19 Mar, 2008

Alternate Current: What If? Why Not?

What If? Why?

Everything You Know Is Wrong

I’m new to the PopCultureShock family, so chances are you don’t know me. Those of you who do know me know that I have an unhealthy fixation with Marvel’s What If series. For those of you who don’t know me… well, I have an unhealthy fixation with Marvel’s What If series. Unhealthy to the point that a while back I decided to read every single issue released and write up a list of the top 100 issues.

What’s the appeal? It’s a loaded question, but a lot of it has to do with the ability to play with continuity where you usually can’t in mainstream books, including having writers expand on a character’s depth by showing what it would take to truly change their composition. We can see what it would take to make Frank Castle throw aside his career as the Punisher and act as a wholesome hero. We can see what could make Victor Von Doom refrain from being a tyrant and instead act as a hero, though still a hero full of himself. Or we can see what kind of horrors could finally break Peter Parker to the point that he would actually go through with murder rather than the predictable fake-out we get every year or so. Did anyone really expect him to kill the Kingpin in Back in Black?

Then there’s the outlandish factor. You can see continuity stray in ways that make you want to read the continuations, sometimes to the point that you wish they really happened in regular Marvel continuity. Stuff like Richard Fisk becoming Daredevil or Living Laser becoming Iron Man or having every single superhero on Earth team up in a far more epic Kree-Skrull War than the one we actually got. Even with that, a lot of issues seem to be the inspirations for other Marvel storylines from over the years, such as Infinity Gauntlet, the Clone Saga, Onslaught, Wolverine in Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Punisher’s background and others.

For the past couple years, Marvel has been releasing new sets of What Ifs every December or so. The first set in 2005 was off to a rocky start with Claremont’s rather pointless What If Professor X and Magneto Formed the X-Men Together? and proof that Brian Michael Bendis’ writing style just doesn’t jibe with loaded one-shots. The next year they tried making them less about continuity and just making Elseworlds stories, such as showing Daredevil as a samurai in feudal Japan. That’s not to say that it didn’t have its little gems, such as that Daredevil story and Kirkman’s take on Thor being the herald of Galactus.

The next set went back to its roots, though based on more epic Marvel events. They were a mixed bag. Hine’s alternate aftermath of Deadly Genesis is brilliant stuff and Peter David’s new version of Spider-Man: The Other is enjoyably creepy, if a little too short. It’s just that the Age of Apocalypse issue was hilariously awful and the one based on Avengers: Disassembled was an insulting attempt to retcon mainstream continuity.

Let’s take a good look at the batch of issues that came out over the past winter. First up is What If: Planet Hulk, thankfully written by Greg Pak. Here we are given three stories, though really, the third one barely counts. Come on, Marvel. Don’t solicit what could be a potentially good short story when you’re really just giving us a Fred Hembeck page that’s worth half a laugh.

The first story is about Hulk tossing his queen Caiera to safety when the ship explodes and therefore sacrificing himself. Most Hulk What Ifs are pretty depressing, but when you think about it, this little scene isn’t all that pessimistic. It’s actually the perfect death for the Hulk. He became cursed with his lone wolf situation because he selflessly saved a stranger from an explosion. How fitting that he would die the same way, only after breaking the curse. Not only that, but his legacy lives on with his son.

As optimistic as that may sound, it’s lost on Caiera, who absorbs the energies of the planet Sakaar and makes a beeline for Earth. From there, it’s just like the cover suggests. Caiera easily kills off Black Bolt, Dr. Strange, Sentry, Iron Man and Reed Richards in the time it takes to tie a shoe. Black Bolt talking shouldn’t exactly kill the Sentry, but don’t let that get in the way of a simple 90’s-style killfest. It is Hiroim the Shamed whose actions make the story end on a slightly less dire note.

It’s really not all that good. The art is nice, but it reads like a Sparknotes version of World War Hulk as read by Johnny 5. It may have worked better if it had taken a full issue to tell, but I’m glad it didn’t, since it would have cheated us out of the second story.

Something interesting about this story is that it’s the first appearance of Skaar, who will soon be starring in his own miniseries. I don’t think I’d give a single damn about that miniseries if it wasn’t for Pak giving me blue-balls via his minor appearance here. Well played. He looks a lot like Nathan Explosion from Dethklok here. Is it just me?

