What if…

“Time. Space. Reality. It's more than a linear path. It's a prism of endless possibility. Where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities, creating alternate worlds from the ones you know. Each a reflection of what could have been. Some heroes will rise, others will fall. And nothing will be the same. I am the Watcher. I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and dare to face the unknown, and ponder the question... What if?”

Debuting in 1977, What If is a comic book anthology series, published by Marvel Comics, whose stories explore how the Marvel Universe might have unfolded if key moments in its history had not occurred as they did in the mainstream continuity. It’s a place of crazy ideas, filled with alternate versions of well-known characters, all on different paths from the ones we know, in stories that are just as apt to end badly for the heroes than not.

It’s totally my jam.

The connecting thread of this anthology is that all of these stories are narrated by a mysterious alien being known as… The Watcher.

The Watcher, whose name is Uatu, was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, and first appeared in Fantastic Four #13. The Watchers are one of the oldest, and most advanced races in the cosmos. Eons ago, they tried to share their knowledge in order to benefit the Universe’s “lesser” races, but their first attempt ended with the natives destroying themselves in a nuclear war. The Watchers blamed themselves for this, and vowed to never again meddle in the affairs of other races, and from then on, to only observe and record events for those who will come after the end of the universe.

Uatu is the Watcher who has been assigned to observe Earth and its Solar System. He looks like a giant baby doll with a huge melon head.

So, there’s certain stories that will always get my attention…

I love good heist movies and Seven Samurai-riffs, mostly because I love a good “getting the band back together” sequence. I love post-apocalyptic stories too, mostly because I love the look and feel of the rubble and ruin, and of overgrown places, not to mention the design/look of the ad-hoc forts and hiding places. I love Dystopian stories too, especially when they invoke the romance of the French Resistance. Similarly, I’m big into Space Smugglers too, because I love the feel of a Wild West Galaxy.

But maybe most of all, I love alternate universe stories.

I love when a character wakes up to find themselves in a strangely different world from the one they know, where key things, or maybe everything, is changed. Also, I’m a sucker for the redesigns of familiar characters and relationships. What strange mix of characters are on the team rooster now? Are enemies friends? Are friends enemies? Who’s wearing an eyepatch?

There’s a myriad of possibilities, and the stories of the What if anthology often use some or even all of these elements, so I’ve always loved this comic book, despite its often somewhat wild swings in quality between issues.

One of my all-time favorite comics is an issue of What if. Published in January of 1984, What if #44 has almost everything I like… It’s a dystopian, apocalyptic setting, with an underground resistance, there’s a stranger in a strange land, and a bunch of alternate versions of well-known characters... Written by Peter Gillis, with art by Sal Buscema, David Simons, and George Roussos, it tells the story of how a small change meant that Captain America was not found, frozen in the ice, in the 1960s by the Avengers, and because of this, he doesn’t return to the world until… today!

Which was 1984 at the time.

It blew my mind as a nine year old kid.

The story begins with an unknown everyday white man, incensed at the news of Nixon's visit to China, as he frees the Captain America and Bucky from the 1950s from their prison of suspended animation. A pair of bigot nutjobs whose natural cruelty and entitlement had been made all the worse by a bad batch of homemade super-soldier serum, their love of hate crimes eventually led to them being locked away in a secret government facility, but now this average white man has released them back onto the world… to set things Right!

Soon enough, the pair are embraced by White America as their saviors, and their support of the political campaigns of extremist white nationalists help to propel those candidates to victory. This leads to a number of bigoted, harmful laws being passed, and a major crackdown on communities of color across the country.

Things get worse.

But then, in the North Atlantic, a submarine crew recovers from the ocean the ice-encased body of the real Captain America, and Cap returns home to find an America in the grips of White Nationalist fascism.

With the help of the valiant newspaperman J. Jonah Jameson of the Daily Bugle, Captain America joins a resistance led by Nick Fury, Spider-Man, and Sam Wilson. The righteous rebels attack a White Nationalist Convention being held at Madison Square Garden where the Fascist Captain America and his allies will be speaking. A fight ensues, all on national television, inspiring uprisings across the nation.

After the battle, Captain America addresses the watching country, and as the audience, moved by his powerful words, begin to sing “America, the Beautiful,” it is implied that seeds of change have taken root, leading to a new future, a new direction for the country, a time of rebuilding, and a time of rejecting the evils of fascist white Christian nationalism…

What a lovely fiction.

