What If...? #24-27

What If...? #24-27

Originally released in 1980

Written by Tony Isabella (#24), Peter Gillis (#25), Mike W. Barr (#26), Mary Jo Duffy (#27)

Art by Gil Kane (#24), Rich Buckler (#25), Herb Trimpe (#26), Jerry Bingham (#27)

What If...? season 3, the show's final season, releases tomorrow.  While it feels like they're running out of ideas (if the titles of season 3's episodes are any indication, the connections to specific events in the MCU seems loose at best - then again, the comics gave us "what if Wolverine was the lord of the vampires?") and not really taking advantage of the premise (there are less episodes than there are MCU movies (26 episodes across three seasons) despite not even touching the TV shows or (until this season) the other streaming series), it was an interesting experiment. I figured I'd read a few issues of the original comic to acknowledge the show since I have the opportunity to do that.

I'm starting with what I can only assume would be one of the most highly requested issues ever - "what if Gwen Stacy had survived?" Gwen Stacy was Peter Parker's girlfriend, though her hatred of Spider-Man (she thought he killed her father) prevented Peter from opening up to her about his double life.  She died in a battle that seemingly killed the original Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, but a relatively small change can have major consequences.

The Watcher serves as a framing device for these divergent realities, establishing that these branching paths exist elsewhere in the multiverse... and that most of the time, things turn out worse. In my experience with these What If stories, they tend to portray the main Marvel storyline as the best option, as outcomes like this tend to have long-term negative consequences. (There are occasionally realities that turn out better, such as a What If on the Civil War event, though I'm pretty sure that story was chosen in part to taunt Tony Stark)

Rather than using his web-shooters (which ultimately snapped Gwen's neck in the main timeline), a moment of hesitation causes Peter to jump down after Gwen; the two of them land in the water, and Gwen nearly drowns, but Peter performs CPR and saves her.  Seeing Peter with his mask off causes Gwen to realize that he's Spider-Man, but she hears him out when he explains himself.

Gwen agrees to marry Peter, though there's still the problem of the Green Goblin, who's still out there, knows Spider-Man's secret identity, and believes that Spidey is dead.  Peter is tempted to kill Norman, though he knows that Gwen wouldn't want that, and deep down, Peter wouldn't either.

Fearing for his life, Norman sends information about Spider-Man's secret identity to the one person who almost hates Spidey as much as he does. Retreating home, Norman reveals to Harry that he's the Green Goblin, though Harry doesn't respond to this information like Norman hoped.

In spite of this, Harry defends Norman when Spider-Man shows up, and Harry's unconditional love for his father manages to snap Norman out of his madness.  With the Green Goblin no longer a threat, Peter follows through with marrying Gwen, and the ceremony goes off without a hitch.

Just kidding.  While Peter and Gwen do say their vows and become husband and wife, J. Jonah Jameson shows up with the police to have Spider-Man arrested, having recieved Norman's evidence.  In addition, Jameson also published Spider-Man's identity in the Daily Bugle, forcing Peter to go on the run.

This goes too far for Joseph "Robbie" Robertson, Jameson's second-in-command and seemingly his only friend, who quits and promises to tear down the Bugle's reputation for Peter and Gwen's sake.  The story ends on an ambiguous note - Peter's secret is known, and it's unclear how he'll continue from here, or if the likes of Gwen and Aunt May will be in danger from countless villains seeking revenge on Spider-Man.

Issue 25 involves an Asgardian civil war - in the original Thor comics, Thor brought Jane Foster to Asgard so they could be married, but Odin set impossibly high standards for Jane that she couldn't meet before banishing her to Earth, which resulted in Thor starting a relationship with Sif for a time.  Here, Thor speaks out against this and is banished alongside her.

Turning to the Avengers for help, Thor claims that Odin has been possessed by some force that makes him irrational and the Avengers need to help Thor dethrone this tyrant. Aside from Quicksilver, the Avengers agree to help, setting off to Asgard.

Odin's visier has sided with Thor, giving Thor advice since Odin won't listen and using magic to power up the Avengers.  Meanwhile, Odin summons Loki to serve as his chief general, because what could possibly go wrong with that decision?

