When Things Were Rotten...

A joke, perhaps...

...but it sure felt like Ben was heading there in the 90s...

See what I mean?

From What If? #9 (1990)

The Doctor Strange Movie That We SHOULD Have Gotten!!

Not that I didn't enjoy the Doctor Strange movie...but there was another direction that they could have gone:

Anthony Stark, Master Of The Mystic Arts!!

See, in this particular universe, Tony Stark and Stephen Strange met on the New York party circuit before their respective origins...

So it was Tony Stark's drunken driving that caused the car accident...

Man, I would have paid a lot of money to see Cumberbatch and Downy perform that scene!

So in this timeline, Stark's guilt is the driving force of their search for a cure...

...and Tony ignores weapons dealing and trips to Vietnam/Afghanistan/wherever, so there's no Iron Man!

And while Strange becomes increasingly passive and bitter, Tony's the one who takes them to meet the Ancient One...

Stark is the one who discovers Mordo's plotting, and volunteers to become the Ancient One's disciple...

Leaving Stephen in the role of smart-alecky manservant, while Stark become Mr. Magic Guy.

But he is still Tony Stark, and he does still love to tinker with gadgets to make him a better hero:

Wait, what?

Yeah, Tony has a computer display to help him identify enemies and pick out the best spells!!

Plus his computer automatically aligns his hands and stance for optimum spell-casting!!

No, that's not cheating.

And when it comes time to fight Dormammu, well, it's time to go full armor:

And what does the armor do?

And he kicks Dormammu's ass!!

That is, until Strange betrays Stark!! He got tired of Tony postponing a search for the cure for his hands to save the universe and stuff, and Dormammu promised to restore his hands:

But, man, don't make deals with Dormammu!

Anyhoo, Strange meets Clea, she inspires him to see that Dormammu is really kinda evil, Stark manages to exile Dormammu from the Dark Dimension for an indeterminate number of years. So...

You know, comics really need post-credits scenes, don't they? Because this comic really lacks a scene where [REDACTED] shows up and...

From What If? #113 (1998)

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Variety Is The Spice Of The Fantastic Four!!

Isn't it time that we all asked ourselves:

I mean, cosmic rays are finicky things, right? Who knows how they can effect people if you just tweak one angstrom here or one cosmic filament there?

So let's get started. What if they all had the Human Torch's powers?

Now remember, the true purpose of What If? is to show that every possible outcome is worse than Marvel-616, so we can never complain. "Hey, we gave you the best possible story--stop whining, or we'll show you how it could have gone!"

With that in mind, during one of their earliest battles, all of that flame gets a little bit out of control. And...

Well, dead babies are pretty bad, so:

Hmm, Sue in a nunnery, no Captain America, no Sub-Mariner...I'm pretty sure this world died from Doom or Galactus or the Kree-Skrull War...

Next: What if they all had Reed's stretchy powers?

Well, Sue and Ben decide that those powers are just too damn icky and stupid to ever use...

...while Johnny has kind of the wrong attitude:

And so?

Wait--they never used the powers? Ever? Not even when the remote is sitting across the room?

Well, this world is probably doomed, too...

Now, What If everyone became Things?

Ben is no surprise, although he has already evolved to his later look...

Reed is some kind of brute...

...which is clever enough, because the Reed Richards of Counter-Earth became The Brute.

Johnny because kind of a sloppier, meltier early version of The Thing...

And whither Sue?

She becomes Sue-Thing!!

I suspect we should call foul on this, but hey, alternate reality. And so there's only one thing to do:

So, without Reed's intelligence or any of them to act as heroes (and no Cap), this universe pretty clearly doesn't live past, oh, 1966.

Finally, what if they the all got Sue's powers?

Well, actually, they kind of split up Sue's powers. She can still turn invisible, Reed can turn other things and people invisible, Ben can project invisible force fields, and Johnny can turn intangible.

What??!?! FOUL!!! (Shhh...alternate universe). Anyhow, they all end up working for S.H.I.E.L.D. (how? why? FOUL!!!!), and they kind of crush Doctor Doom in his first attack:

Well, this universe just might have a chance of survival!

Still, 3 out of 4 universes seem headed for tragedy. So it's a good thing they all got separate powers, right?

Final verdict? All four universes, no matter their differences, are still better than that terrible, terrible Fox movie.

From What If? #11 (1990)

FF Week #15--What If?

It's hard to imagine now, but the Fantastic Four was once so integral to Marvel, that there was really no choice but make them the subject of the very first issue of the new What If? series:

The FF were well-represented during that initial What If? run...

...even though it occasionally got silly:

They even published a sequel story to What If? #1!!

It was clear that Marvel creators of the era knew and respected the Fantastic Four's legacy, and gave much thought to the place in the Marvel Universe:

Of course, sometime the ideas were trivial...

[SPOILER ALERT: They both did continue to mutate!!]

And there were lots of classic FF stories to explore possible alternate ending for:

When the second edition of What If? Came around in 1989, though, there was far less focus on Marvel's first family. It took 11 issues before they got a cover!

But at least they could join in on the trend of telling What Ifs about stories that didn't wrap up all that long ago...

This one was more a Silver Surfer story, but he did join the FF, so we'll count it!

Another What If? based on the Byrne era...

We had already had a What If? based on Franklin's birth, but, well, why not try again?

After that, though, the Fantastic Four's appearances in What If? dried right up. If you weren't the Punisher or a mutant or Spider-Man, good luck on getting a What If? story approved in that era!

Still, it was the 90s, so you could really try and extreeeeeme the story out to get the FF back in the book, right?

I think the premise of this one was, "What If We Made The Fantastic Four As Annoyingly 1990s As Possible?":

And finally, another riff on the John Byrne run:

Which leads us back to today, and the greatest What If? of all:

What If Marvel Actually published A Fantastic Four Book?

I know, that one is so remote a possibility, even the Watcher couldn't sell it...