Your guide to the weirdest, wackiest, wrongest What Ifs: A ComicsXF Primer

What if Roy Thomas, who had recently stepped down from being editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics in the mid-1970s, was like, “Well, I want to keep writing, but I don’t want to deal with continuity?”

Marvel has answered that question a bunch of different ways over the years, from Thomas’ own Invaders series, written during the 1970s but set during World War II; to the Epic line of the 1980s, which sought to keep creators’ creator-owned ideas in house; to the current trend of having veteran writers tell stories set during certain periods of characters’ history.

Only one of these has its own TV show, though.

Disney+’s What If…? returns this week, with new episodes releasing daily beginning Friday. Call it waiting until the last possible minute to pick up an Advent calendar so you can get it on clearance. Episodes include “What If … Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?” “What If … Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?” (Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon!) and “What If … the Avengers Assembled in 1602?” an adaptation of the 2003 miniseries by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert.

Like The Simpsons, have no fear, What If? has stories for years. And some of them are probably better than “Marge becomes a robot” and “Maybe Moe gets a cellphone.” Our intrepid crew of multiverse-nauts scoured the pages (and Wikia entries) of What If? and found some great ones, some weird ones and some ones that are also there. Where applicable, we’ll include the collected editions you can find them in, or the episodes of Battle of the Atom they were covered on.

What If … Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?

What If? #1, February 1977
Written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Jim Craig
Collected in What If? The Original Marvel Series Omnibus Vol. 1
Check out our interview with Roy Thomas about creating the series.

The first issue of What If? asks a simple question: What if Spidey joined the FF? It makes sense. Spider-Man encountered the Fantastic Four in the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man. He and Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, are close friends (or more, depending on which corners of AO3 you inhabit). He has a keen interest in science and could learn much from Reed Richards. Plus, the FF are culturally beloved and it would get J. Jonah Jameson off his back. This issue introduces a number of key What If? concepts, including narration from Uatu the Watcher and an ending that teaches a lesson in the law of unintended consequences, as Spidey’s acceptance into the FF leaves team female the Invisible Girl feeling neglected, leading her to abandon them for hot fish sex with Namor the Sub-Mariner.

What If … the Original Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four?

What If? #11, October 1978
Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Collected in What If? The Original Marvel Series Omnibus Vol. 1

Stan Lee. Jack Kirby. Flo Steinberg. Sol Brodsky. When a box of cosmic rays is delivered to the Marvel offices in 1961, it imbues the four of them with the powers of the Fantastic Four. Of course, Flo is Sue. Of Course, Jack is Ben. And OF COURSE, Stan is Reed. Together they team up with Namor to foil a Skrull plot to transform all of humanity with cosmic rays. Best of all, this story is written and drawn by the King during his batshit late-’70s Marvel period, which gave us stuff like the Madbomb, Devil Dinosaur and the Eternals.

What If … Dazzler Had Become the Herald of Galactus?

What If? #33, June 1982
Written by Danny Fingeroth and drawn by Mike Vosburg
Collected in What If? The Original Marvel Series Omnibus Vol. 1

This seems awfully specific, but many X-Men fans tend to forget Dazzler had her own series in the 1980s, and in that series was a three-issue story in which Alison Blaire receives the Power Cosmic and gets sucked into a black hole to fight Galactus’ herald Terrax the Tamer. Dazzler rejects becoming Galactus’ new herald there, but this comic presupposes, what if she didn’t? Turns out, she’d convince him to only eat uninhabited planets and would serve him for centuries, only to return home and find the Earth destroyed and be super-bummed about it.

What If … What If Was a Series of Comedic (and Some Problematic) Shorts?

What If? #34, August 1982
By pretty much the entire Marvel bullpen
Collected in What If? The Original Marvel Series Omnibus Vol. 1

What if the Marvel bullpen got super high off the smell of their own farts and pitched a bunch of What Ifs at each other while giggling maniacally? It might look exactly like this issue, a series of shorts of varying quality — only some of which were conceived by actually funny cartoonist Fred Hembeck — that dares to ask questions like:

• “What if the Fantastic Four were bananas?”
• “What if Spider-Man married Spider-Woman?”
• “What if Ghost Rider had possessed a baby?”
• “What if Black Bolt got the hiccups?”
• “What if Ka-Zar were a middle-aged accountant?

Hilarious, right? Don’t worry, it devolves quickly into:

• “What if Power Man were white?”
• “What if Daredevil was deaf instead of blind?” (Thanks, Frank Miller!)
• “What if the Hulk married the She-Hulk?” (They’re cousins!)
• “What if Daredevil could see?” (Daredevil: font of ableist stories since 1964)
• “What if Iron Man had an eating disorder?”

Hard to get mad at this one though: “What if Silver Surfer, White Tiger, Night Rider, Iceman and Moon Knight fought Wendigo in a snowstorm?”

What If … Wolverine Was Lord of the Vampires?

What If? Vol. 2 #24, April 1991 
Written by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Roy Thomas, drawn by Tom Morgan
Collected in What If? Into the Multiverse Omnibus HC Vol. 1
Covered on this super early episode of Battle of the Atom!

In what is clearly one of the best What If? issues of all time, Lofficier and Thomas have Logan and Dracula fight as Werewolf and Man-Bat, respectively, only for Wolverine to win and become Lord of the Vampires. The new all-vampire X-Men make quick work of the world, blood sucking any and all who get in their way. This would be cool enough, but the real reason you want to read this one is when Doctor Strange’s astral form enters the body of Frank Castle to create Sorcerer Supreme Punisher, who shoots silver bullets with crosses on them and throws garlic grenades. It’s that one-of-a-kind weird you can only get in an issue of What If? 

