What If...? 39 - Timequake

What If the Watcher saved the Multiverse?

What If...? #39
Writers: Roy Thomas & Jean-Marc Lofficer
Penciler: Gavin Curtis
Inkers: Ian Akin with Don Hudson
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Ed Lazellari
Editor: Craig Anderson
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Watcher visits the Deputy Secretary of the Time Variance Authority and learns that his cosmic oath to not interfere has been suspended amidst the emergency. Immortus has become a quantum wave infiltrating a succession of alternate realities and will eventually reorder the multiverse. The Deputy Secretary relates the origins of the Time Keepers by the TVA's last director, "He Who Remains," at the end of the universe to teach the next universe how to avoid this one's mistakes but his first creations were flawed and became the Time Twisters, who went destroying multiple eras until "He Who Remains" negated their existence and created the Time Keepers instead. With the timelines at risk the TVA acts decisively by... holding a meeting of the board to discuss multiple matters then launching an "Anti-Immortus Campaign" of posters, leaflets and T-Shirts. Another proposal is to change Immortus's origins and so far the quartet recruited from the different timelines has been sent into Limbo where they face various guardians such as Tempus, a squad of robots and the Space Phantom's race. However the quantum wave keeps resetting events. The Watcher proposes going back to the very early days of Immortus before he was Rama-Tut or Kang, when he was just Nathaniel Richards, inhabitant of an alternative Earth where his time travelling ancestor of the same name (and Reed Richards's father) had helped rebuild the planet after an invasion. The younger Nathaniel had explored his ancestor's fort and the Watcher sees this as the key point. However the TVA are obsessed with using the "Saturnyne Symbiont" that when implanted will make it impossible for Immortus to store much Nexus energy but don't know how to get it into him. In Nathaniel's youth he explores the fort and discovers his ancestor's time machine when the TVA transport in the Fantastic Four of another timeline where they had different powers and Reed's mind now occupies Dr Doom's body. However they are too aggressive and Nathaniel suspects a trick to prevent him gaining the time machine so activates the fort's internal weaponry, killing them. In Limbo Irondroid and Dr Doom are killed and not reset when the next Immortus wave sweeps over. The Watcher suggests an alternate Fantastic Four who can convince better - a version of the team who never gained super powers. This team's Reed Richards operates a dampening field to neutralise the weapons and then tries convincing by producing a DNA analyser to prove they are related. Nathaniel is convinced and let's Sue administer the Symbiont. Things to reset with everyone returning to their timelines whilst Immortus cannot contain the power and explodes. At the end of time Immortus meets the restored Time Keepers and then a second trio appears. It becomes apparent the Watcher was actually dealing with the Time Twisters and there are two alternate realities at the end of time, one where He Who Remains replaced the Twisters with the Keepers and one where he did not. The Twisters melt away into pods and the Keepers return to watching over the timelines. Back at the TVA the Time Zone Manager returns from his holiday and the Deputy Secretaries all try to take credit. The Watcher leaves and reflects on how the threat was defeated by four special humans with no power at all.

After four chapters largely serving to recruit characters from individual timelines and set up the threat we now get a very heavy final issue with a strong dose of the comedy as the Time Variance Authority is a satire on how big organisations work or rather don't with the added gag of all the ranks of middle management looking identical and being drawn as Mark Gruenwald, Marvel's then-Executive Editor and continuity cop. There's a lot of continuity to this issue with the origins of the Time Keepers, the Time Twisters and Immortus all proving relevant to the plot whilst we also get appearances by just about any character or race ever connected to Immortus's Limbo (though, seemingly, not the Limbo of Inferno) as well as appearances by two different Fantastic Fours from the original What If...? series (issues #6 and #34 and there's nothing contradictory here that stops this being a later adventure for either team). But at it's core the narrative flows smoothly and never gets confusing in spite of the umpteen timelines, flashbacks and time travel involved.

(Immortus's original timeline is called "'Warlord's Earth' for the sake of brevity" by the Watcher, which now stands as a reminder that all the numbering of various different timelines was not used by Marvel at this time outside of Captain Britain and Excalibur.)

What's also notable is the way the threat is resolved. The Watcher may have broken his vow to not interfere rather more than he might care to remember but he's not one to get actively involved himself. Instead he uses his knowledge and travel abilities to help others reach solutions. This may be the first comic story in which he's been the headline character (the earlier comedy issues in both series don't count) but he's not going into action all powers blazing or trying to confront Immortus directly. Instead he observes and recommends, staying completely in character. However the Time Variance Authority is played for laughs and one has to wonder just how such an organisation could ever have come to play a key role in the multiverse unless there's a highly competent frontline staff. Instead salvation ultimately comes through a version of the Fantastic Four.

Normally the idea of travelling back in time and stopping a disaster through changing history is a bit of a cop-out in time travel stories. Here it seems to work that by introducing an element into a character's past it only takes effect in the relative present which is probably best not thought about in detail. But what does stand out is the way that salvations ultimately comes not through the exercising of powers but by thinking through the situation and convincing. The Fantastic Four are the foundation stone of the Marvel Universe and so it makes to sense to use a version of them to bring resolution but here we have the twist that they are without powers. And so we get an affirmation that what makes them fantastic isn't stretching or flaming on or turning invisible or rocks or for that matter having wings, stretching, having a robot body or being a super powered mind occupying another. No it's good will and knowledge that saves the day and shows how these four are special people cosmic rays or no cosmic rays. That really is the sort of insight into characters that What If...? stories can often give.

