Writing intros for so many installments is hard. Gives me more respect for the Watcher, who thought up over a hundred variations of, “I’m going to show you stuff that didn’t happen, based on stuff that didn’t actually happen anyway.”

75) WHAT IF THE AVENGERS LOST OPERATION: GALACTIC STORM?

Issue: Volume 2, #55-56
Writer: Len Kaminksi
Artist: Craig Brasfield
Spider-Man death: Yes
Background: Galactic Storm was based on the war that was brewing between the Kree and the Shi’ar. Earth was going to be their battleground and the Avengers made an attempt to stop it. Their plea for peace got them in trouble and the team split up based on different ideas of how to handle the Kree. Captain America and others were taken prisoner by Kree rulers Ael-Dan and Dar-Ben. In regular continuity, the Shi’ar killer Deathbird appeared and assassinated the Kree men, but here, Captain America senses her and prevents their deaths. He finds that this one heroic gesture leads to unfortunate consequences.

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That hiatus was long enough. Let’s get back to business.

80) WHAT IF DAZZLER HAD BECOME THE HERALD OF GALACTUS? /WHAT IF IRON MAN WAS TRAPPED IN THE TIME OF KING ARTHUR?

Issue: Volume 1, #33
Writer: Dan Fingeroth, Steven Grant
Artist: Mike Vosburg, Don Perlin
Spider-Man death: Yes
Background: Two stories here, neither have much to do with the other. First, there was a time when Terrax, Galactus’ then-herald, schemed behind his master’s back and ended up in a black hole for his troubles. Because Dazzler was a bit overpowered at the time, she was chosen to bring him out of the black hole to stand trial. Galactus decided that Terrax had learned his lesson from the black hole and reinstated him. So what if he wasn’t so forgiving? As for the other story, there was a storyline where Dr. Doom and Iron Man ended up in Camelot via time travel. After a little adventure, the two banded together to return themselves to the correct point in history. Here, Doom is more of a bastard and really isn’t bright if you think about it.

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I’m not dead!

I’ve basically been grinding for the last week on a game for work. Check out Games Radar this weekendish for my Dead Rising guide. I had one short short deadline, so I went Quick ‘n’ Dirty with it. It’ll get you through the game and show you the highlights. Getting 100% is up to you.

Now that I’ve got this bear off my back (though I have another arriving in the mail later today! hooray for getting paid to play games!) I can get back to my labor of love: comics!

What happened while I was busy? Looks like Marvel let Civil War slip hard, pushing the ending back to Feb 07 at the earliest. Mark Millar says it’s McNiven’s fault and that he only had a few weeks lead time.

“So, what?” say the fans. “Why didn’t you launch later?”

Tom Brevoort gives an interview about it and says this interesting piece:

The whole infrastructure of comic book retailing is changing, and I think what you’re starting to see is the beginning of the movement away from a monthly magazine publishing model over to something more akin to a book publishing model. This is very distressing to a lot of people who’ve grown up with the monthly model as a bedrock concept. But ever since we retreated almost wholly to the Direct Market in terms of the basic comic book product, there’s no compelling reason for the monthly release schedule outside of the need for retailers to have a predictable cash-flow that allows them to keep their doors open.

Insult or nugget of truth? Probably both! I’d have no problem with Marvel switching to trades only, with multiple teams releasing multiple books staggered so that you get a new 128-144 page story every couple of months. It’d effectively kill megacrossovers, but you could still do event comics.

Make the comics industry behave like a real publishing industry and we’ll be on better ground.

And what’s this? Mark Bagley is leaving Ultimate Spider-Man with #110? Bags is one of the top three Spidey artists, easy, so I’m sad to see him go. USM has always been a good looking book and he’s leaving behind some huge shoes to fill.

I’ve got two drafts in the works. First is an examination of Superboy #91 and the second is my list of Top 5 Black Women, to go along with my list of Top 5 Black Men. Also on the docket is my love of Jim Lee and the X-Men. Gavok’s off for a week, so I need to throw 4l on my back and keep up regular updates! His What If countdown, which you should be reading if you aren’t, will return when he does.

However, I recently got the final volume of Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman. It’s the last book to feature Cameron Stewart on art and it’s called Catwoman: Wild Ride. Give it a look, if only because it features this classic scene from Catwoman 22 reproduced below (and without permission, I’m sorry!) with Robert Mitchum Slam Bradley. I tell you what, man, it’s the cigarette throwing what does it. Slam has style. If you like this scene, do yourself a favor and check out the rest of the series. It’s beyond excellent.

In the meantime, check out Slam going toe-to-toe with Batman and I’ll probably see you tomorrow once I get some sleep!

