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The Road Not Travelled: Let's Read Marvels WHAT IF...
- Thread starter Octopus Prime
- Start date
We’ve got a Chris Claremont story and that means we’ve got a lot of Chris Claremont stuff, as Chris Claremont (and also George Caragonne and Rod Ramos) ask us What if The Phoenix Had Lived.
Actually, looking t the credits box, George is credited with the plot and script, so maybe Chris was just there because it uses phrases like “As inevitable as death” and “Mind, body AND SOUL” constantly.
Anyhoo, this here is another two parter and its, again, riffing pretty heavily on one of the better Volume 1 stories (albeit adjusted to fit the retcons about Phoenixs nature) and it’s also… easily in the running for the darkest What If stories.
Anyhow, as Canon would have it, one day Jean Grey was having a hard time piloting a space shuttle through a solar flare and the strain she put on her psychic abilities trying to keep the ship intact caught the attention of the godlike Phoenix Force, which gave her a big honkin’ power boost; which was great in the short term since, empowered as Phoenix, Jean was able to save the universe by repairing the cracked M’Kraan Crystal and bad Long Term, as Jean was eventually mind-whacked by the illusionist Master Mind who tried to convince her to give Evil Hedonism a try leading to the creation of the planet destroying Dark Phoenix. Then Jean elected to commit suicide rather than risk losing control as the Dark Phoenix.
Then it was later revealed that Phoenix was actually a God posing as a human rather than a human wielding the power of a God, so Jean was technically in the clear for those genocides as she was unconscious in the bottom of a river, healing from massive solar radiation damage.
Anyhow, What if The Guys Who Wanted to Kill the Dark Phoenix Were Better At Their Job?
Good news is that they’re not really overachieving in that category; they just knock Phoenix out rather than killing her. This is partly because of a courtesy to the X-Men who helped save the Shi’ar from their insane former emperor D’Ken and partly because when Phoenix repaired the M’Kraan Crystal she poured part of her own life force into it and the Shi’ar were worried that killing her would undo those repairs and imperil the Universe all over again. So instead of an execution, they elect to surgically remove Jeans X-Gene and access to her telepathy (and with it; her access to The Phoenix Force)
And from a Super Hero Comic Book Standard, this doesn't result in much of a change to the status quo; in the 616 Scott mourned Jeans death then hecked off to Alaska where he met his fiance/wife Madalyn Pryor; a woman who had no super powers and was otherwise exactly like Jean in all ways (grossly simplifying things in a way beyond the scope of this story). In this story, however, things go down a very different path; for one thing Scott moves to Arizona instead where he’s happily married to a depowered Jean.
Well, he’s happy, Jean is… excessively not, judging from the vast number of cigarettes all around her and the sleeping pills she’s strongly implied to be trying to kill herself with. Seems that when the Shi’ar de powered her, they weren’t just giving her a slap on the wrist for her genocide, they also made sure she *firmly* remembered that she killed billions of innocent people and resquiggled her brains so that every time she falls asleep she relives all her atrocities commited as Dark Phoenix.
Luckily, Cyclops doesn’t have long to worry about the dangerous mental spiral Jean is on, since, like, two seconds after realizing that Jean has a lot of sleeping pills for someone who hates going to sleep and her lack of telepathy means she lost her primary means to interacting with the world, Magneto appears, blows up most of their house and says “Good news; this is one of those times when I’m also an absurdly talented engineer;I can give you your powers back!” And yoinks her off to a rebuilt Asteroid M.
Jean, to her credit, isn’t actually swayed by Magnetos offering of restoring his powers. Timeline is pretty fuzzy, admittedly, but this one of those periods when Magneto is pretty much pure evil as opposed to a guy who has a pretty justifiable distrust of humanity or a monster seeking atonement, and Jean figures that he probably has ulterior motives for trying to restore her to a state of Godhood.
Also the rest of the X-Men reach Asteroid M and a big fight breaks out while Jean has a pretty fierce internal debate about whether it’s worth restoring her mind and body at the risk of reawakening Dark Phoenix. Eventually she decides not to and destroys the machine Magneto built to restore her. However, much more significantly, her powers started coming back WITHOUT so much as touching the machine since, again, this version of Jean is quite literally a God Incarnate, not a person, even if she isn’t aware of that fact, and even Shi’ar science can’t put that particular cork back on the bottle.
Regardless, intentionally rejecting her power winds up being pretty good therapy for Jean who gets over that suicidal ideation pretty much completely and happily settles into the No Powers, Helpful Support Staff for the Xavier Institute; eventually taking over as Headmistress and the leader of the New Mutants, and gives birth to a l’il scamp that is Rachel Summers.