The following story is loads better, based on Hulk landing on the planet the Illuminati intended for him. The irony is that while the Illuminati figured that Banner would be for this and Hulk would be against it, once they get on the planet, it’s the opposite that’s true. Hulk loves the creatures on that planet and plays protector. Banner wants off and only works for survival. The two personalities argue as they always do, leading to an adorable ending and an even more heartwarming aftermath. In the end, we get a glimpse at what I can only describe as the Anti-Maestro. I had no idea this piece of the issue was going to be as great as it turned out to be.

The next one to come out was What If: Annihilation. Despite the kick-ass cover, the concept seemed too good to be true, so I was cautiously optimistic. A lot of seemingly awesome What If concepts from the past couple years have ended up being lukewarm in action. Luckily, this exceeded expectations. The change in continuity has to do with Drax attempting to free Galactus instead of Silver Surfer. That one decision leads to all their deaths and the inability to stop Annihilus’ reign of galactic terror. On Earth, Captain America is hesitating on whether or not he should take out his former best friend Iron Man as part of the Civil War climax. A taste of the Annihilation Wave comes to Earth, much like some fans expected to happen during the actual Civil War miniseries.

Nova does the impossible by joining together nearly every pro-registration hero, anti-registration hero, Inhuman and a whole bunch of supervillains for the sake of fending off against eradication on a cosmic scale. This gets the full attention of the Annihilation Wave, which makes a run for our planet. Uatu the Watcher steps in with his own little device to destroy the alien threat and as you can figure, Earth ultimately wins. That’s all well and good, but it’s just a bit lacking as a story of this scale. It just feels pointless and hollow.

Thankfully, that isn’t the end of things. There are still six pages left. The rest of the issue and the reason why I love it so much, tie into Uatu. While Uatu is a good enough character, there is only so much that he actually does. He can narrate, tell everyone that he can only watch but not interfere or interfere by giving the heroes information and/or a weapon. Though in one What If he did interfere by physically fighting Galactus. Still, all those examples of his interference are based entirely on him trying to save mankind – or the universe – from complete destruction. This story is very different.

Usually the Uatu we see in What If is the Watcher from the mainstream Marvel Earth, showing us other realities. Not this time. It becomes more apparent that this Watcher narrating is the one from this comic’s reality. During the final pages, he isn’t breaking his oath to ensure our survival so that he has something to watch. He’s doing it for the sake of making us feel better about who we are. This cold being is trying to give us hope when he doesn’t even need to. That’s inspired.

All the dialogue and moments in those last pages make What If: Annihilation one of my favorite comic issues of 2007. Even with its small size, it manages to remain epic and pleasing.

The best of the batch is then followed by what I’d consider the worst. What If: Rise of the Shi’arr Empire is based on Vulcan getting knocked into the M’Kraan Crystal and absorbing the energies of the Phoenix. Personally, I love Vulcan. In fact, it was What If: Deadly Genesis from a year prior that convinced me to read the character’s stories. The idea of Vulcan being the Phoenix is full of potential.

The story isn’t horrible, but it’s just very… easy and plain. Vulcan with the Phoenix powers leads to him fighting every living Summers character on Krakoa for the final battle. The solution is what you’d expect and the whole thing just comes across as paint-by-numbers. Though I’m still not sure I get Vulcan’s physical transformation towards the end.

What really makes this one hard to read is the art by Larry Stroman. It’s a very EXTREME! 80’s style with lots of instances of bad facial anatomy, characters hunched over like zombies and other deformities. Don’t take my word for it. Take Rachel Summers’.

Don’t get too distracted by her face or you’ll miss whatever the hell is going on with her hand.

After that Vulcan mess, we move onto the well-hyped What If: Civil War. I have very mixed feelings about this one. We are given two different stories and a framing device. The first story, written by Kevin Grevioux, is based on the idea of Tony Stark dying from injecting himself with the Extremis tech. Captain America leads the other heroes towards taking down Mallon, the super-criminal from the Extremis storyline. The prelude to Civil War goes as scheduled, though this time it is Captain America running against the government unopposed. He’s able to convince every single superhero to follow his lead.

What happens is exactly what Tony Stark feared would happen if he didn’t take his stand: the war between heroes and the government still takes place, only more extreme and violent. If you look at it, all the players in the story (Captain America, Jim Rhodes, Gyrich, Maria Hill and I suppose Reed Richards) are all little pieces of Tony Stark’s place in Civil War, only warring against each other in chaos instead of working together as one man. As expected, the ending is a big downer, lending itself to a world that’s more than likely about to get worse.

