What Is... What-If? // Comics to Cinena

With Disney’s new streaming service fresh out and holding childhoods hostage, Marvel is at the forefront of their push for global brand dominance. New tv shows, new movies, and the tease that all of these will tie directly in with the new movies. Except one.

What If?

The concept is a simple one. What if X happened instead of Y? From there, the storyteller is freed up to expand into an entirely new universe where up could be down, or the biggest disaster or miracle could happen from one change. With the Disney+ advertising, fans quickly became aware of Peggy Carter showing up as Captain Britain (and Steve Rogers becoming a WW2 Iron Man). However, this is far from Marvel’s first time at the rodeo.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any interviews from Marvel to establish how What-If came about, or who had the first germ of an idea. It is safe to assume that it was highly inspired by the multiple “imaginary tales” that DC published in the 1950s and 1960s. Stories of Superman dying, or what if Superman existed in a different time, or never left Krypton at all answered questions that fans may have had at the time. However, most of those stories would be placed in the main run of a book with just a disclaimer slapped on the cover.

God forbid any of these actually, you know, happen and let the character grow and change.

Few of these would be inspired by direct takes on previous events, focusing on vague concepts instead. Regardless of inspiration, the first issue of Marvel’s What-If came onto newsstands in February of 1977. What-If issue 1 featured a grand introduction by Marvel’s own omnipresent Watcher, a character who passively existed on the sidelines in previous stories. Here, the Watcher would be a guide to the audience, showing them what might have been if certain actions had been taken, or if events had happened differently. In this case, what if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four?

After spending the early pages describing how he can see into the Multiverse and different timelines, the Watcher chooses to summarize how Spider-Man would come to join the Fantastic Four. He would also cover how the timeline would change in a weird summary, choosing to show and not tell most of the time. As the book evolved during its first run, the Watcher would summarize things less and instead take more of a backseat to the story itself. 

As I began to read What-If’s various issues, there became a rather obvious pattern with the stories. Most issues will either have a disastrous ending where everyone dies or a similarly horrible thing happens that isn’t in canon, or everything turns out exactly the same in the end. In the case of Spidey joining the FF, Sue Storm decides to marry Namor and the book calls out how this is the bad ending.

Issue 7 of What-If from February 1978 would be a perfect example of the other type of What-If. Asking the question of what if someone else had been bitten by the radioactive Spider rather than Peter Parker, the book looks at Spider-Man supporting cast members Flash Thompson, John Jameson, and Betty Brant in three different mini-tales. Flash Thompson would accidentally kill wrestler Crusher Hogan before becoming the thief Captain Spider… only to die at the hands of the Vulture. Betty Brant would be encouraged by Peter to become the amazing Spider-Girl, only to give up the webs immediately after being the cause for Peter’s Uncle’s death. John Jameson would become a jetpack equipped high-flying superhero: Spider-Jameson… and die in another one of Spider-Man’s early adventures.

In each universe, however, the writer would cop-out and decide to make Peter Parker somehow take that spider and turn himself into Spider-Man at the end of the book. Despite the point of the book being “What if things were different,” the book would also enjoy thumbing its nose at the concept and instead talking about how some things were meant to be. 

Perhaps the worst case of the What-If concept being thrown out the window came from the 10th issue of the revival volume from 1990: What if the Punisher’s Family Hadn’t Been Killed? Rather than his family being killed off by gangsters, Frank Castle’s family would live to see another day. About a month later, specifically, as his family would be killed off by a bunch of crooked cops who didn’t like that Frank Castle was too moralistic to take bribes.

And then Frank was the Punisher once more.

As mentioned briefly above, the first volume of What-If would end after a rush of bad ideas in 1984. The book had, frankly, run out of compelling ideas aside from a few issues here and there. Even some good ideas like “what if the Spider-Clone had lived,” spinning off of the original clone story back in Amazing Spider-Man #150, turned into a parody comic with the two Peter Parkers deciding to share their life on alternating days. However, with the revival in 1989, the book would take a look at major events in the lives of Marvel’s characters, or even take a look at the event books of the day.

