Rating: 2/5 – Slower than your usual What If? story
I dropped off the What If? books long ago when Marvel started doing them as one shots rather than a series, but the writing duties of Jimmy Palmiotti made me check this out. I don’t want to speak poorly of this but have nothing great to say about it either. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, rather that it was the first issue of a multiple issue story and so it contained a lot of setup with only a few pages of payoff. As with any What if? story, there were forced differences from what we’ve seen before. Someone dies, things go horribly wrong, stuff happens that would forever affect the Marvel Continuity. That’s why we like What If? books, but this was a still a slow start.
We start like the real A vs X where the Avengers find the Phoenix Force is coming to earth and go to Utopia to confront the X-Men. The reaction of the X-Men is similar but without giving much away, it’s more heated and things get out of control. When Magneto and Namor are two of your diplomatic representatives, what do you expect?
Overall, I enjoyed it and await the next issue. Palmiotti and Gray very rarely steer me wrong and Jimmy alone is still a great writer. I think the major problem was making this a multiple part story when What If books are typically tight “one and done” issues.
Reviewed by: Chris Stark – chris@comicspectrum.com
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Did not like it. Marvel always drops the ball. Kill off major characters. Woo that’s never been done!!! Come on get some fresh blood back into Marvel or get Chris Claremount back. We need some stories that make sense!. I’m tired of the greek boys club and their ideas on what characters matter the most. Hey Marvel listen to the fans, we buy the comics!!!
Hi Brenda….. I do think Marvel has some REALLY good comics coming out right now. It’s just that not all of them are that good. Personally I think 20% of their output is pretty excellent, maybe another 30-40% is OK, and the rest is pretty questionable (like the cash grab book reviewed here). The problem is that if your sample set is from the “poor” part of the line-up you get a skewed view of Marvel overall.
The bigger the event, the less likely I am going to like it, but that’s just me. There is still a solid segment of comic buyers who eat that stuff up. The trick is to match your tastes to the part of Marvel’s line-up that’s going to appeal to you.
OKAY I CAN SEE YOUR POINT. BUT TO ME MARVEL NEEDS TO ACT AS IF THE OLDER FANS LIKE MYSELF MATTER. I LOVED THE X-MEN THAT WERE LIKE A WELL OILED MACHINE BACK IN THE DAY. I LIKED A CAP. AMERICA WHO DIDN’T COME OFF AS A TEA PARTY REFUGEE. I MISS THE OLD STAND UP AND BE HUMAN SUPER HEROS OF STAN LEE. THEY WERE EASY TO RELATE TOO AND DIDN’T ACT LIKE THEY HAD A BUG UP THEIR BUTTS. BUT I WILL TAKE YOUR ADVICE AND TRY TO JUST BUY WHAT I LIKE AND LEAVE THE NEWER TOO WEIRD FOR ME STUFF ALONE!! THANK YOU.
I completely see your point. At the same time, I see that Marvel is trying to make money by targeting stuff at a core demographic of males in their teens/20s and what they want to see.
I’m just glad that they are doing SOME stuff that is appealing to my demographic. They’re doing more stuff in different formats than comics (TV/movies) that hit 100x the audience of the comics. The comics are an IP-mill for them.
What is interesting is that the same writer can do things that resonate with me at the same time that he does stuff I cannot stand. This speaks to that same guy doing his best to tell different kinds of stories targeted at different audiences. My example here is Jonathan Hickman on Avengers. I really can’t get into “Avengers” which is big/splashy stuff but I love “New Avengers” which seems more story/character driven & is really the Illuminati Bendis created a while back. I know other readers who feel the exact opposite and who love Avengers and cannot stand New Avengers.
Anyway, we’ll keep doing reviews to try & help point you at the stuff you will like!