What If?
Okay, I have been reading old Marvel "What If?" comics.
When I was a kid, I read maybe 3 or 4 of them, and they were bad-ass. The Thing kept mutating until he almost died! Conan and Thor were buddies! (Hey, I was 13.) Plus there was a Dr. Strange-centered issue. So the few back-issues I found were enough to convince me that What If? was awesome. Each one is basically a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode. The story-telling's always hellishly compressed, and the leaps in logic are never questioned. There's some great What If stories like the one about Spider-Man having a daughter, which led to the Spider-Girl series.
Like so many other childhood events, such as eating a pint of ice cream without breaking a sweat, playing Pool of Radiance on a Tandy 1000, and listening to horrible eighties music, I am no longer able to enjoy What If? with a non-critical eye. The dialogue is awful. The art is eeeh. The hot chicks are early eighties hot chicks.
Also, the issues are steeped with the minutiae of the Marvel Universe, circa 1984. Seriously, What If:
When I was a kid, I read maybe 3 or 4 of them, and they were bad-ass. The Thing kept mutating until he almost died! Conan and Thor were buddies! (Hey, I was 13.) Plus there was a Dr. Strange-centered issue. So the few back-issues I found were enough to convince me that What If? was awesome. Each one is basically a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode. The story-telling's always hellishly compressed, and the leaps in logic are never questioned. There's some great What If stories like the one about Spider-Man having a daughter, which led to the Spider-Girl series.
Like so many other childhood events, such as eating a pint of ice cream without breaking a sweat, playing Pool of Radiance on a Tandy 1000, and listening to horrible eighties music, I am no longer able to enjoy What If? with a non-critical eye. The dialogue is awful. The art is eeeh. The hot chicks are early eighties hot chicks.
Also, the issues are steeped with the minutiae of the Marvel Universe, circa 1984. Seriously, What If:
- Nova had been four other people?
- The Avengers fought the Kree without Rick Jones?
- The Invaders had stayed together?
What If: Comics were so boring that I decided to look for better ways to spend my time?
Who the heck is Nova? I know the Kree are aliens, and they fought the Skrulls, who were shapeshifters that invaded Earth repeatedly, without me ever caring at all. I know Rick Jones was a regular guy with no powers who liked to hang out with the Hulk, and that he was boring. I know one of the Invaders has super-speed, and was named the Whizzer, proving, as always, that early comics are unintentionally hilarious.
However, nothing in these speak to me at all.
They were, however, better than ROM: Spaceknight, another Marvel stinker-roo I read recently.
posted by Todd D. at 10:20 PM
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