Two things about the story get an unintentional chuckle out of me. For one, the art tries to be very McNiven, but sometimes characters have overly animated facial features. This is fine for rubbery Reed Richards, but Thing’s face shouldn’t look like it’s melting off when he’s all sad like that. The other thing is how at one point Captain America breaks out the old Iron Captain America armor in honor of how he feels Iron Man would have backed him up on this. Not only does he forget about it completely by the next scene, but it looks nothing like his old armor. It’s just Greviox trying to tie the story in with the cover image.

Christos Gage takes up the next story, taking off from the incident where Captain America zapped Iron Man during their handshake when Iron Man just wanted to talk things over. Iron Man chooses to admit that although he’s sure he’s doing the right thing, he needs Cap to make sure he’s doing it the right way. With this honesty, Cap turns off his device and legitimately shakes his hand. Due to a misunderstanding, the Thor clone is released and hell begins to break loose.

No doubt about it, the image of Captain America holding his shield in defense of an ailing Iron Man and telling the Thor clone, “You want him? You’ll have to go through me,” is a feel good moment. Though I suppose that’s the problem here. This isn’t much of a story. It’s just a series of feel good moments, showing how awesome things could have been. It’s like the Marvel Adventures version of the story.

It wouldn’t have been very effective if it wasn’t for Ed Brubaker and Marko Djurdjevic’s framing scenes that portray the Watcher visiting Tony Stark at Steve Rogers’ grave, showing him these stories to prove his own little point. This whole bit is an homage to Frank Miller’s What If Elektra Had Lived?, a story that I STILL don’t understand its popularity. By putting this and the two stories together, you get a reasonable showing of one of Civil War’s main themes: Tony Stark may have been right, but he certainly wasn’t right enough. Now the world is suffering for it.

The final recent What If is What If: Spider-Man vs. Wolverine. That title isn’t very literal, as the two don’t exactly fight each other here. It’s based on a one-shot from 20 years ago where Spider-Man’s hero-vs.-villain mentality got mixed in with Wolverine’s shades-of-gray lifestyle while in Europe. Wolverine hoped to protect a former KGB agent and love interest Charlie (it’s a female, I swear) from being captured by the Russians and enduring a slow and painful death. His solution was to kill her first. Spider-Man tried to stop this, but in all the confusion, he accidentally punched Charlie in the head so hard that he killed her. The two heroes went their separate ways and Peter sulked over having taken a life.

This story, written by everybody’s friend Jeff Parker and illustrated by Clayton Henry, deals with Logan making the decision to help Peter redeem himself before he can return to America. Charlie has a sister, a captured CIA agent named Alex, and they need Spider-Man’s help. He makes the decision to stick around and his whole life changes. The more he’s trapped in this world, the darker he gets. It all begins with accidentally killing the latest Crimson Dynamo and gets worse from there. Once he has Alex freed, he latches onto her and they become inseparable. It’s figured that by keeping her alive, he validates all the killing, plus she has a noticeable resemblance to a certain blond bridge victim from the old days.

In fact, I think I can sum up Spider-Man’s change with this image.

Notice that his black ops costume is based on Alex Ross’ concept sketch for the first Spider-Man movie.

Through the teachings of operative genius Nebo, Spider-Man enhances his skills and powers to the point that his little family is nearly unstoppable. And they are something of a family. Wolverine doesn’t do all that much in the story other than supply dialogue and play off Peter, but the two develop an almost brotherly relationship.

The real reason I enjoy this issue is because for once, the other shoe doesn’t drop. In all the other What Ifs, Spider-Man is never allowed to stray away from type. If he goes for the kill, it destroys him. If he shirks off responsibility, his existence becomes even more of a nightmare. So to see him become a killer, you expect a whiny ending about Spider-Man crying over all the mistakes he made. Thankfully, we don’t get that.

The ending we do get shows that the kind wise-cracker we all know and love is gone, but maybe it’s for the better? Everyone who matters is happy, the world may possibly be better off and maybe, just maybe, the ends have justified the means.

Again, it was a really good batch this year. Makes me wish they’d just make the series monthly again. I’m just kidding. I’ve been wanting a new monthly What If series for years. This just pumps up my morale.

Next month Marvel will be releasing all five issues under the trade What If: Civil War. You should pick it up.

Alternate Current is a series of weekly posts on thought-provoking, or simply fun, topics from bright minds all throughout the blogosphere. We take submissions and responses, so if you’d like to get into the mix, send an email to David Brothers. This week comes courtesy of Gavin from 4thletter!. Check back tomorrow morning for the first of Gavin’s regular columns in Comics From The 5th Dimension!