As a whole Timequake has been a rather awkward story. It's refreshing to see the series trying something a bit different and presenting a saga with consequences but it's been let down by awkward choices of alternate worlds that have required some heavy resetting to get the characters to where they're needed and several of the chapters haven't done a good job of providing a substantial story with a clear difference from the regular Marvel history. It's also been complicated by the Time Keepers and the Whisperer introducing elements into the timelines that have shifted them away from how things would otherwise have panned out. But this final chapter instead focuses upon how disruption is responded to and how the Watcher calmly finds a solution.

Although the storyline as a whole has been a bit disappointing this final chapter is easily the best. It presents a very different take and approach from a traditional super comic, reflecting how different a character the Watcher is. It also makes good use of a couple of classic What If...? stories without having to make changes of one kind or another to get the characters to where they need to be. Instead it gives us an opportunity to see how the characters respond in different circumstances whilst still being true to themselves. The series is at its best when it does this. It also gives the Watcher the opportunity to do more than merely narrate or observe and Uatu comes out the stronger. The whole story may have been weak but this is a fantastic conclusion.

(There is also a one page gag strip entitled What If Magneto Was Stuck in an Elevator with Colossus, Iron Man and Doctor Doom? credited to "Cullen Montano Going Joyce". It's a silly premise and the punchline just doesn't come off.)

What If...? 36 - Timequake

What If the Cosmic Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy had been defeated by Korvac?

What If...? #36
Writers: Roy Thomas & R.J.M. Lofficer
Penciler: Dave Hoover
Inkers: Ian Akin & Michael Bair
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Renée Witterstaetter
Editor: Craig Anderson
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Time Keepers recap their plan to the Watcher who is secretly aware of the involvement of the being known as the Whisperer. The second nexus is found in a timeline where the Vision took over Earth's computers to become a benevolent dictator and by the 22nd century had led the Earth to galactic victory over the Kree and Skrulls. The Vision himself is the Nexus and the Time Keepers thus divert this reality's Korvac on his journey back in time from the 31st century to arrive in the 22nd. Korvac is intrigued by the Vision and pops back to his own time where he captures and mesmerises the Guardians of the Galaxy. Returning to the 22nd century they capture the Cosmic Avengers - consisting of Commander America, Jhen the Gammazon, Irondroid and Tachyon Torch, generally descendants or genetic constructs of the 20th century heroes - and use them to infiltrate the moon Deimos where Korvac interfaces to battle the Vision in Cyberspace whilst the two super teams secure the complex there. One of the Vision's sub-routines contacts Earth and a ship is dispatched containing Captain John Fury Jr and the Space Commandos. On Deimos they battle the heroes when Fury is briefly visited by the Whisperer who tells him that if Korvac wins the result will be intergalactic destruction. Fury uses an ultrasound setting on his gun to release first the Cosmic Avengers and then the Guardians from Korvac's control. They discover that Korvac has beaten and destroyed the Vision and now controls all the galaxy's computer systems. Whilst the others battle endless robots Yondu has an idea and takes Irondroid to Korvac's physical form where Irondroid duplicates and reverse Korvac's mental patterns to transmit a cancelling wave into the system destroying Korvac. However the Vision is dead. The Time Keepers tell the Watcher that now the Nexus is gone and the timeline is unlikely to sustain itself for long and turn their attention to the next timeline. Meanwhile the Whisperer takes away Irondroid.

This second chapter is a sequel to a less well-known What If...? story from issue #19 of the second series. Little of that story is recapped with the detail of the Vision having become a supercomputer dictator generally sufficient but one consequence is that the Cosmic Avengers are not introduced too well and it's only through dropped dialogue moments that it becomes clear what their various relationships to the present day heroes are. The Guardians of the Galaxy are also not detailed too well until their fight with the Avengers towards the end of the issue and when characters have been mesmerised from their first appearance it's hard to tell what they would normally be like.

This story is inadvertently extremely of its time with the battle between the Vision and Korvac taking place in "cyberspace" and reflects the absolute obsession with virtual reality in so much science fiction and fantasy in the early 1990s. At least here the Vision tells Korvac it is primarily a simulation in their minds' eyes but this bit really dates the story which is surprising for something already set in a different time. But it's also curious that for all the advanced technology Korvac still has to interface with the Vision through plugging into a physical socket.

Also awkward to understand is the precise relationship between this timeline and the future from which Korvac comes. A lot of time travel stories in Marvel have complicated things further by having the different time zones be alternate realities with no direct relationship to each other but this is rarely explained and so it's not clear how Korvac's time can be the future of both this timeline and the regular timeline or just what the impact of the Time Keepers' intervention in diverting him is. Nor is there any real exploration of the consequences of the Vision's death. Though John Fury Sr talks about the human race taking back control of things and the Watcher suggests the timeline will survive, nothing is shown of what happens when a super computer running everything is suddenly no longer there. That's a pretty big blow for such a society.

Instead this issue ultimately boils down to multiple fights that are all the consequence of the Time Keepers interfering to send Korvac into the era. There's no real exploration of the implications of the alternative timeline or to do much with the Cosmic Avengers. This issues feels rather decompressed to cover up a thin set of events and just an excuse to have an unusual combination of characters fighting. Timequake continues to disappoint.