(There’s a couple guys out there who’ve offered me guest articles… hop to it! I’d be glad to run them. Hoatzin/Rad, I’m calling you out, man. We need some Scrooge McDuck up in here! If anyone else wants to talk, the e-mail is at the top right!)

I think I’m out of intro fodder. Let’s just get to the meat, then.

85) WHAT IF THE VISION HAD DESTROYED THE AVENGERS?

Issue: Volume 2, #5
Writer: Jim Valentino
Artist: Jim Valentino
Spider-Man death: No
Background: When the Avengers first met Wonder Man, he was secretly dying of a rare radiation disease. Baron Zemo offered to cure him if he helped destroy the Avengers. Appearing as a friend, Wonder Man led the team into a trap. Soon he had a change of heart and sacrificed himself to save Thor. Giant Man recorded Wonder Man’s brain patterns in hopes that he could live on. He did, later on, in the form of the Vision. While an android, Vision’s personality was based on that of Wonder Man’s. Some time later, Wonder Man did return from the dead, but that’s beside the point. What if Wonder Man had his change of heart before luring the Avengers into a trap?

Wonder Man tells the Avengers that he’s supposed to trick them, but can’t due to how they’ve treated him with such dignity. Giant Man talks with Reed Richards about a possible cure for Wonder Man’s condition as Wonder Man fights alongside the Avengers. After the brawl with Zemo’s forces is over, Giant Man gives him the cure and saves his life. Wonder Man is granted membership into the Avengers.

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So remember when I said that Marvel would announce its upcoming What If issues long before I’d have this finished? Looks like I was right.

This year the five stories are all based on major events, most of them recent:

– Spider-Man: The Other. Here, Spider-Man’s spidery side takes over. Why he’s wearing the symbiote on the cover, I don’t know.
– Avengers Disassembled. So what would have happened had they not realized Scarlet Witch was behind it when they did?
– Wolverine: Enemy of the State. He’s still under Hydra’s conditioning and he needs to be stopped now more than ever.
– X-Men: Deadly Genesis. No explanation yet, but I haven’t even read Deadly Genesis in the first place.
– Age of Apocalypse. Oh man, I hope they mean the one from the 90’s and not the new one.

Speaking of What Ifs based on Marvel events…

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When it comes to doing countdowns of the best What If issue, I’m not the first. A couple years ago, Wizard magazine had their own top ten list. Here is their version:

10) What If Captain America Were Revived Today? (volume 1)
9) What If the Beast Continued to Mutate?
8) What If the X-Men Lost Inferno?
7) What If the Fantastic Four Had Not Gained Their Superpowers?
6) What If Pheonix Had Not Died? (volume 1)
5) Humor issue (volume 1)
4) What If Daredevil Killed the Kingpin?
3) What If the Hulk Went Berserk?
2) What If Conan the Barbarian Were Stranded in the 20th Century?
1) What If the Alien Costume Had Possessed Spider-Man?

Does this list coincide with my list? Not very much. Only two of those issues make it into my top ten. Three of them aren’t even on my list in the first place (I already talked about why #7 sucked). One of them is in this article.

Back to the real list. Read the rest of this entry �

It’s time to begin. Er… now that I’ve done two prelude articles before starting this off, I now realize that I don’t have anything to say for an intro. I could always go over the history of the series. Yeah, let’s do that.

What If first started in 1977 with the issue What If Spider-Man Had Joined the Fantastic Four?, based on the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man. The series lasted for seven years until ending with issue #47, What If Loki Had Found the Hammer of Thor? For the most part, the quality remained about the same.

Several years after cancellation, a special was released called What If Iron Man Had Been a Traitor? While not exactly a classic, it seemed to have helped bring the rebirth of the series as volume 2 started the very next year, 1989. Volume 2 followed the same structure of the first volume: Uatu the Watcher would go on a monologue about who he is and what he does, followed by spelling out just what the issue’s story is about. Like I mentioned a couple articles back, this is a good way to learn Marvel history. Me, I just found out Shang Chi’s backstory days ago. Before that all I knew about him was that he’s some martial artist guy without fear and his name makes him sound like Shang Tsung and Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat did the Fusion Dance.

I can’t be alone in this, can I? Read the rest of this entry �

I finally finished it. 176 issues of What If and I’ve finished reading them. My list of the 100 best is put together and the series of articles will commence.

But first… let’s just take another look at some of the issues that won’t be on the list. Some of the really bad ones.

Before I start, I’ve been asked about the clichés included with the series. In the last article, I mentioned the bit about Reed Richards being a borderline psychopath, but what else is there?

