Showing posts with label Uatu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uatu. Show all posts

Monday, 22 July 2013

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. "



Saturday, 20 July 2013

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?