Riiiiiiiiight up to the point where the Secret Wars happens, (Jim Shooter, ruining everything again); and while in the 616 there was a kind of time-blip thing going on so the whole Secret War happened over the course of, like, an afternoon for everyone not involved in the fighting, in this universe it took place over the course of several weeks. Reasonably sure that’s me just no-prizing a minor plothole, however.
Anyway, while all the X-Men and New Mutants are off on Battleworld Jean is left home alone with her baby which wouldn’t be too big of an issue since most of the people who hate those teams were sent there as well. All except one; Jason Wyngarde, Mastermind; the very guy who trying to psychically manipulate Jean into being Dark Phoenix, and got his brain shredded in retaliation when the full scale of what a bad idea that was came to light.
Seems ol’ Jimmy Win never properly recovered from having his consciousness expanded beyond the limits of the universe and he’s been holding a grudge against Jean ever since. And, because that’s not quite bad *enough* it seems that being given entirely too open of a mind means that he is *much* more creative with his ability to create mind-breaking illusions which he’s happy to torture Jean with; convincing her she’s gone to hell where she’s being slashed apart by demons, burned to a crisp and eaten alive by bugs, while being forced to watch her friends and family subjected to the same punishments; up to and including seeing her infant daughter getting impaled by rusty spikes.
No discretion shots either; that’s all fully on panel.
Then we get ourselves ANOTHER little twist after Jean points out that Mastermind still has limits to his power and this is a bit beyond them and he admits that yeah, that’s well beyond Jason Wyngardes power but that’s not who’s got their hands on the steering wheel right now; it seems that Dark Phoenix blowing Masterminds soul apart left a spot perfect for the malevolent psychic demon The Shadow King to claim squatters rights and take over his body so he could have a corporeal form again.
And because this ain’t The Shadow Kings first rodeo when dealing with psychic mutants, he decides to be prudent and just shoots Jean stone dead with a normal ass gun rather than try to duel her for supremacy on the Astral Plane like he usually does. He also steals Rachel with the intent to groom her into being a perfect host body for him, and then leaves because… well… nothing else to do here.
But, again, this isn’t Jean Grey; this is a Capital G God made of meat and bone (or Fire and Life Incarnate, as the book reminds us a whole bunch of times) and after Shadow King leaves, all that Fire and Life leaves her husk and rebuilds itself a new body with a confused jumble of thoughts of both Jeans life as a human and the Phoenixs existence as a cosmic entity of raw flame and power and, thinking Jean would probably try to usurp it if the truth ever came out, vaporizes Jeans still comatose real body before leaving on a quest to get revenge on the Shadow King.
And Uatu says “Oh crap; it’s a god committing first degree murders now. That’s… maybe worse than second degree planet-killing?”
TO BE CONTINUED…
BUT DID IT HAPPEN?!?
Withholding full judgements until the stories done, but near the end of the issue when Jean and the spirit of the Phoenix and commune with one another in a strange astral plane it seems very much to be the White Hot Room that I think Grant Morrison introduced in their run of X-Men, like 15 years later.
Also in one panel, The Shadow King looks a hell of a lot like a Critter, from Critters.
We’ve got days of the futures which have past, presented when George Carragonne and Rod Ramos tell us What If The Phoenix Rose Again
The cover has a slight hint of the direction this story is going.
Anyway, after a two page recap of important context (mostly summing up the previous issue, partly summing up Phoenixs origin); we’re off to the races… and wrapping up the cliffhanger ending from the previous issue in record time.
Phoenix, having some real identity issues in being unsure if she’s a firebird goddess incarnate or a woman who tapped into cosmic power, tracks down the Shadow King to Muir Island where he’s used the islands Mutant research technology to turn the infant Rachel into an adult so he can possess her.
And Jean says “Oh… nah” and incinerates the Shadow Kings astral body and rearranges Rachel’s molecules until she’s a baby instead of an adult. This is all over in, like, two pages.
Jean says “Okay, little slip up there but I gotta make sure to not use my vast cosmic energy anymore.”
And so she does for what the caption box tells us is 8 years (Rachel still seems to be a toddler, however, but everyone is wearing their Jim Lee era costumes, so… make of the timeline as you would) when we get another plot line popping up that was briefly inferred in the previous issue, but you’d be forgiven for missing it.
Seems that anti mutant sentiment had been percolating in the background, as it does every few years, and the new President, who rode in on a platform of racism thanks to the assassination of Senator Kelly, has decided that Mutant Registration is definitely a law he should sign into legislation.
Jean pays attention to the news and says “Well… can’t have that” and zips off to the White House and brain-blasts him to remove all the racism from his perosnality.
This immediately gets him assassinated by his constituents; gun-toting mutant hating militia, and replaced by the unnamed Vice President; a guy who hates Mutants even more and immediately puts the Sentinel Program into full effect, and the new incarnation of Master Mold immediately takes over the country since… we’re doing Days of Future Past now and you’re going to get a bit of Terminator in the stew when you’re cooking with that spice.