Once the fighting starts, Iron Man gets Vietnam flashbacks and heads to Odin to try and arrange peace talks between Odin and Thor.  Loki, wanting to take advantage of the fighting to kill Thor and Odin, kills Iron Man to stop this from happening, hatches a plot to steal some of Odin's power, and tries using that to kill Thor.

While trying to defend Thor, the Wasp underestimates her newfound strength, killing Loki with a wasp's sting to the face. With Odin too drained to fight directly, Thor makes it to the throne room - the two of them talk things out, but too much blood has been spilled, and Thor can't bring himself to forgive Odin, cutting his ties with Asgard and forming a new kingdom with the Asgardians who chose to follow him.

Issue 26 shows us a reality where Captain America was elected president of the United States; in the main comics, he was given the opportunity to run for president but declined.  For the most part, it goes surprisingly well - he gets a well-meaning career politician as his running mate, he foils an assassination attempt on himself, and upon being elected, he fulfils his campaign promises such as immediately revealing his identity and removing America's dependence on oil through solar energy collectors.

However, when visiting a recently-liberated South American nation, he discovers that its new president is actually the Red Skull in disguise, who uses the solar technology that America gave his government to help them rebel against a dictatorship as a weapon to attack America.  Steve goes to stop the Red Skull, but in the process, the solar-powered lasers are turned on the Skull's own headquarters with Steve inside; his body is never found.

As back-up stories throughout these issues, we get a multi-part backstory on the Eternals.  This isn't really a "what if" scenario, though the Eternals were originally outside of Marvel's continuity (mankind had never encountered aliens before, and the Hulk was explicitly stated to be a fictional character), so maybe the editor or one of the writers is using What If...? as a way to fit them into the main Marvel Comics continuity.

The fourth issue that I'm covering today asks "what if the Phoenix never died?" Interestingly, the story goes with (from what I've read) the original plan for Jean's fate, where she was going to be stripped of her powers rather than killed.  That idea was originally rejected because, as Dark Phoenix, she destroyed a planet, killing its five billion inhabitants, and the editor felt like there was no coming back from that.

At first, it seems to work, with Jean becoming much more docile as a result and resigning herself to operating the Danger Room while the X-Men train. However, when Xavier contacts them telepathically to warn them that Galactus is going to devour a planet under Shi'ar control, that seems to awaken Jean both spiritually and psychically - she regains her drive, and there are hints of her psychic power slowly returning.

The X-Men try to intervene, but they can't even get past Galactus's herald Terrax, let alone make it to Galactus himself.  When Terrax is about to kill Scott, Jean senses it, and the Phoenix power erupts from her once more.

Jean manages to fight off Galactus, denying his request for her to become his herald and destroying the machine that he uses to convert planets into energy, all without even the slightest hint of Dark Phoenix emerging.  As the issue nears the point where the back-up story would usually start, it looks like this story will have an uncharacteristically happy ending where things turn out better than in the main Marvel universe. My first thought was that it was intended to be a way for the writer to say that Jean could have survived and redeemed herself, and it would have been better than what we got.

However, the issue continues as Jean sneaks out of the mansion, traveling to the depths of space to absorb some small asteroids, graduating to a star surrounded by uninhabited planets.  Kitty catches her returning from one of these trips, and that's where things take a turn for the worse.

Upon being confronted by Kitty, Jean lashes out, vaporizing the girl as Dark Phoenix returns.  Xavier feels like he's forced to wipe Jean's mind entirely, rather than targeting her mutant powers like the Shi'ar did.  It fails, and Jean destroys his mind before turning her attention to the rest of the team.

Jean giving in to her dark side and killing her friends would be bad enough, but upon seeing Scott dead, her grief causes the Phoenix Force to erupt, consuming Earth in a massive fireball that spreads without any end in sight.

Out of these stories, I found the first one the most interesting, though that was likely due to me being more familiar with how the original events went.  Still, the last one might have been the most effectively written, for how it gave me hope that events would turn out better than the original canon only to snatch that hope away. While I get why they would want to show that what we got in the main Marvel universe, no matter how tragic, is better than the alternative, it would be nice if some endings were an improvement over what originally happened to mix things up. Still, the changes led the stories down some interesting paths, and the events that led up to the tragic endings had some unexpected twists and turns.