or: WHAT IF… Joe Quesada never became Marvel's Editor-in-Cheif?
(edit: full image can be seen HERE)
When I started reading comics in the early-to-mid 90s, some of my favorite comics were the WHAT IFs. Maybe it was because I had a short attention span, maybe its because they were never sold out, maybe its because a lot of the stories of the time were very involved, so starting at the beginning of an arc didn't guarantee you'd be able to follow all the action. For example I loved the X-Men cartoon, so I started reading X-Men, and the storyline that just started was X-Cutioner's Song, which was almost impossible to follow unless you knew the backstory that had started years prior (or should i say Pryor... puns are great). What If gave you a quick synopsis of the story as it originally played out, then started up with the scene mentioned in the title, took that premise and ran with it. Sometimes seemingly disparate events would tie together in the weirdest ways.
So I found this Collage of "What If…?" covers online, when someone pointed out to me all of these "what ifs" happened in continuity. Maybe not in the EXACT manner presented, but Wolverine being a vampire happened, as did Ross becoming a Hulk, and Cap coming back later than the 70s (even if it was in the Ultimate Universe). Furthermore, many of them happened when Joe Quesada was Editor-in-Cheif.
I'm of two minds about this. Some stuff like Spiderman's Clone living, I only learned about the original story after I already reading the retcon. Clone Saga was one of the first Spiderman story arcs I read in its weekly releases (after Maximum Carnage). With some stories I went back and read the original stories, I was dissatisfied with the ending and felt that the retcon was the better tale. But with some of them, like General Ross becoming Hulk, or Spiderman not getting married, I think the retcon comes off anywhere from cheap and unoriginal, to just plain insulting (maybe that has to do with the way they were written... looking at you O.M.I.T.). Most of the time "What Ifs" are a way of saying "if we would've done it different, all hell would've broken loose."
Does it bother anyone else to know that Marvel is essentially taking story ideas they already put out there as being a bad idea for continuity and making it canon?
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