Help! As you saw yesterday, "Separated at Birth" has gone A.W.O.L.! Now it's time for "Ten of a Kind" and I'm afraid I'm never going to find poor old Separated!
Oh, wait! It's right here. It's having a team-up.
That's right, folks, it's the biggest cross-over in Comics Oughta Be Fun! history since "365 Days with Ben Grimm" crossed over with "Bring It On Week." Separated at Birth meets Ten of a Kind...and for some added excitement, it's all to end What If? Week with a bang! If you've read as many What If? issues as I have, then you're thoroughly sick of Iron Man dying like a punk. But you also may have noticed along the way that many of the What If? covers are homages or callbacks to the original stories they reference! So here, for the first time ever, worlds collide, lives are changed, and the Marvel Multiverse will never be the same, as Bully presents
Ten Separated at Birth What If? of a Kind!
R: What If? v.2 #102 (November 1997), art by Leonardo Manco
R: What If? v.1 #41 (September 1992), art by Jim Valentino and Sam De La Rosa
R: What If? v.2 #33 (January 1992), art by Rod Ramos
R: What If? v.2 #42 (October 1992), art by Kevin West
Look familiar, true believers? It oughta...you've seen it before!
R: What If? v.2 #14 (June 1990), art by Ron Lim and Terry Austin
R: What If? v.1 #36 (December 1986), art by John Byrne and Terry Austin
And there's more where that came from!
R: What If? v.2 #58 (February 1994), art by Gordon Purcell and Andrew Pepoy
For the world's greatest assassin, he sure misses a lot. Three cases in point.
R: What If? v.2 #20 (December 1990), art by Jim Valentino, Ron Garvey, and Bob Wiacek
R: What If? v.2 #21 (January 1991), art by Jim Valentino and Bob Wiacek
M: What If? v.2 #29 (September 1991), artist unknown
R: What If? v.2 #67 (November 1994), art by Manny Galan
Are there any more? Funny you should ask that...
R: What If? v.2 #23 (March 1991), art by Rodney Ramos and Bob McLeod
And, you know, as far as I can tell, there's only one instance of the reverse...of a What If? cover inspiring the design for a regular Marvel comic. Could it be that one where the Watcher is doing his Marilyn Monroe impression? No! It's this one, that kicked off the M2 Universe:
R: Amazing Spider-Girl #30 (May 2009), art by Sal Buscema, Ron Frenz, and Chris Sotomayor
So! What have we learned? I've learned a) to nail my Separated at Birth down to the blog and b) What If? frequently wound up killing everyone on Earth. Iron Man usually was first. Oh, and c)! There's no cover you can't redo and say it took place on, say, Earth-8675309. And that is, as the Watcher himself says...One to Grow On.
(More Ten of a Kind here.)
I'm almost afraid to ask, but why does Iron Man have Punisher-motif armor?
ReplyDeleteI suspect it has something to do with "War Machine" and that makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
Iron Man was usually first, but I seem to recall Doctor Strange surviving at the end of more than one of those stories.
ReplyDeleteAssuming you're referencing the cover of What if Captain America Founded the Avengers? Frank Castle is a member of a Shield Super Soldier team who discovers Cap in a block of ice (which is weird cause Steve Rogers has been President of the US for 20 years). He's been provided with a new experimental armor suit designed by Shield's best designer Tony Stark (and given a skull motif cause those Shield boys are fascists).
ReplyDeleteI know this is many months later, but the What If v2 #42 ("What If...Spider-Man Had Kept His SIX Arms?") was penciled by Kevin West, who was the 2nd penciler for the first run of "Guardians Of The Galaxy" (after Shadowhawk creator Jim Valentino left the series around issue #16).
ReplyDeleteBTW, I love what you're doing with this set of posts.