Back in the 1970s, Marvel comics started publishing a fun little series called What If; a series
that explored hypothetical questions surrounding events and characters in the main continuity,
but often, going off the rails, or journeying into territory that would be far from realistic
in reality.
Sometimes these What Ifs throw all logic to the wind and opt out to be completely absurd,
hilarious, and even ever so slightly self reflexive.
Meaning, often, their concepts were down right crazy.
So today, we’re taking a look at a handful of these glorious stories that appeared in
the series with our list of the top 10 craziest marvel what ifs.
Let’s jump in!
10 Thanos Joined the Avengers Let’s start our list off with something
a little topical!
While what ifs are going through the minds of millions excited to see the upcoming Avengers
End Game film, we’re fairly certain this what if hasn’t translated into a fan theory
about how that drama will play out.
Enter What if Thanos Joined the Avengers.
Lolz.
It’d solve a lot of problems in the MCU now, wouldn’t it?
Or create a bunch.
Anywho, this storyline comes from one of the more recent What If issues out there – What
if infinity – which explores a bunch of Infinity event related topics.
Thanos dons a Captain America uniform, and during the Infinity story line, he joins Earth’s
forces against the Builders rather than using that conflict to take advantage and go after
the planet for himself.
But that doesn’t mean there’s a happy ending – Thanos ends up helping the Avengers
defeat the Builders much quicker, and still ends up domineering in classic Thanos behaviour.
9 World War 2 In Space For starters, the concept of World War two
happening in outer space is flat out ridiculous.
Here we have Nick Fury and the Howling Cammandos going around smoking cigars (in their space
suits, of course) in full 1970s sci fi glory.
To be fair, this issue dropped shortly after the release of the first Star Wars film, so
you can kinda see why Marvel would jump on that bandwagon.
So what was the logic on this Earth?
It took place in a reality where Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine designs went into
production and therefore accelerated Earth’s technological advancement, leading World War
2 to be fought in space.
Fury and his crew fight evil space lizards and Terran traitors on a space station.
It’s a standalone issue, of course.
8 The Blob’s Demise The Blob aka Frederick J Fred Dukes first
appeared on the pages of The X-Men issue 3 back in 1964, created by dream team duo Stan
Lee and Jack Kirby.
The concept behind him is simple – he’s huge, and has mutant powers that give him
superhuman strength, endurance, durability, resilience, and near impenetrable skin.
He also has his own personal gravity field.
How fancy.
Anywho, in 1993, in What if the Hulk Killed Wolverine, this story featured the grey hulk
going on a rampage and murdering wolverine, which ultimately led to him being challenged
by the other x-Men.
He slaughters a bunch of them, and then, comes across none other than the Blob.
While fighting Pyro, who shoots flames at Hulk, hulk GRABS the blob, using him as a
human shield to defend himself from the fire.
Naturally, this burns the Blob alive, and results in Hulk tossing Blob’s corpse onto
Pyro.
Not so immovable now, are you Blob?
Dark.
7 The Monstrous Four This little story came to us in the 1990 issue
What if the Fantastic Four all had the same power.
We get to see the Fantastic Four in a slew of different iterations, one being in which
they all became horribly deformed monsters, with Ben just still being the regular version
of the Thing.
Kind of insulting, eh?
Reed becomes a purple version of the Hulk, Jonny becomes the original gross mushy version
of the Thing, and Sue – well, her transformation is the worst – she turns into the Man Thing.
Or I guess, invisible woman thing.
She can’t speak.
She just gestures and cries and everyone freaks out about it and Reed makes the call that
they’re all too hideous to ever leave monster Isle.
On a less depressing note-
6 Hall Monitor Frank Castle Appearing in What If Vol 2 issue 34 from 1992,
this story is as comical as you think – Frank Castle is a hall monitor at a school of super
powered human beings.
As you can imagine, mercy to his fellow students ain’t something he gives out willingly.
It’s also been criticized for not being the most well written what if on the block.
