What If The Fantastic Four Had Different Super-Powers? Part 2

And we're back. Please don't make me recap this thing if you've ever read Fantastic Four you know three quarters of what happened. 

Thank God nothing bad happens when Ben's in a room with a low ceiling

Oh joy scene from the beginning.2 with added monster. And why are freakish non-humans always so keen on money and valuables? Can't imagine this guy depositing a check without a lot of tiring explanations. "

What If The Fantastic Four Had Different Super-Powers? Part One

Well for once I didn't have to put an exclamation mark in the title, that's refreshing. Sadly I suspect every time I won't it'll be a question mark. That's how it rolls in comics. Any way today we're doing What If #6. 


What If is (or was) a Marvel series that existed to ask that question again and again. Basically every issue was a story set in outside the usual Marvel universe, where some decision or event went differently. Like say "What if Spider-Man saved Gwen Stacy and didn't marry Mary Jane?" or "What if Joe Quesada didn't take that last thing as a suggestion?".  It would then explore the ramifications of the difference. Usually this would serve as an attempt to make us think there was only one way things could turn out that wasn't death or despair, but not always. 

Some of the stories were interesting and well thought out, like What If Captain America Were Revived Today? (in the mid 80's), which explored patriotism being perverted to serve fascism.  Some  seemed like bad fanfiction premises, like half the ones where Susan marries Namor The Submariner.  And others just asked weird, convoluted questions, like Arachnamorphosis (your spell-check just exploded). That one asked what if Peter Parker occasionally turned into a ever hungering spider monster, had a son with Gwen Stacy who then died,  but also the kid has Peter's issue as well?


An almost disproportionate number of  What If stories involved the Fantastic Four, so our question now is What If The Fantastic Four Had Different Super-Powers. 


We begin with a naked lie. 

"We will not split the royalty checks!"

  This? This doesn't happen at any point in the story. The alternate Fantastic Four don't cross into the main universe, nor do the "real" FF enter their world. No, neither team becomes aware of each other's existence. I know I said in this blog's very first post that comic covers like to lie (even today) but usually they lie like a genie. They don't say anything that contradicts the facts, but they always leave out something, or frame it differently then you'd expect. This just fuck it and invents a fight. Is this where the idea of putting Wolverine on the covers of comics he isn't even in came from? And on that note alternate Johnny does not actually look like that in the story. 


So multiple people in the letters were demanding a team composed of Mandroid, Big Brain, Ultra-Women, and Dragonfly, specifically? Rather specific vision, are we sure they didn't impersonate the writers so they could unleash this upon us?  

  

Beware Of The Blob! Part One

In order to understand how X-Men came to be, we must look at Doom Patrol the Fantastic Four. The Fantastic Four was almost certainly following the coat tails of the Justice League, DC's successful team book of the time. The publisher of Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman asked Stan Lee to come up with a  team for the company .


The result was a bit different from most previous comic book teams. One way was that the Fantastic Four wasn't composed of pre-existing characters, but ones who shared a origin and were indeed an extended family. Very soon into their run they would also shed secret identities, and after a few adventures in "Central City" (presumably located in the East Cost State), they were firmly situated in a real life city, New York.

But more importantly they had genuine conflict among the heroes. Weird Silver Age shaded melodramatic conflict but still conflict. This helped it become a runaway hit who's influence is still felt by nearly every comic without wooden logs for main characters.


Obviously Marvel wanted to keep warming itself on the flames of the team book craze they helped kindle, so they churned out another book in "The Sensational Fantastic Four Style" (hey I didn't come up with that tagline), The X-Men. And they were like the Fantastic Four, except there was five of them, and they weren't related, and at the start they were kind of weird and creepy.

So yeah the X-Men started as a cash in. Stan Lee apparently decided  that coming up with individual origins was getting boring, so he had the five X-Men, Cyclops, Beast, Angel, Iceman and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey if you don't know her old codename) be part of a emerging race of mutants. Who are of course persecuted because normal people are dicks with no sense of self preservation.


From X-Men issue 3, Beware The Blob

The 60's predecessor to Weight Watchers could be a little zealous

Peculiarly Angel appears to have gained some kind of omnipresence power, for he is not only tea bagging the Blob but also flying above the logo. Also X-Men covers had a habit of claiming  something within was the strangest thing ever, for example the X-Men were the strangest superheroes ever. And while Blob is a little strange he pails next to the guy with the power to spit out a space ship, or the equally bald Charles Xavier clone with boobs. 

Also that X-Men taking America by storm thing is an overstatement... if saying Wolverine doesn't appear in a lot of comics is also one. Yeah X-Men during the 60's was never a very popular book, mainly being seen as the Fantastic Four But Less So. In fact for a while it only existed as a reprint title. X-Men probably owes it's more recognizable elements and it's popularity to Chris Claremont and John Byrne. But that's another story. 

Also look at Iceman in the corner logo trying to actually be seen, maybe he got sidelined as punishment for only throwing what appears to be a slightly dirty toy rocket at the Blob. 

Also soon we shall see why the Blob is such a threat, and it will shock you true believers!


There's a fairly boring add for a wrist radio, which would be great if you were attending a Dick Tracy costume competition. But we're skipping it.