What If...? 38 - Timequake

What If Thor had become a thrall of Seth?

What If...? #38
Writers: Roy Thomas & R.J.M. Lofficer
Pencilers: Marshall Rogers & M.C. Wyman
Inkers: Sam Delarose with Rod Ramos
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Renée Witterstaetter
Editor: Craig Anderson
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

As a second Time Keeper vanishes from existence attention turns to another timeline. Here Seth triumphs in his assault of Asgard, capturing Odin whilst his forces slay many of the prominent warriors including Sif. Thor is thrown in a dungeon alongside Karnilla and learns that Loki as allied with Seth whilst Grog declares his intentions towards Karnilla. Seth turns his attention to attacks by other pantheons with the Celtic Gods attacking whilst the leaders of other pantheons meet with Mephisto and plan a liberation attack. The Watcher notes this would destroy the Earth but the Time Keeper says the only alternative is to rescue Odin who is the Nexus. The Watcher departs. A drunk Grog goes to visit Karnilla when he is attacked and killed by the vampire Wolverine whilst Thor is released from the dungeon by Dr Doom and Irondroid. The Whisperer appears and explains the need to save the reality. Observing, the last Time Keeper notes he will soon have to intervene. Thor and his cross dimensional allies invade a chamber where Odin is being drained of his power and attack Seth and Loki with the Time Keeper sending in a Protectdroid robot who mimics a combination of the four's appearance and powers. The battle rages until Loki flees, the Protectdroid is destroyed, Seth subdued and Odin released. The last Time Keeper vanishes from existence as the Whisperer appears and reveals himself to be Immortus, having escaped as his own realm of Limbo was a poor prison and he could use the Nexus power for his own ends. He now plans to become the master of time and leaves. Wolverine realises he has been used. Meanwhile the Time Variance Authority realises the danger of Immortus conquering all timelines but the Time Zone Manager is on holiday and none of the hordes of Deputy Secretaries has an idea what to do.

The fourth chapter of Timequake is the first to not be based on a previous issue of What If...? Instead it draws on a then-recent Thor storyline that took the Thunder God away from Earth around the time of the end of The Evolutionary War and the start of Inferno. Here the twist is literal with Seth's serpent form managing to overcome Odin followed by the almost stock gratuitous mass killing of regular characters such as Fandral, Hogun and Sif. But other than showing that Seth's conquest raises concerns amongst the other pantheons and their reluctance to act without the consent of their own death gods, this story doesn't really tell us anything new about the Asgardians or the Egyptian Death God. Instead the timeline soon becomes a proxy battle for the Whisperer and the Time Keeper as they each send in their agents to either rescue Odin or ensure his death. Again we have an issue that devotes a lot of time to fights rather than exploring the ramifications of the change to history or showing how the characters react to such circumstances.

The overall Timequake plot steps up a gear with the revelation that for all the grand powers of those trying to look after the timelines there is a lot of temporal stupidity going around. The Time Keepers are revealed to have used an utterly inappropriate prison to contain Immortus whilst the endless faceless bureaucrats of the Time Variance Authority are good at blaming each other but utterly useless at original thinking when a solution is needed. That the Whisperer is Immortus is actually a surprise as early chapters suggested that this was the Watcher taking discrete action but it would have helped if the summaries at the start of each chapter had included some other suspects Zarko the Tomorrow Man (who had recently reappeared in Thor only a few months before this was published) who was the antagonist in the Time Keepers' original appearance.

Overall this chapter has made a decision to focus on the Timequake plot at the expense of worldbuilding the alternate timeline seen and so the latter gets very little attention with the subplot of the other pantheons planning an attack going nowhere beyond explaining their absence at the climax. Instead it brings together a quartet of characters from across the different and shows they can work together despite their very varied origins as well as revealing the identity of the Whisperer. As a result it feels slight again. The underlying problem is that Timequake is a story being told in a single title but has the feel of a crossover between multiple series and so individual chapters are unable to advance it very much before the climax. As a result so far the whole thing has been disappointing.