Welcome one and all to the best Wednesday thing on a blog ever! What if Wednesday #3! I am going to be so hard pressed to talk about stuff in the first paragraph of each and every one of these! Anyway up there is an image of the Watcher's first appearance from Fantastic Four #13 all the way back in like 1963 or something. I feel a What If post should probably start off with some kind of picture of the Watcher man. I don't know when I will use my favorite picture of him but we will get to it! Anyway we got more What If's from Volume 2 to talk about!
Holy moly ass shit! Now this is a comic book (by Doug Murray of the 'Nam fame and Rik Levins) that grabs your ass and doesn't let go until the last 3 pages which are just weird joke what ifs that I guess they just decided to shove in there for some reason or another. We will get to the wacky issues of What If someday and boy howdy they are something! Anyway this time the mob DOES NOT kill The Punisher's family AND he becomes a police officer. An honest cop trying to do the best he can, you know like Frank Serpico. He finds out about corruption, judges, his partner and even his Captain are in on it (they are all pretty much working for the Kingpin in the end) it doesn't end well for his family. And then it doesn't end well for the corrupt cops and judges this go around because THEY are who he's after this time. So keep your nose clean or Frank Castle will shoot it off. I'm amazed that 30 years ago we were still talking about issues we are talking about now. And they still haven't been resolved. And the fact people are complaining NOW that comic books have discussed social and political issues. Anyway, this comic comes Highly Recommended!
What If #22 by Ron Marz and Ron Lim (double Ron action for ya!) is pretty good too. I think I like it because it has a mostly positive ending really. OK so in the mainline Marvel Universe comics published between 1966 and 1987 that had the Silver Surfer in it had him confined to earth (I believe that Silver Surfer #1 from 1987 by Steve Englehart and one of the best Batman artists EVER!, Marshall Rogers was the first time he finally passed the barrier put on him by Galactus. You can easily correct me if I'm wrong becuase I 1.) haven't read every damn comic ever made and 2.) can't remember every single detail about them) but in 1987 he finally found his way off planet and had wild cosmic adventures. THIS what if keeps him confined to earth and accepts membership into THE FANTASTIC FIVE! and they start whuppin ass like its going outta style. In a two page spread they beat the piss outta Dr. Doom, Annihilus, The Frightful Four and fucking Terminus, the huge ass motherfucker space robot guy. Then after that they get a call from a priest worrying about shit and after the priest is possessed BLAM they get sent to fucking HELL and have to fight Mephisto, one of the stand ins in Marvel Comics for you know, Satan (my favorite is Satannish because he's not Satan he's just kinda Satannish.. its wild). Mephisto tells the Surfer he has to stay in Hades forever unless he wants the rest of the Fantastic Five to be tortured by him. The Surfer agrees but refuses to sign his agreement because "The Surfers Word is his Bond" and Mephisto just burns the shit outta the Human Torch. Long story short the Surfer ends up taking over Hades and making Mephisto his prisoner and all Evil disappeares. Wild stuff. Recommended.
I had a hell of a time trying to get those two images to stick there. One would always get deleted. Uh, yeah I think we finally got to the first What If that I really did not like which is weird because it's by Kurt Busiek who usually does very good work. I wasn't exactly thrilled with What If #69 but I'm sure someone would dig it, this I don't think it works very good. Anyway, this two parter starts off with a bang with Scott Summers, Jean Grey and Professor Xavier being blown the fuck up... by Cable. Then it goes back to them all talking by Professor X (who had returned early from space in this timeline) and he tells Cable he's no longer leader of the New Mutants which causes him to throw a tantrum and start a fight and the New Mutants go with him. Oh and THEN they go back to the start of the story where they are at a funeral now and the X-Men break into two factions, one who wants to kill Cable and one who wants to bring him in. It's not even like they both go after him, just the murder crazy faction (led by Wolverine) but the Storm faction is now being taken down by supervillains all teaming up and the X-Men don't bother trying to get help from any other superheroes or anything nah, that's foolish talk. So with several X-Men dead it becomes a time for Magneto to take over the USA and then the Sentinels are sent out and if you don't see that this is going to the Days of Future Past future than you are being silly. It ends with Wolverine pulling some Mutants out of the camps (and people think X-Men isn't an allegory for civil rights from everyone to Jewish people to black people to gays and on) because he got some fail safe thing that made it so that Sebastian Shaw (who made these metal-less Sentinels so it wouldn't be able to tell hes a mutant) saying the X-Men are back.
Boy fucking howdy I did not like this story. Everything about it feels forced, from Cable not stepping down to the New Mutants not leaving Cable after he killed Xavier and Scott and Jean (I mean you can be against the X-Men for trying to execute Cable without a fair trial and all but JESUS these people were your mentors for crying out loud! Didn't feel like that was something they would be for), then Storms side not trying to get some help from anyone or anything. THEN Dazzler and Sunspot and Strong Guy just being like "ok sure i'll now join you Magneto and these people who killed my friends and not the pro mutant people like the Fantastic Four". I know for some of these you'll go "DURR IT'S AN ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE SILLY" and I'll respond "Yeah but it just splits off at this second, these characters should still act like they did in 616 unless giving really good reasoning and it wasnt here" it just felt like Kurt had a idea to make this end up in the Days of Future Past like Future and just wanted to shove it all in there. The bring side this comic does have Siryn in it, Banshee's daughter and lady redheads very sexy. Oh and the art was pretty decent and those covers are pretty cool. I'll probably end up owning these but if you aren't the kind of person who needs to own every issue in a series I'd say these comics come really Not Recommended at all.
Anyway, what comics will happen next Wednesday! WAIT AND SEE!
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