1) Spider-Man dies. A lot. Of course, this is to be expected. After all, he shows up in many, many issues. It’s the law of averages in effect here.

2) Kingpin dies. A super lot. What I said about Spider-Man doesn’t apply for Wilson Fisk. If he’s in the comic, there’s a 95% chance that he’s going to die. Then again, it’s a wonder why he’s still alive in regular continuity.

3) Loki is a puss. I can’t recall a single issue where Loki comes out a winner. Then again, there is a chance that he survived Marvel Zombies, so he has that going for him.

4) Hulk depressed! If the Incredible Hulk is the main character of a What If issue, the chances are very good that this isn’t going to end well. There are a couple exceptions.

Now to the crap. Read the rest of this entry �

Back when I first started reading comics, in the 90’s (thunder noises), I was a bit too young to have any real income and was mainly relegated to read comics that had Spider-Man and/or Venom on the cover. One of said covers was for a What If about the New Fantastic Four, made up of Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk and Ghost Rider. I had never heard of this team, but the concept was too rad not to look at, so I got the issue.

That, from what I recall, was the only one I ever did get back then. I remember passing on one about Cannonball’s brother Josh because, hell, I didn’t even know who Cannonball was. Didn’t he show up once during the really shitty final season of the X-Men cartoon?

Like many comic readers, spider-clones and evil, magnetic Xaviers pushed me away from the hobby for years. I can’t really remember when I got back into it again, but I know it wasn’t long into it that I remembered the What If series. With nearly 200 issues out there, I only looked at those based on characters I knew about. X-Men and Spider-Man mostly. Then, over time, as I started to understand more about guys like Iron Man and Dr. Doom, I’d read their stories. Then Dr. Strange and Captain America. Then Fantastic Four and Namor. And so on and so forth.

Until Wikipedia came around, these comics were some of the best ways to get background on characters and storylines. I didn’t know a thing about how Strange became a sorcerer until reading these. I didn’t know the story behind how the Silver Surfer became Galactus’ flunky, only to be given independence. In fact, most of Captain America’s backstory I’ve learned from his What If issues. So thanks for the help, Uatu the Watcher.

After realizing how many of these I’ve read, I knew I had to finish the series off. And so, at the time of this article, I have about 30 issues left to go through. Once I’m done with those, it will be time for me to reflect on it with my list of the best 100 issues. Read the rest of this entry �

You’re reading this, so this is your favorite site, right? RIGHT?

So tell your friends. Tell your mother, your father, your baker, your barber. I’m super-successful, and work on a magazine that has more readers than there are people on earth, but that is not enough. I crave attention. I am a megalomaniac. Two steps away from getting a metal faceplate and being Hermanos de Acero, I swear on my as-yet fictional tragic radioactive accident that gives me powers.

I don’t want posts to be met with dead air. I want back and forth, I want comments, I want to get people talking or laughing or something. You know what you get with posts by me? Generally snark-free insight on comics, the likes of which you can only find on a mountain in Tibet. I still haven’t written “Dark Knight Strikes Again Doesn’t Suck So Stop Telling Me To Not Like It, STUPID” or “Batgirl Going Evil Was A Bad Idea, But Now That It’s Over, It Could Be Great” or “Top Five Black Males in Comics” or “Top Five Black Females In Comics Who Aren’t Photon Or Storm” yet, but c’mon! They’re coming.

There’s two other guys on this site who’d love some love, too. Wanderer has tons mouths to feed because he keeps adopting adorable little babies. It’s kind of weird how he’s accessorizing his clothes with his children, and I really don’t approve of the cute, but demented, “Baby Pyramid,” but help this man out!

Gavok? Eh, he’s cool. He’s got a sweet What If…? article in the works. He’s subjecting himself to some of the worst excesses of the ’90s for you. You want to know what ones to read and which will give you terminal stupid shock? Wait a few days. You’ll see. This man, this monster… he does it out of love.

So get the word out. Link to the good articles, comment on the writing, start up a blog war with us so that we can get some free publicity, rap beef style. Link us (but not our images, I pay for this site out of pocket, kids) to your busy comics message boards if we say something you hate/love/don’t care about really. Talk us up on your livejournal. We’ve got an RSS feed right here and (oh snap) a Livejournal feed here! I’m going to add these links to the sidebar later today to make them easier to find.

See those rotating banners up at the top? They’re 700×200 jpegs (though one is a gif) and you can make your own. All it requires is a funny, serious, or really just any random moment from a comic and the word “4thletter!” in an unobtrusive spot in black or white. If you’ve got a good one, send it to 4thletter@gmail.com, okay?

C’mon, folks. Get the word out. Is you is, or is you ain’t, my baby?