Also of note… the Bucky of the 1950s was named Jack Monroe, and he was later given a chance at redemption when he became the grim and gritty, hair-metal-looking, bad-ass vigilante known as Nomad. When the original Bucky that we all know and love, but long believed to be dead, James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes, finally came back, but was still the brainwashed super-assassin known as The Winter Soldier, he killed Jack Monroe, because fuck that fascist bitch.

Anyway.

So, as I was saying… these alternate worlds of myriad possibilities, and strange versions of familiar and beloved characters have always appealed to me, so I was very excited to see the first season of animated What if show when it was released a year or so ago. This show is set in the continuity of the MCU—the films, not the comics—and features the voice-acting of many of the actors who play the characters in the movies, and it really delivered…

The episodes were funny, cool, and surprisingly dark at times for a cartoon, and most of all, they were fun. We had an alternate history where Peggy Carter was the one who got the super-soldier serum in WW2. We also saw an alternate history where T’Challa becomes the charming space pirate known as Star-Lord, and one where the original Avengers were killed before they could form. We saw a world where Doctor Strange broke bad, and a world consumed by a zombie apocalypse. We saw Killmonger take a different path, but end up in the same place, and we saw what might have taken place, had Thor been raised as an only child, another story of a different path that eventually led to the same place.

I loved it. Tons of fun.

And the story that made up the final two episodes—where first Ultron won, gaining the Infinity Stones, which then forced the Watcher to break his vow, and assemble a team of multiversal heroes to defend all of creation—also contained many of the story elements I love… getting the band together for a post-apocalyptic resistance against a dystopian regime, some strangers in a strange land, and all featuring some really great re-designs of familiar characters.

Plus, it was a great example of a classic Avengers story.

Big thumbs up.

Now, it’s time for Season 2, with a new episode premiering every day, from December 22nd to December 30th, and I am very excited.

I plan to talk about them here, as each one airs…

First up, we get Nebula as part of the Nova Corps on the planet Xander, in a Bladerunner-esque classic noir mystery tale involving murder and corruption. It’s a nice way to start, hitting all the rainy street and shadows noir notes it should, and also features Howard the Duck, so… good stuff.

Next, a young Peter Quill returns to Earth, with his father, Ego the Living Planet, following, and threatening to destroy the world if Peter doesn’t return to him, only to find a hastily-assembled 1980s version of the Avengers standing in his way, made up of Hank Pym’s Ant-Man, Bill Foster’s Goliath, Dr. Wendy Lawson’s Kree warrior Mar-Vell, King T’Chaka, Thor, and the Winter Soldier, all being run by Howard Stark and Peggy Carter, not to mention, a young Hope Van Dyne tagging along too. It’s a very kind of classic Amblin “kid saves the world” type of 80s adventure. Plus, I love it when a previously unseen team is put together.

Then, it’s a Yuletide good time, and a story that might actually take place in the regular continuity of the MCU. Set somewhere between the first and second Avengers movie, Happy Hogan, Maria Hill, and Darcy have to do a Die Hard when that groovy motherfucker Justin Hammer takes over Avengers Tower during Christmas. It’s a nice little palette cleanser for Christmas Eve, fun and funny.

For Christmas Day, we get a story that was originally supposed to be part of Season One, as we visit a world where the portal over New York City closed before Iron Man could fall back through, and he ends up on the junk planet of Sakaar, a place under the control of the frivolous and narcissistic evil of the Grandmaster. With Gamora after his head for Thanos, Tony, along with Valkyrie, Korg, and a tiny Chinchilla, are forced to participate in a Mario Kart-like Deathrace 2000, versus the Grandmaster, and all for control of the planet. The ending of this episode doesn’t quite fit with the ending of Gamorra and Tony’s story that we caught a glimpse of last season, but… what if that last bit was only the first part of a larger story, right?

Then, for episode five, we get a sequel to the Captain Carter story from the first season. Picking up where that episode left off, we follow Peggy and Natasha through an alternate version of the stories from Winter Soldier and the Black Widow movie, all while heavily implying, despite Steve being Peggy’s focus, that Peggy and Nat are on a collision course… of love. This story also raised a few questions as to what Steve must smell like now, wafting up from the edges of the suit’s neck-hole, if he truly hasn’t left the Hydra Stomper suit for decades...

Also of note, this episode has the first hint of the narrative string that will tie this whole season together somehow, as a unexpected hole in reality drops Peggy Carter into the past, into the time and place of an episode from this season that still has yet to air. What does this sudden new event portend?

I do not know…

Next, in a real “roll of the dice” moment, episode six departs from the show’s usual focus, and instead centers on a brand new character named Kahhori. Her story asks the question…

What if North America was never colonized?

