What If? #6 - Marvel Comics

WHAT IF? No. 6, December 1977

Initially re-treading the somewhat familiar old ground of the Fantastic Four’s origin story, this thirty-three page periodical certainly seems to take a while to get going with its unusual premise of depicting Marvel’s first family with “different super-powers”. Indeed, Roy Thomas’ script for Issue Six of “What If?” somewhat surprisingly opens with Reed Richards’ famous blue-costumed quartet initially battling a group of ‘every day’ armed robbers for a good dozen panels before the Watcher even steps in to suggest that the cosmic rays which mutated Jack Kirby’s co-creations could have given the heroes other special abilities if their personality traits had been less distinctive on the day of their unsuccessful space mission.

Disappointingly however, such a disconcertingly long wait isn’t arguably worth it either with Uatu’s unimaginatively retconned “New Fantastic Four” from an alternative reality consisting of a giant floating brain, Ben Grimm sprouting wings and Sue Storm pitifully just taking on the plasticity of her future husband from Earth-616. Only Johnny’s transformation is debatably intriguing, with the hot-headed youth changing into a living robot which has an “empathic ability to turn on any kind of machine”, courtesy of his apparent “fascination with and knowledge of [all] things mechanical.” 

Just as head-scratching is Thomas’ central storyline, which follows in the footsteps of Doctor Doom attempting to steal “the priceless treasure of Blackbeard the Pirate” for his own evil ends. Rather than have Invisible Girl abducted though, as per Stan Lee’s narrative for Issue Five of “Fantastic Four”, Latveria’s monarch instead matter-of-factly walks into the Baxter Building unharmed and convinces Reed’s bodiless intellect that he can build him a humanoid body capable of enjoying “the succulence of a superb meal” if he would accompany him back to the Doomstadt.

Of course, the small eastern Kingdom’s supreme leader has absolutely no intention of actually helping his hated rival reignite his romance with Sue through an “anthropomorphic housing”, and soon reveals he merely requires “Big Brain” as a power source for the heavily-armoured dictator’s infamous time machine. This nightmarish scenario, admittedly well-pencilled by Jim Craig and Rick Hoberg, certainly provides the rest of the team with some excellent opportunities to demonstrate their various powers. But ultimately depicts all three protagonists individually failing in their efforts to defeat Victor in hand-to-hand combat, and therefore becoming wholly reliant upon Richards to save the day by permanently sending “my mind into Doom’s body!”

Writer/Editor: Roy Thomas, and Pencilers: Jim Craig and Rick Hoberg