3 out of 5

Over at tmnt entity, turtles king Mark Pellegrini has a theory on the lack of What If stories nowadays, and that it has to do the concept not holding much weight since the scenarios have mostly been covered by the imprints’ constant reboots.  This is possible, but seems a bit crotchety to me.  I would split the decline in prevalence into a couple main things, one of which is an offshoot of the other.  First, similar to Mark’s pitch but perhaps a little less “we’re all to blame!” is that a lot of the big ideas are done…  by the What If books already made.  What If popped up in the late 70s, with plenty of landmark stories to choose from.  I’m completely making this up, as I haven’t read any of those original volume 1 books, but I think about a show like The X-Files, where all the kooky mainstays were pretty much covered after a couple of seasons, and thereafter (and even before that), it was mostly variations on ideas that’d been done before; this comparison is to suggest that when you’re not dealing with an evolving plot – something that builds off of itself – and instead circling around a gimmick, such as What If, there’s only so much you can do with it.  And a lot of the fun stuff is touched early on.  So thereafter you get into more “minor” What Ifs, and with smaller focuses come smaller payoffs.  When DC did Elseworlds in the 90s, it was an excellent way to update the What If concept and give it room to grow, thus producing pitches such as “What If Superman landed in Russia?”  But in terms of the one-shot comic, the 90s run of What If wasn’t big and bold enough to be accessible to a general crowd – in other words, you needed to be a comic book nerd to care.  And as the 90s slowly churned its way out of grim and gritty and through Spawn art-first nonsense, towards the end of that era, when comics took their first grown up steps toward “legitimacy” – X-Men and Spiderman films were soon a’coming, ushering in the start of a slow wave of changes that would lead to our “my dad knows who Guardians of the Galaxy are” world – the tried and true comic book nerd was shushed into the closet, and What Ifs were allowed to whimper away.

Nowadays, nerds can re-emerge proudly, making six figures at their IT companies and finger-banging their equally nerdy girlfriends, because the world is still so backwards that I can explain progress as “geeky dude bangs hot girl,” and so some of those What Ifs can pop up again here and there.

But: the big ideas have still been done, and when it comes to indies – even something hugely popular like Turtles – it’s probably not quite worth the dollars to do a Kingdom Come-sized graphic novel elseworlds that might really put an interesting spin on things.  So we get a one-shot retread of City Fall that supposes that, basically, the Turtles lost, and go work for Shredder.  If you’ve read a handful of What Ifs, wherein the minor change results in several deaths and then things essentially end up in the same place, you’ll know what to expect from this book as well.  It’s still worth reading, though, because City Fall – like a lot of the IDW series – was a jumble of good bits, overwrought bits, and clutter – and reducing it down to one issue makes it humorously, like, readable.  Not better, per se, because it lacks impact, but the compressed style works well for Waltz, and I wish they’d give it more of a shot in the ongoing comic…

I’m also not a huge Santolouco fan (like, the only one, apparently), but I am a Cory Smith fan, who does a few pages in this book alongside Josh Howard handling the bulk of it – and his “dark” take on the Turts (for a “dark” book) was pretty great.

Overall, you’re not missing anything by not reading this, whether you follow the series or not.  It’s not a hugely imaginative or fun re-take on anything.  However, the “deviations” idea is a good one, and this is a valid effort with some great art and a tight take on a sprawling story.  Meaning: if IDW decided to turn this into a semi-consistent series, I’d be all in.