Furthermore, based on hearing Rachel saying she had a bad dream that her mother turned into a fire bird, Wolverine decides Jean must have gone Phoenix again and tries to nip that in the bud by stabbing her a bunch as soon as she walks in the door.
He's correct but a *wild* leap based on the available evidence and kind of uncharacteristic way for him to treat her.
Luckily “several knives” are pretty far under the water mark of things Phoenix has to worry about being threatened by, so NBD, but she does elect to leave the X-Men because being repeatedly stabbed by Wolverine ruins the team dynamic a bit.
And, like, a minute after she leaves, the Mansion is attacked and destroyed by an army of Sentinels.
Seriously, they practically pass each other by; it’s not clear if this was a deliberate move from Jean or not.
Anyway, DoFP largely proceeds from here, but on an accelerated timetable. Half the X-Men died in the initial attack, most of the less impressive Mutant population shortly thereafter, and most of the super powered community along with them, and Master Mold and the Sentinels rule over the country, Skynet style.
Then Jean decides she’s done sulking over being stabbed a couple of times by the also-ran in her love triangle and opts to rejoin the X-Men, now hiding in an abandoned Sentinel factory along with whatever other survivors they could scrounge up, and, after quickly assuring them that, yes, she’s wearing red and gold instead of green and gold but she’s regular Phoenix, not Dark Phoenix, she’s welcomed back on the team.
And with several big guns, in the form of Jean and Magneto who was apparently sitting things out for the past decade, restored to them, the X-Men launch a plan to destroy Master Mold and cripple the Sentinel army; which also leads to the deaths of most of the remaining X-Men, but Phoenix lives after single handedly destroying the entire legion of robots and Kitty flings herself into Master Molds head and telefrags his brain, which is *pretty boss*. So the world is saved.
Then Destiny, who inexplicably survived all of this despite pushing 100 years old, tells Phoenix “Well… thanks for stopping all this stuff I really should have seen coming. But there are *zero* potential futures where you stay on Earth and don’t wind up incinerating the planet. And that’s the best case scenario.” And Jean says “Yeah, I thought as much” and leaves the planet to go off to… wherever Gods go when they’re off the clock.
Omnipotence City I guess?
BUT DID IT HAPPEN?!?
Provisionally, at least. As stated, this is largely a retelling of DoFP (albeit with a comparatively happier ending), and this whole two part story was somewhat revisited in the recent Jean Grey miniseries where Jean tries to figure out if any of the instances of her accepting or rejecting the Phoenix Force over the years would improve things, and many of the stories in that series had echoes in this.
NEXT TIME: It’s another silly jokes issue, which are hard to recap so… *something else*, I guess.
Well we’ve had a few two parters, so why not go for the gusto and see how the What If format works for a five part story arc, though I think the only connection is the framing device as we see in Time Quake: What If The Fantastic Five Invaded the Negative Zone?
The credits list David Cullen, Jean-Marc Lofficier and Roy Thomas as writers, but as of late, I've come to discover that Roy might have been following Stan Lee in terms of taking credit for other peoples work and it really doesn't feel very Roy Thomas-y so I suspect this might have been one of those times. David also handled the pencils.
First, as always, a brief recap to provide the necessary context, courtesy of Uatu. But this time it’s… not about setting up this story, and it’s not brief. Uatus complaining that his job of “watching Space TV” and “Nothing Else” is harder than it looks because there’s infinite parallel realities and each of them spawns an infinite number of other parallel realities and so on, so he has a lot of channels to watch even if he only has to pay attention to a few of them, sometimes. But, making his job easier (albeit in an oppressive, genocide-y way) are the Time Keepers, masters of the Time Variance Authority, and their
Recently Immortus had turned into a statue after trying to circumvent the process by marrying the Scarlet Witch who was one of the most significant Nexus Points of all, which doesn’t seem relevant to this story but they kept bringing it up so I’m assuming it’s important.
Anyway, while Uatu is busy reciting several Wikipedia articles worth of Marvel Time Travel Rules, the Time Keepers look up and say “you know we can see you, right?” and invite Uatu over to watch what they’re up to.
If Uatu is surprised to be directly involved with one of the stories he doesn’t show it, and figures “okay, as long as I don’t have to interfere”, but he sure does talk a lot during the movie, which is pretty disruptive if you ask me.
Anyway, the Time Keepers are sore over Immortus’ whole… being turned to stone and cast into limbo thing because that means they have to get involved with editing history to ensure their own ascension directly. And they’re also not great at it, and have the Watchers same “Watch But Not Interfere (in a way anyone notices) dealy, and that translates to them watching a reality they hoped to eliminate and trying to figure out the least they could to to ensure its destruction.