Having reportedly worked with Mohawk advisors in the development of this character, in an episode where most of the dialogue is in the Mohawk language and features Mohawk culture, Kahhori is a young Mohawk woman whose people live next to a hidden lake where an Infinity Stone has fallen to Earth.

Anyone who enters this lake disappears, so it is forbidden to go there. But those who do, end up in a lush and serene land where everyone is imbued with a strange power, and never grows older. It’s a “fountain of youth,” so to speak. After Kahhori arrives in the lake’s little pocket universe, it soon becomes apparent that she is very strong with the Infinity Stone’s power, but where the others see the place as a paradise, Kahhori sees it as a prison. The reason that she fell in the Lake in the first place was that she was being chased by marauding Conquistadors, who were threatening her village. She needs to escape this little pocket universe if she wants to save her people. In the end, she convinces the others to return to the real world with her, and to help her repel the evil colonizers.

This episode is a risk, as new characters in the Marvel or DC Universes generally don’t have the best track record when it comes to becoming a marquee name. Most big name characters were created over sixty years ago, and that’s just not an easy club to break into. Most of the time, new characters make a big splash, but then they sink below the surface, never to be seen again. For every Wolverine, for every Kamala Khan or Miles Morales, for every Deadpool or Harley Quinn, you get a Gravity, an Aztec, a Triathlon, a Stacy X, or (shudder…) an Adam X the X-treme. The new 2020 version of the New Warriors were so bad, I don’t know if their promised first introduction was even published.

In my opinion, it seems like the main reasons new characters fail is that they’re too shallow, an obvious author insert, they’re gimmicks based on dumb trends that won’t last, or they’re just too powerful for being so new, nothing but a “Captain I Can Do Anything,” which is boring.

Kohhori’s origin is pretty basic, just a variation of the classic “oh shit, something spilled on me… oh shit, I can fly!” But this is good, because the less razzmatazz, the more her personality is showcased. She’s comes out a pretty good character, with a mission that could create a pretty interesting alternate world. So that’s good. But I think she might also be too powerful, or at least, her powers are too undefined at the moment, and that can make it difficult to create good villains to match her, which is really the key to giving your new hero some longevity.

Also, when your character is stuck in the past, or in some kind of side universe, that ultimately just means they can’t interact with the “real” main continuity characters in the kind of casual way that fuels the characters’ world. Casual cross-overs and team-ups are a big part of the draw of these characters, because they’re not just colleagues, they’re friends, or at least rivals. Without that community, without that drama, to help drive the character’s personality, who they are, and what they want, endearing them to the audience, in the end, no matter how cool a pocket universe and the character who dwells there might be, it will eventually run out of gas.

This is also why Peggy Carter is so prominently featured in this show too. She’s awesome, but she has nowhere else to go, because she’s trapped outside the main continuity. The only way to use her with the rest of the big name characters, outside of some big Multiversal Cross-over, is to “portal” her over to the main universe again and again, and then send her home when it’s all over, again and again. That’s not just boring, it quickly begins to feel perfunctory. What’s the point of a “separate” universe if it’s barely separate at all?

Unless you’re going to launch multiple titles, featuring multiple alternate characters, then a side universe with only one title is nothing but a big box, and twenty-two pages a month only has so much room to spare to develop characters and relationships with the same depth that the main continuity so easily provides. Eventually, it will run out of gas. Marvel tried to pull this off specifically with Peggy Carter already too, a single title in a pocket universe. It ran for half dozen or so issues before being cancelled, and it wasn’t because it was a bad book either… it was because it ran out of gas.

There’s a reason why Marvel is finally moving Spider-Gwen—now known as the Ghost Spider, a character mostly known to the wider world for the Spiderverse films—from her little one title pocket universe, over into the main continuity… it’s because her title was slowly dying all by itself, and she’s just too cool a character to let fall into limbo, possibly never to be seen again, once her title is cancelled.

So, we’ll see what happens, both with Captain Carter and with Kahhori. Fingers crossed they get more exposure other than this. I’m interested in seeing more of both characters. It’d definitely be fun to see a smart and well-written alternate world where the Americas develop free of colonization, and also as a global superpower backed by an Infinity Stone, but we’ll see if Kahhori actually makes the leap from What if Season 2 to some other medium. She’s voiced by Devery Jacobs from Reservation Dogs, and Amber Midthunder was doing some social media posts to indicate her interest in the character too, so who knows, maybe it will happen.