What if the Phoenix had not died? What if the X-Men Lost Inferno? What if the X-Men Died on their First Mission? What if Professor X Became the Juggernaut? All of these stories and more would expand on Marvel’s Multiverse in weird ways, and in ways that fans devoured. It didn’t hurt that a lot of them would also feature the currently popular X-Men, with a lot of tales throwing Wolverine at the forefront. Issue 62 would even double the Wolverine by asking What if Wolverine Battled Weapon X? 

Eventually, the writers of What If would feel themselves restrained by the Watcher, and would actually lose the character with the 76th issue of the second volume. With the Watcher sidelined from his own book, the stories were allowed to become a little more strange, and a little wider on the variety. However, issue 105 would prove to be the longest-lasting What-If of any kind.

What If Spider-Man had a Spider-Girl was already covered by us in a previous article, but the character is still around in Spider-Man events and has a vast fanbase for what could have been a one-shot character.

While What-If Volume 2 would end in 1998 with issue 114, the concept would never really go away. 2004 would start a trend for Marvel to bring up a bunch of one shots under the What If brand. Sometimes these would have the Watcher, or another framing device to look at another reality. Other times, the reader would be thrown alone into another universe without a guide. Either way, these stories would often look at recent events, or revisit other concepts of yore. 

2005 was a special case, however, taking a peek into one alternate universe with a set of six issues. Known as Mirror Mirror in their collected form, a young man somehow hacked into the internet of another universe, and the reader was given a tale informed by his deep dives into that world’s history. A Captain America who fought in the American Civil War, a Fantastic Four who were Cosmonauts, and even a Thor as Herald of Galactus. It’s rare to have a deep look into a one-shot world, and it was really fascinating.

A personal favorite of mine is also the line’s obsession with the New Fantastic Four. Stemming from a story in Walt Simonson’s run of the Fantastic Four, the books ask what would happen if the team of Wolverine, Spider-Man, Hulk, and Ghost Rider kept going as the Fantastic Four. Mike Weringo was working on a sequel of such a story when he passed in 2007. The book would be completed by other artists at Marvel and put out as a charity work. A sequel would follow in 2009 with Iron Man joining the team and the new(er) Fantastic Four facing Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. It has, perhaps, my favorite Wolverine moment:

There is also a rather fascinating theory that when Marvel editorial begins to run out of ideas, they look at an old What-If cover and force the writers to make a tale based off that. I mean, it’s hard not to think this is the case when you have the following:

What if Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four? 2010.

What if the Hulk had the brain of Bruce Banner? 1989.

What if Someone Else was Bitten by the Radioactive Spider? Silk in 2014.

What if Jane Foster Found the Hammer of Thor? 2014.

What if Rick Jones Became the Hulk? 1986.

What if Doctor Doom became a Hero? 2016.

What if Spider-Man's Clone Lived? 1994.

What if the X-Men Died on their Very First Mission? 2005’s Deadly Genesis.

What if Spider-Man had not married Mary Jane? Retconned in 2007.

What if Wolverine was the Horseman of War? 1999.

To be fair, though, some of these ideas are really interesting and resulted in fantastic comics. However, it’s hard not to see that some inspiration has been coming from the What If archives.

A spin-off of sorts in 2001 would cross What-If with X-Men and take a team of alternate universe mutants and make them wander the Multiverse to fix what went wrong. The Exiles, as they would become known, would cross into Marvel’s best known (and weirdest) stories, only to face personal drama and a rotating cast as members were sent home. Chris Claremont would also highly influence the book in his second run at Marvel in the 2000s, turning the book into the New Exiles and writing with alternate versions of some of his best creations.

What-If has been one of Marvel’s best ways to look into alternate universes, and the fact that it keeps coming back year after year speaks to its power to see what could have been. Odds are great that the upcoming Disney+ series is going to work with the movie continuity in the same way that the comics worked with their medium’s canon. If it’s as good as the potential remains to be seen, but hopes are certainly high.