Comics Collector's Series: What If Volume 1 #1-47 Complete

, sometimes rendered as , is the title of several comic book series published by Marvel Comics, exploring "the road not traveled" by its various characters. Events in the series are considered separate from mainstream continuity in the Marvel Universe. Volume 1 which had the initial 47-issue series ran from February 1977 to October 1984. The first What If story, "What if Spider-Man Had Joined the Fantastic Four?", presented an alternate version of events seen in . Great fun for all Marvel Comics fans everywhere.

The stories in the initial 1977-1984 series featured the alien Uatu the Watcher as narrator. The observer of events transpiring on Earth from his base on the moon, Uatu, a member of an immortal race of Watchers, is also able to observe what transpires in alternate realities. Thus, What If stories usually began with Uatu briefly recapping a notable event in the mainstream Marvel Universe. He then indicated a particular point of divergence in that event, and demonstrated what would have happened if events had taken a different course from then. Some storylines involved individual characters choosing to take (or not to take) a particular action, when in "reality" they had made precisely the opposite decision. For example, a Captain America storyline published circa 1980 saw the hero being offered the opportunity to run for President of the United States as a third-party candidate. In the end, he declined the invitation. Nevertheless, issue #26 of What If ("What if Captain America became President?") showed him accepting the nomination, and ultimately winning the 1980 Presidential Election. Due to their nature, stories presented in the What If format were allowed to break the rules of the characters' respective series that kept the status quo intact; major characters could be (and often were) killed off in the alternate realities, and many stories were based on the premise of a particular Marvel superhero, upon gaining/discovering his or her special abilities, choosing a life of crime instead. One issue used what had been the original plot for the conclusion of the Dark Phoenix saga in the X-Men, where instead of committing suicide Jean Grey submits to a lobotomy that removes her powers. In the What If version, though, Jean Grey is powerless to later prevent the death of Scott Summers; the resulting shock causing Dark Phoenix to be restored resulting in a Galactic cataclysm. However, not all What If stories were quite so serious in nature. Issue #11, for instance, offered a tongue-in-cheek view of what might have happened if members of the original Marvel Bullpen — specifically, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Flo Steinberg, and Sol Brodsky — had been given the powers and abilities of the Fantastic Four. The series occasionally ran a backup feature, "Untold Tales From the Marvel Universe", depicting the development of some of Marvel's superhuman races such as the Eternals and the Inhumans. --

I have included the title of each individual issue of this series in the filenames for easy reference. For more information see the Wikipedia article the link of which is in "Original News."



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