Talking about WHAT IF Comics...

[random_havoc]

Okay, so this thread is for all What If comics Marvel has done, but in particular I wanted to start with the recent 4 issues AVX mini. Am I the only one that thought it sucked beyond all sucking? Magneto goes back to full on kill-all-humans villain with no explanation, and at the end

Spoiler

Jean reappears for no apparent reason to make sweet spirit loving to Wolverine. Oh, and apparently Mags killing Hope was enough to magically transfer the Phoenix to him? Why the heck did that work?

Found the whole thing insulting to my intellect (not to mention that terrible art).

Anyone else's thoughts on that?


Also, my favorite what if comic is probably tied between "What if Marvel Heroes had lost the Atlantis Attacks" and "What if Professor X had become The Juggernaut"! Both are awesome!

 

[Donnie Darko]

I used to really like What If... books. I remember one where Cap was unfrozen "today" (like 1991), and it had him being tricked into leading a team of supervillains during the first issue of the two-parter. There's also one where Doom becomes The Thing, and this leads to The Thing becoming The Hulk.

As far as the AvX one goes, you can't really expect anything really good to come out of that series. Although, I would've loved "What if AvX was actually about Avengers vs X-Men and not Avengers and some X-Men vs a poorly written Dark Phoenix".

 

[runawayboulder]

I wasn't a regular reader but I liked a few of them back in the day. What If the Alien Costume Possessed spider-Man was a good one (with early art from Mark Bagley), Wolverine during Conan the Barbarian's era and the Dark Phoenix one was good too.

Mostly they are all just violence porno, stories about heroes getting killed and maimed. I'd prefer if they used actual ideas that almost came to fruition but were shot down during a creative summit. Something with a little real history behind it.

 

[KevanG]

I have a ton of those books. I love them. I'm missing most of the very early volume 1 but I have most of Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. I haven't got any recently (the last few years) because they're published so infrequently.

 

[JewishHobbit]

I liked what I read of vol. 2 (not ready any vol. 1 I don't think), but everything that's come out since vol. 2 ended has been crap. I used to buy them, then I just skimmed them, and recently I just stopped. It's like... "What if Spider-Man didn't make a deal with the Devil?" Then we see that he rejected Mephisto, Aunt May died, he goes crazy with grief, murders MJ, goes on a supervillain spree, shoots Captain America in the face, and then goes down guns a blazing with the Punisher. They just take a starting point and take it so far in the extreme that it's ridiculous.

Of the old series though, I liked "What if the All-New, All-Different X-Men Never Existed?" Basically, the original team figured out the Krakoa story on its own and the 2nd generation never had to be assembled. It went on to have the original team confront stories that the All New, All Different team did (and lets us see how they would have been handled differently) and battle various members of what would later become the All-New, All-Different X-Men. It was the first What If I ever read and is still my favorite. Issue #23 I believe.

 

[runawayboulder]

I liked what I read of vol. 2 (not ready any vol. 1 I don't think), but everything that's come out since vol. 2 ended has been crap. I used to buy them, then I just skimmed them, and recently I just stopped. It's like... "What if Spider-Man didn't make a deal with the Devil?" Then we see that he rejected Mephisto, Aunt May died, he goes crazy with grief, murders MJ, goes on a supervillain spree, shoots Captain America in the face, and then goes down guns a blazing with the Punisher. They just take a starting point and take it so far in the extreme that it's ridiculous.

^^^Exactly the problem with these books. They deteriorate into a Uwe Boll movie. Like I said before, if they took actual ideas that were floated around at some point and made that the starting point and put some creativity into them, I'd probably read more of them.

 

[JewishHobbit]

^^^Exactly the problem with these books. They deteriorate into a Uwe Boll movie. Like I said before, if they took actual ideas that were floated around at some point and made that the starting point and put some creativity into them, I'd probably read more of them.

Like instead of my above OMD example, play out Straczynski's idea of Harry never getting into drugs (or whatever it was) that led to Gwen surviving and the marriage never happening. And don't end it with Gwen becoming a gun-toting vigilante murdering her bestie Mary Jane Watson before convincing Peter to help bury the body leading to his being discovered by Aunt May, so he kills her to cover the crime and eventually runs away with Gwen to start a crime spree in Las Vegas.