In the meantime, Kahhori is seemingly central to the overarching narrative of this season, as the episode ends with first, the very well-deserved humiliation of Queen Isabella of Spain, but then the Dr Strange from the 1st season—the Guardian of the Multiverse who broke bad—shows up, hinting at a much larger role in store for her. But what is that role?

Beats me, but with only three episodes left, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough…

With Hela being voiced by Cate Blanchett, the seventh episode is titled “What if… Hela found the Ten Rings?” It’s a decent standalone episode featuring a variation of the story from the first Thor movie, one that does involve Hela meeting the Mandarin from Shang Chi, who is armed with his signature Ten Rings, but a more accurate title probably would have been “What if… the Goddess of Death learned mercy?”

I feel like this episode failed to nail the motivations of the heroes. It was hard to tell when they had that moment where they turned from the idea of ruling for the sake of power, to ruling for the sake of altruistic reasons. Maybe it’s just me, but I never got the feeling that the stated desire of two known villains to “protect” the Earth meant anything other than them being in charge and everyone else had better like or else… but then all the sudden, they’re benevolent?

Didn’t work for me.

Also, I think the Mandarin is our first Phase 4 character, and I gotta say, of all the characters that could’ve been picked, this is who was chosen? It’s not a bad episode, but it’s very much a standalone placeholder, which is fine, after all, it is an anthology, but I kind of wish they had done something a little more interesting with some of the more interesting Phase 4 characters.

This season’s penultimate episode is called: “What If…. the Avengers Assembled in 1602?” Very loosely based on the limited series 1602 written by Neil Gaiman, penciled by Andy Kubert, digitally painted by Richard Isanov, and set in the Elizabethan era, in the year 1602. It’s a story where superheroes have appeared around 400 years too early, due to someone from the future accidentally ending up in the past, and as a result, creating a cascade of events that will eventually destroy the world, unless the heroes can set things right. Personally, it’s not one of my favorite sources for an episode to be drawn from, but there’s no denying that it’s popular with a lot of people.

This episode is also the continuation of the Captain Carter story from Episode Five. It’s got some good roughhousing fun, and she saves the day in the end, because she’s amazing, but while it’s an all-in-all pretty decent and by-the-numbers What if episode, it’s more akin to an episode of Star Trek where the crew gets trapped in the holodeck than anything else, which really isn’t my thing.

What if… We went to the Renn Faire?

Worst of all, it felt like too much of a mish-mash.

Granted, it’s only half an hour-ish, so it’s not like there’s a lot of time for some deep-dive world-building, but still, there’s too much of a gimmicky kitchen sink feel for this one. A lot of known elements are stuffed into random places here, and they’re not bad, or even incongruent, but it doesn’t feel organic, like this is world that grew into this, it more feels more like what it probably was… They had a list of available characters they were allowed to use. Because of this limitation, it all feels very random, like the roles were assigned similarly to tossing scrabble pieces onto the board, and then spelling out words depending on what lands where. Plus, as I already noted, when it comes to “new” characters, we’ve only had the Mandarin from Shang Chi, and that’s it, right?

That’s a little… odd.

Spider-man and Daredevil both had very central roles in the 1602 comic book, and both of them have appeared in the MCU, so while I definitely understand why they changed Steve Roger’s roll for this adaptation, because that’s a hard one to make seem acceptable, either one of those two would’ve made more sense as the thief… the thief that seemed pretty superfluous when it was all said and done. Also, why is Thor, Loki, and Hela even there? Are they still Gods? How did they become English royalty? Is it just because they have posh accents? This episode kinda feels like the writers read the summary for 1602, and also know about Robin Hood, and have watched some of Game of Thrones, because there’s a lot of seemingly random and half-baked cliches here that don’t serve a lot of purpose in the plot.

Anyway, those kinds of adaptation questions aside… what I’m really wondering at this point is, where’s like… She-Hulk? It would’ve been cool to see her show up. Or maybe the Falcon? Or Ms. Marvel? And not just in this episode, but any of them. Why not an episode with an early version of Moon Knight? What about something with Yelena Belova and Kate Bishop? Those two were a delight together.

There’s seriously nothing they could’ve spun out of The Eternals?

What about Isiah Bradley, the only survivor of the Super Soldier Serum trials that the government was conducting on black men, y’know, the first Captain America? In the Falcon and the Winter Soldier show, there’s a mention of him and the Winter Soldier fighting in Korea in the 1950s, you couldn’t do something with that? Or why not set up something with Eli Bradley, his grandson, who becomes the hero Patriot?