What If … Thanos Changed Galactus into a Human Being?

What If? Vol. 2 #34, February 1992
Written by Scott Gimple and drawn by Tom Morgan
Collected in What If? Into the Multiverse Omnibus HC Vol. 1

You expect certain things from stories where a godlike being is transformed into a human being. They’ve probably got to learn how to eat, and they definitely need to learn how to poop, and if you’re lucky, we might all learn a lesson about human frailty or perseverance or empathy or something. Or you could do what Scott Gimple and Tom Morgan do in this one, and take things in a different direction — “What If … Thanos Changed Galactus into a Human Being” but also that human being was Elvis Presley for completely random reasons that are never explained? Turns out, he’d still really like eating, but he’d like rock ’n’ roll and sex even better. It’s the rare What If? where everybody wins! It’s also worth noting that an inordinate number of the additional (comedic) What If? scenarios from this issue, including “What If … Doctor Doom were a Pediatrician” and “What If … the Punisher was a Hall Monitor” involve the attempted murder of children, but I’ll allow the child endangerment in “What If the Punisher Had Died and His Family Had Lived” (and become the Punisher Family), because that one includes Bullets the Wonder Pup. Also, in case you were wondering, “What If … You Were Spider-Man” — you’d be dead! You’re no superhero!

What If … Spider-Man Had Kept His Six Arms?

What If? Vol. 2 #42, October 1992
Written by Michael Gallagher and drawn by Kevin West

Remember when Stan Lee and Gil Kane gave Spider-Man six arms in 1971’s Amazing Spider-Man #100-102 and invented Morbius, the Living Vampire to fix it? Well, what if Morbius got eaten by a shiver of sharks and became a dead vampire? This would, naturally, lead to Spider-Man keeping his six arms, which in turn leads to a bunch of soul searching and Spidey being very problematically ableist in front of Charles Xavier. But it also makes Spidey a better superhero (Six punches hit harder than two!) and helps him finally win the public relations war as he becomes “a universally respected spokesman for the physically challenged of the world.” Yet this story would have us believe six arms are better everywhere but the bedroom, as Peter Parker uses holograms to hide his extra appendages from his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. Which begs a further fabulation of this fantastic fable — “What If … Spider-Man Had Kept His Six Arms … and Gwen Stacy Liked It?”

What If … Scott and Jean Got Married Sooner/Didn’t Get Married/Jean Smashed Logan

What If? Vol. 2 #60, April 1994
Written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Ron Randall

Coming hot off the X-Men’s 30th anniversary celebration in 1993, the early months of 1994 were dedicated to the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey, the X-Men’s OP romantic pairing. What If? #60 is a direct tie-in to the wedding (with a “main reality” framing sequence, something of an oddity for the series, taking place at the wedding itself), and it does so by offering three alternate romantic scenarios: What if Cyclops and Jean Grey got married sooner (a different team of New X-Men are killed by Krakoa); what if they never fell in love at all (aka what if Jean chose Angel back in the early days; turns out it leads to Cyclops becoming an incel and joining the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants); and what if Jean fell in love with Wolverine (Dark Phoenix destroys all existence, which sure seems like a shot across the bow at Jean/Wolvie shippers). The resulting issue works far better as a wedding tie-in than a compelling examination of alternate history(ies), in large part because dividing the page count per tale by three barely gives any of the different scenarios room to develop, with two of the three concluding on one of the series’ two stock outcomes (“everyone dies!”). Yet even as a tie-in, it’s hardly Busiek’s most important contribution to the X-Men mythos, and stands as another example of the series’ latter-half dependence on glomming on to the X-Men to survive. 

What If … Nightcrawler Smooched a Different Adoptive Sister?

What If? Vol. 2 #98, June 1997
Written by Bill Rosemann and drawn by Leonardo Manco

We long ago accepted Kurt Wagner macking on his adoptive sister, Jimaine Szardos, aka Amanda Sefton. What’s one more kissing sister? In this story, Mystique never yeeted baby Nightcrawler off a waterfall left baby Nightcrawler by a tree to nap while she did revenge murders. Instead, she raises him in secret while she gathers her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and her adopted daughter Rogue discovers him one day in the attic. From then on, Rosemann shows us how he read V.C. Andrews’ 1979 novel Flowers in the Attic (or watched the 1987 film starring Kristy Swanson). Cool. Cool cool cool. Cool.

What If … Magik Became the Sorcerer Supreme?

What If … Magik #1, October 2018
Written by Leah Williams, drawn by Filipe Andrade
Covered on this episode of Battle of the Atom

In October 2018, Marvel released a handful of new What If? one-shots, the very best of which starred a teenage runaway Illyana Rasputin rejecting the X-Men but falling in with Dr. Stephen Strange, who trains her in the use of sorcery in a way that allows her to confront the trauma inflicted on her by Belasco. More than a goofy AU thought experiment, Williams — whose presence in the X-line is sorely missed — writes an emotionally powerful story about living as an abuse survivor, augmented by the art of Andrade, who went on to knock it even further out of the park with Ram V on The Many Deaths of Laila Starr and their current BOOM Studios series Rare Flavours. Look at the page of Illyana holding her staff in the water as a teen and then as a little girl and try not to cry.

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