What If Wedsnesday: What If Spider-Man Had Joined the Fantastic Four?

Every Wednesday, The Amazing Justin Palm! gets drunk as shit and reviews an issue of Marvel Comics’ “What If?” so that you, the reader, can enjoy his drunken ramblings about a comic book whose sole purpose is to talk about shit that never happened, so it doesn’t matter at all. Dear Internet: You’re welcome.



So! First of these columns, and it’s actually sort of topical. This particular story takes place during the events of Amazing Spider-Man 1-2 and Fantastic Four 12-14, both of which I’ve fairly recently reviewed. The story is by Roy Thomas, which is a good sign, and asks a question that... ugh... was recently answered after the Human Torch “died”. (Yeah. Because dying off camera in a comic book means you’ll never come back ever. OF COURSE.)

Now, I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, but I have long maintained that I am philosophically opposed to any version of the Fantastic Four with Spider-Man as a member where the rest of the team ISN’T Wolverine, the Hulk, and Ghost Rider, but... honestly, this is a pretty solid story. Instead of running off like a little bitch, Spider-Man agrees to stick with the FF because Reed Richards stops being such a greedy bastard (“You want to go on crazy space adventures for me AND get paid enough to keep you’re elderly, barely alive aunt breathing through modern medicine? Fuck off asshole!”), so Peter joins the FF and everything is awesome. Seriously, they have a press conference, and Spider-Man is being heckled by America’s Greatest Newspaper Man, J. Jonah Jameson, and all the sudden Reed Richards is all “Dude, I’m backin’ my hommie” and JJJ SHUTS THE FUCK UP. Apparently, being backed up by the smartest guy on the planet gives you street credit.

Anyway, the new Fantastic Five fight the Vulture, the Red Ghost, and pretty much everything else pretty much about as it happened in the ‘real’ universe (comics aren’t really real, but you know, whatever). EXCEPT! When the FF go to the moon to fight the Red Ghost, Reed only has room for four in his rocket ship, and basically tells Sue that the men are talking, so she gets stuck on Earth while the rest of the team goes off to have an awesome moon adventure. Which by itself would be dickish and boring, except that at the same time, Namor the fucking sub-mariner has been mind controlled by the fucking Puppet Master, the Villain Who Makes The Least Amount Of Sense Ever In The History Of Comics Ever. ANYWAY! Sue joins his underwater kingdom, because she’s bored with Reed now that he has a man-crush on Spider-Man, and when the rest of the Fantastic Five get back to Earth, Reed FREAKS THE FUCK OUT. That is because Reed Richards is the most mentally unstable man on the planet, who at any time he doesn’t win Susan Storm’s heart ends up killing us all, and I promise to prove that in the coming weeks.

Anyway, there’s some mind control bullshit and stuff going on still, but essentially (heh) when the rest of then team gets home and realizes Sue is gone, they decide to go to what little is left of Atlantis to fuck Namor’s shit up. They go, there’s a mostly boring rehash of FF #14 (although it’s hard to hate any story where the Thing fights a giant octopus), and anyway! In this version of the story, after all the mind control crap is over, Sue decides she (as the only women on the team) feels like the fifth wheel on the new F5, and so she leaves Reed for Namor. And despite my comments earlier, Reed doesn’t destroy the universe.... for now.

Okay, so (*drunken*) seriously: for the first issue of a series that no one knew would really take off? Pretty decent-to-good. Is it the best issue of What If? ever? Of course not, it’s issue fucking number one. But it is SOLID, and that counts for something. I first read it when I was 14 (I promise, most of these issues I haven’t read before I review them, but I have an old copy of the “Best Of What If”, okay?) and despite not appreciating Silver Age Marvel History like I do now, it was pretty cool then, and it’s pretty cool now. So yeah. For a pilot episode? Not bad.

Next Week! What if the Hulk had the brain of Bruce Banner! I assume it will be a lot like most of the Hulk comics later in Peter David’s run?

P.S.: I haven’t actually read Peter David’s run on Hulk (yet), though I’ve heard it’s pretty good. And I’m one of the three people who read his entire run on Captain Marvel, so.... I probably ought to?

P.S.S.: Seriously, I fucking loved Peter David’s Captain Marvel. Seriously.