza, J.R. Justiniano & Roy Richardson) ‘What If… Stryfe Killed the X-Men?’ does what it promises and shows the catastrophic outcome after Professor X dies and his hapless students are left to face the homicidal future-clone of Cable as well as the mutant leveller Apocalypse, after which these walks on the wild side end with a visceral, dark thriller from Kurt Busiek, Ron Randall & Art Nichols who ask ‘What If… Wolverine Battled Weapon-X?’
From #62, June 1994, the grim chronicle details how the rogue Canadian science team that inflicted an Adamantium skeleton and experimental behaviour modification on secret agent Logan missed their mark in this universe and had to settle for a second-best human lab rat.
When their Weapon-X escaped to carve a swathe of slaughter through the country and wiped out neophyte superteam Alpha Flight, the grizzled veteran knew what he had to do, and to whom…
Action-packed, cathartic and just plain fun, these different strokes offer old-fashioned fun in vast amounts, and now that a wider world is filmically conversant with a (if not “the â€) Marvel Universe, perhaps it’s time to raid the vaults again and release similar collections starring Spider-Man, Thor, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and/or the Avengers…
© 1995Marvel Entertainment Group. All rights reserved.
A British edition by published by Boxtree is also available.