What If ... This was the Only Comic at Kroger?

Today, I live in an area that has four local comic shops, plus a store that deals in all sorts of pop culture collectibles with the occasional comics sprinkled in. As a kid, Waldenbooks and the flea market in a downtown parking building were pretty much my only options for finding comics.

But when I was 9, the local Kroger store, where we shopped almost weekly and my stepdad worked, started carrying comics. Well, a comic.

Now if a general retail store was going to carry a comic, especially back in the late '80s, you'd think it would be a title like Amazing Spider-Man or Superman or Batman. Maybe even the Fantastic Four or X-Men.

But no. For a couple of years, the only title that appeared on the shelf was volume 2 of Marvel's “What If.”

(If you want to check out the covers and titles of the entire run, head on over to Comic Vine. And fair warning, a handful of old What Ifs are going to be spoiled in the rest of this blog.)

The first issue I got was #4, “What If the Alien Costume had Possessed Spider-Man?” (written by Danny Fingeroth, drawn by Mark Bagley). I had seen Spider-Man's black costume, but I didn't know the whole story.

The series host and narrator, Uatu the Watcher, provided a crash course in how and why Spidey got and got rid of the black costume. Future issues offered Cliffs Notes of Marvel history and introduced me to characters and concepts like Wolfsbane*, Baron Strucker** and Thor as a frog.***

But they aren't called “What Happened.” The appeal is to see familiar characters and stories go in new directions, with stuff happening that didn't in the comics. Stuff like Spider-Man dying.

Now, we all know death isn't permanent in comics. Heck, in the latest X-Men titles, it's an every-issue occurrence. But we were still a little over three years out from the Death of Superman, so that was rather surprising to young Evan.

Issue 6, “What If the X-Men Lost Inferno” (Fingeroth, Ron Lim), was much more disturbing. The only experience I had with Inferno was an issue of Fantastic Four in which Graviton fought a demonic mailbox. So I didn't really know what I was getting into when I bought the issue and a demon-possessed Wolverine actually ate a baby. I hate to see a comic cover or page bent, so just imagine how serious it was for young Evan to eventually rip this issue in half and throw it in the trash.

“What Ifs” always tended to go dark, if only because that's not usually the way the original stories went. At some point, I came up with the lofty theory that the reason for this was that we had to believe the way things actually happened was for the best, since there was no way, in real life, we could change the past. Or something.

As cool as those stories were, they could really be downers. Even something as seemingly innoccuous as “What If Wolverine Battled Conan the Barbarian” (Glenn Herdling, Gary Kwapisz) ended with the universe being destroyed.

At least the darkness was balanced by the light of humor. Many issues featured comedic one- or half-page gags, like “What If Ghost Rider Hit a Puddle.”

This culminated in issue 34, “What if No One was Watching the Watcher.” A throwback to the original volume's humor issue, this opened with a story (by Scott Simple and Tom Morgan) in which Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to transform Galactus into a human. The Devourer of Worlds was sent to Earth where his new form bore more than a passing resemblance to Elvis Presley. Ultimately, he was faced with a choice, return to the cosmos as a powerful force of nature or live a new life as the King of Rock 'n Roll. Aside from “Adventures in Spider-Babysitting” by Darren Auck, the rest of the issue were quick gags like “What if Doctor Doom was a Pediatrician” and “What if the Punisher was a Stern Yet Fatherly Type.”

I stuck with the series off and on into the mid-30s, but it lasted 114 issues, eventually losing the specific titles and just telling you who was featured. I was long gone by the time of the “What If” that had the most lasting impact, Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz's introduction of Spider-Girl in #105.

A Heroclix set a few years back and just browsing some of the titles for this entry are making me think about adding “What If” to my list of back issue bin targets.