And with all that set up, time for the story on the cover of the comic! Which requires even more set up and context, since this is a continuation of the Fantastic Five stories previously covered in What If! You know; the ones where Reed offers Spider-Man a paycheque in exchange for some extra help superheroing; eventually driving Sue from the team and into Namors hands, who turned her into a fish man’s wife, which drove Reed insane with jealousy and caused him to build a Fishman killing genetic weapon, then repent for trying to commit Genocide and that caused Johnny to vow revenge on Reed and Namor alike.
See Uatu; that took one paragraph made up of a couple of run-on sentences, not 8 pages!
Anyway, apparently Johnny calmed down (give him five minutes and he forgets what he’s doing) and Sue eventually left Namor (her emotionally available hunky fishman hisband) in favor of Reed (who is none of those things and is also a war criminal in this continuity) and they had a kid, but, owing to… a *lot* of genetic weirdness and Cosmic Rays involved in the kids conception, both Sue and l’il baby Franklin are both dying, and the cure lies in the heart of the Negative Zone.
Long time readers may recognize this as the exact same setup as one of the FF Annuals (I want to say #6?) except Spider-Man is around. And it, indeed, is pretty much exactly the same story. In fact, it goes smoother as Spider-Man gets separated from the group and meets Annihilus (THE LIVING DEATH WHO WALKS!) and yoinks the Cosmic Control Rod off his neck when he realizes it’s a weapon of unfathomable power and not just a cool thing on Annihilus’ armor.
He then meets up with the rest of the FF, struggling with the traps and monsters in Annihilus’ fortress (there’s some fun banter) and Reed says “Oh dip, that’s exactly what we were looking for, thanks Spider-Man” and they head back to the Positive Zone, to use the Control Rod to save Sue and Franklin before they can die.
At this point, back in the framing device, the Time Keepers say “damn, doing nothing didn’t help at all!” and decide to escalate the situation by appearing before Dr. Doom and informing him that Reed Richards just got a source of cosmic energy that can bestow unlimited power and immortality.
That gets the ball rolling.
So Doom appears right the frick out of nowhere in the Negative Zone and yoinks the Cosmic Rod back from Reed in order to strand the FF in the Negative Zone then go back to Earth enjoying vast cosmic power and semi-immortality… only to then get blindsided by Annihilus as he wasn’t aware there was also a psychopathic bug man in play, and the two of them, along with the FF start playing hot potato with the Rod which is, of course, when a *fourth* party makes themselves known in the form of a huge, ghostly figure that calls itself The Whisperer appears before Doom, stops time and offers some pretty important information about what's happening.
Specifically that Doom was tricked into intervening courtesy of the Time Keepers and nobody but NOBODY manipulates Doom and also that Reed needs the Rod to save his wifes life and, whatever else Doom might think of him, Reed is a super genius and Sue is basically the only thing that keeps his head on straight (see, for example, the previous Fantastic Five story where knowing that Sue was happily married to another man made him give the go-ahead on MER-MANSLAUGHTER) and if Reed lost his wife and unborn child like this, he'd probably estroy the planet in his grief.
And Doom agrees that, yes, a simpering dolt like Reed who is careless and full of grief and rage is... probably not a great combination and he elects to give the rod to Reed to spare the world this fate; thereby proving what Doom knew all along; he's the single greatest hero the world had ever known and nobody appreciated him for it; just as he and Annihilus fling themselves into the destructive rift that everything in the Negative Zone is slowly drifting towards.
So Reed gets the Rod, hightails it back to the hospital and saves Sue and Franklins life, and at the end of time Uatu says "See? Watching And Not Interfering Is harder than it looks, ain't it?" and the Time Keepers say "Well, okay, that was one reality we failed to annihilate, but we still got four more", leading us to PART 2!
And also, as spotted by Uatu, but missed by the Keepers (always bet on the king when it comes to Watching, baby) the Whisperer reappeared just before Doom fell into the all destroying void and yanked him away to safety for reasons AS YET UNKNOWN!
Then we get a big ol splash page showing that this is part 1 of a five part story, and that it may have real consequences for the 616 Marvel Universe! Which is kind of the opposite of what people were reading What If for!
BUT DID IT HAPPEN?!?
Well, yeah, as noted, except for Spider-Man and Doom being around, this is practically a panel for panel retelling of an extant FF story. I'm not sure if the Time Keepers working to keep the human race specifically on as tight of a leash as possible was revealed previously, but it was a major plot point of Kurt Busieks Avengers Forever.
NEXT TIME: The Time Quake continues as we get Extra Sets of Space Guys!
Not gonna lie, you’re closer than you’d think.