Perhaps the best take away from this storyline is how many panels are absolutely wonderful
when taken out of context.
Like this one of Frank Castle shouting HALL PASS???
While firing off a little hand canon.
Yup.
Maybe not the most sensitive in this current social landscape, now is it?
On a less depressing note, this story takes place on Earth 89110, which is the same earth
in which The Hulk also became a high school hall monitor.
Not sure if I’d want to go to school on that Earth, that’s for sure.
5 What if Doctor Doom was a Pediatrician?
Need I say more?
This story also appeared in the same issue as Frank Castle Hall Monitor, but is a wee
bit more absurd.
Doom would treat his child patients with torture devices.
Moving on.
4 Dazzler as Galactus’ Hearld Oh Dazzler.
While girl is getting her own animated series on Disney’s streaming service and will surely
become a beloved character because of it – hopefully- back in the day, the character was often seen
as quite the joke.
Created back in 1978 as a cross promotion with Marvel and Casablanca Records, she was
a singing superhero who could convert sound light into beams of various forms and intensity.
She was also a highly accomplished roller skater, so you know, easy to make fun of.
Ouch.
Anywho, Marvel kinda rolled with that and put together this hilarious little What If,
in which our girl Dazzler took Silver surfer’s place, only to realize shes not really up
for the gig since she has one hell of a time coming to terms with the fact that she needs
to find planets that Galactus can consume.
She also develops a big ol romantic crush on the fella which, as you can imagine, doesn’t
really pan out all too great, making many readers feel that this particular story was
a bit groan worthy.
3 A Thousand Hulks I duno about you guys, but the idea of a thousand
hulks running around on Earth is not something I’d ever want to see, in real life or in
the panels.
That would be utterly terrifying.
Such was the case in this story – What if the gamma bomb spawned a thousand hulks?
The title of this issue is slightly misleading – the hulks don’t spawn from the gamma
bomb, but rather are birthed from the radiation from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
at the end of World War 2.
This event spawns a ton of hulks that Bruce Banner then studies, and these Japanese Hulks
end up taking over the US for 40 years.
Nick Fury eventually rallies all of the other heroes to fight back, and the end is left
super ambigious, never actually revealing the outcome of this conflict.
2 YOU ARE SPIDER MAN Nothing like a little bit of meta fourth wall
breaking to spice up a story, amiright Deadpool fans?
Well, in this case, not so much.
Compared to other comical What If issues, this one actively makes fun of the reader,
and even has a page in which the comic tries to encourage you to paste your own picture
of your face over top of Spider-Man’s.
And the outcome?
Well, the cover gives it away – all of Spidey’s enemies stand over your grave laughing at
you.
Being a hero is hard work you guys.
1 Gender Swap While this one may be one of the smaller stories
to ever appear in a What If comic – it’s literally just a panel – it’s perhaps
one of the funniest What Ifs that Marvel has ever published.
Why?
Well, back in the day, Stan Lee had a wee bit of a grudge over the fact that in 1976
DC came out with a character named Power Girl.
In 1978 he said, I quote, I’m pretty annoyed about that…
I’ve got to ask the Marvel lawyer – she’s supposed to be starting a lawsuit about that
and I haven’t heard anything, I don’t like the idea.
You know year ago we brought out Wonder Man and DC Comics sued us because they had Wonder
Woman and I said okay, Ill discontinue Wonder Man.
And all of a sudden they’ve got Power Girl.
Oh boy, how unfair.
Back to the panel now – it reads What if Wonder Man were a woman and Power Man were
a girl?
This along with a fun little caption that read Dear Marvel: Our Lawyers advise you not
to print this gag.
With love, your Distinguished Competition.
Distinguished Competition aka DC aka DC COMICS.
See what they did there?
Yep.
Alright there we have it!
What other What If issues do you think were absolutely absurd?
What’s your favourites?
Give us a shout in those comments below and fill us in on your thoughts!
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