While I do enjoy this show, it’s definitely leaning too heavily into the original characters still. Especially if one of the goals here is getting the Normal People out there to love the new characters, who will be driving Phases 4 through 6 of the MCU films and shows, in the same way they love the original MCU characters from Phases 1 through 3. I gotta think that has to be a priority, right? And what better place to stretch those still new characters’ legs a bit than in a cartoon?

Not that I don’t love Iron Man and Captain America or anything, but c’mon, give me another Werewolf by Night and Man-Thing team-up maybe, right?

Oh well, spilled milk.

But… this episode does end with Dr. Strange showing up, the same Dr. Strange who showed up in the end of Kahhori’s episode, the same Dr. Strange who once broke bad, but worked with Captain Carter to protect the Multiverse last season, and he seems to be working on something that I assume is currently hidden from the Watcher’s nearly omniscient gaze, albeit… not for long, I imagine.

Finally, the central idea of this episode’s plot, that two timelines are stuck together and that entanglement is going to result in the destruction of those timelines… is this the first seed of the Multiversal Calamity that will lead to the big Secret Wars films—otherwise known as Avengers 5 and 6—the ones that were supposed to center around Kang (as mentioned in my Ant-Man 3 review) but may now end up revolving around Dr. Doom, at least, if the post-Jonathan Majors being fired rumors are true?

We shall see…

The final episode of the 2nd Season: “What If... Strange Supreme Intervened?” does its best to wrap everything up with a general plot of “Hey, remember that Dr. Strange that broke bad? Well, guess what, that’s still an issue.”

Turns out… ever since the events of last season, this version of Dr. Strange has been busy building a Multiversal prison in order to house variants from different universes who are powerful enough to be considered Universe Killers. The walls are lined with crystal baubles that house endless variations of infamous names like Thanos, Surtur, Hela and Fenris, the Mandarin, the Zombie Scarlet Witch, and Infinity Killmonger, there’s multiple versions of Loki, even an angry Thor, a weirdly neon-green Asgardian Hulk, and an overly-cyborged Rocket Raccoon, on and on. The problem is that one of these prisoners has escaped, so Strange asks Peggy to find them and bring them back.

Sent to a world where both Peggy and Steve Rogers were killed before either of them could get the Super Soldier Serum, and the Red Skull then led the Nazis to victory in WW2, which eventually destroyed the whole world, Peggy finds herself standing in a decimated South Dakota, facing Kahhori.

Of course, a Red Skull Mount Rushmore isn’t all that wildly different from our own Mount Rushmore, which was a desecration of the Lakota site called Tunkasila Sakpe Paha, or Six Grandfathers Mountain, carved by White Nationalist bigot and sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, a well-know member of that age-old institution of White America, the Ku Klux Klan, a group who funded his previous project, the gaudy Confederate eyesore known as Stone Mountain.

So, turns out… Strange’s prison is not just meant to house super-powerful bad guys, it’s for super-powerful good guys too, because Strange is feeding them into a massive machine called a Dimensional Forge, because he’s hoping to harness their energy and then use it to recreate his home universe, and with it… the one true love that he lost. Strange thought Peggy would understand, given how events beyond their control have kept her and Steve apart too, but Peggy is a righteous motherfucker, so even if she can understand his motivation, she can’t let him kill these people, even to save others, so… she intervenes. After that, it’s a big fight, until at last, she throws down her enemy, and smote his ruin upon the mountainside…

All in all, the episode is a lot of multiversal fun, filled with a bunch of callbacks and deep cuts. Maybe too many, sure, it is a bit messy, with a lot of flash and bang, but it’s a cartoon and the final episode, so… what’re ya’ gonna do?

I like how Kahhori’s powers are more clearly defined here. She seems to mostly be a speedster, one who can project energy blasts, and is on the same power level of Scarlet Witch, and I assume Captain Marvel too. That’s cool, and makes sense, given how the origin of their powers are all rooted in Infinity Stones. Marvel could use a new speed-based character too, other than Quicksilver, who’s now dead in the MCU, and I guess Makkari too, since Marvel seems to be avoiding ever mentioning the Eternals, which is bullshit…

Anyway, everything works out, and ends with a brief glimpse of Yggdrasil too, its branches hung with its endless possibilities.

These were really great.

I’ve enjoyed both seasons, and I’m looking forward to season three. The fun, coupled with the great animation, and the stellar voice acting that often features the stars from the films, makes it an all-around good time. I mean, it is a cartoon about superheroes, so it’s not like we’re plumbing any deep depths of truth about the human condition or anything, but still… these are great fun.

If you like Big Two comics, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t like these.

Until next time…