3 out of 5

Classic What Ifs, purchased to check out some of writer Peter Gillis’ older work.

This will be an incredibly shallow review, as, to me, these books read exactly like what I think parents of a certain age – the parents whose parents threw out their comic books – imagine most comics to be: lots of tights and posturing and soap opera.  …Which, uh, is what they are, but we’ve gotten more graceful with the application.  They don’t wear tights when not on the job, and maybe have learned to substitute posturing with witty references.  In the 70s and 80s, though, we had a lot of Exclamation Points! and, man, you had to be mired in continuity to read most of Marvel or DC.  Jumping-on points were just not a concern.  Especially in the What If world, where we are drilled down on very specific events, and, sure, there’s a brief recap of how things originally played out, but even the variations presented in most WIs isn’t going to seem like a big deal unless you were deep in the Marvel shit.

I wasn’t, especially before I was born, and my taste in this era of writers is pretty picky.  I was enjoying some indie stuff I’d read from Peter Gillis, hence checking out these issues, but it didn’t add much to my opinion.  If anyone I gloss over here is part of your go-to stable, I’m sure you can school me on nuance I’m missing.  Otherwise, this is generic stuff.  Not unentertaining, but not especially grabbing.

In issue 25, Gillis imagines Thor getting pissed at Odin over being denied the human companionship of Jane Foster, and it’s… incredibly silly.  And of course it’s Loki fomenting things, but either way, it’s pretty hilarious how the squabble turns into a Ragnarok-sized war.  Rick Buckler gives us our solid, square-jawed art, with impressively varied colors from Dave Simons, and this goes on for an insanely long time, but, in true What If fashion, finds its way to a punch-in-the-gut downbeat ending.  Also in 25, Mark Gruenwald takes a few pages to tell us the “Untold Tale” of The Eternals ‘first uni-mind.’  I got nothing on this one, except that without any Eternals context, it’s pretty dumb.  Sorry?

Issue 29 has hilarious cover copy: “This may not be the best story you’ve ever read– but with a cover like this– how bad could it be?!?”  The cover features a bunch of heroes and villains sprawled out at the feet of the Avengers, who, What Iffily, DEFEAT EVERYONE!!!… as told to us by Steven Grant, art by Kupperberg and Al Gordon.  This is hard to take seriously because of how idiotic the Avengers act – taking the word of a stranger (Centurion) to essentially beat up the world in order to save it – and because of how ridiculous that stranger’s costume is.  Like… shoulder pads attached to his helmet or something?  Okay.  Kupperberg and Gordon’s art is fantastic, though, so much more dynamic (to my eyes) than Buckler, but the story is pretty ho-hum.  Spoiler: Centurion was up to no good the entire time.  Thereafter we get two short accompanying tales: Gillis’ ‘untold’ story of Black Bolt trying to find his Inhumans a new home – snooze-worthy, though Black Bolt does, as always, his shush maneuver – and then another What If by Grant in which an amnesiac Namor never remembers he’s Namor.  This is actually pretty cool, pushing the concept pretty far into breakdown territory for bearded seaman Namor.

Woop.