Reader's Diary #2103- Various writers and artists: What If? The Complete Collection Vol. 1

I was very excited to finally be able to sign up to Disney+ but I probably should have held off. I've been excited to enjoy all the promised new Marvel shows but it turns out none of them are ready. One of these shows is the animated What If? shows which, like the comics that spawned the premise, take a canon Marvel story line and explore what would have happened had there been one change. What if, for instance, Peggy Carter took the super soldier serum rather than Steve Rogers?

It sounds more fun that the first collection of comics turned out to be. Perhaps the problem is that Marvel has now been around so long, some of their more far out ideas that first made their appearance in What If? have now actually been done in canon plots. One of the stories here, for instance, asks what if three different characters were bitten by a radioactive spider? Well, the Spider-Verse has since done that, only much bigger and better. Likewise, there's a story here where Jane Foster becomes Thordis. So, Jason Aaron may not have gone with that name, but he did show Jane Foster wielding Mjolnir. And again, his version was far better developed.

One of the stories that I did actually enjoy wasn't a result of the premise at all. It asks what would happen if there was a team of Avengers formed in the 1950s and shows five heroes from Marvel's very early days that have either been long forgotten or remain really obscure. I do love reading about new or rare superheroes and certainly: 3-D Man, Marvel Boy, Gorilla-Man, Venus, and Human Robot fit that bill.

I also enjoyed the inclusion of old fan letters sent in from the original comics. I'm not sure what I found more surprising: that they didn't only publish positive letters or that they included everyone's full address. Who knew the series had so many fans in Calgary?