The Road Not Travelled: Let's Read Marvels WHAT IF...

[Olli]

Captain Universpiderman also made an appearance during Spider-Verse, where he was one of the main multiversal Spider-Men (but ultimately didn't stand up so well against the villains who ate spiders-men).

 

[Octopus Prime]

We’ve got a Chris Claremont story and that means we’ve got a lot of Chris Claremont stuff, as Chris Claremont (and also George Caragonne and Rod Ramos) ask us What if The Phoenix Had Lived.

Actually, looking t the credits box, George is credited with the plot and script, so maybe Chris was just there because it uses phrases like “As inevitable as death” and “Mind, body AND SOUL” constantly.

Anyhoo, this here is another two parter and its, again, riffing pretty heavily on one of the better Volume 1 stories (albeit adjusted to fit the retcons about Phoenixs nature) and it’s also… easily in the running for the darkest What If stories.

Anyhow, as Canon would have it, one day Jean Grey was having a hard time piloting a space shuttle through a solar flare and the strain she put on her psychic abilities trying to keep the ship intact caught the attention of the godlike Phoenix Force, which gave her a big honkin’ power boost; which was great in the short term since, empowered as Phoenix, Jean was able to save the universe by repairing the cracked M’Kraan Crystal and bad Long Term, as Jean was eventually mind-whacked by the illusionist Master Mind who tried to convince her to give Evil Hedonism a try leading to the creation of the planet destroying Dark Phoenix. Then Jean elected to commit suicide rather than risk losing control as the Dark Phoenix.


Then it was later revealed that Phoenix was actually a God posing as a human rather than a human wielding the power of a God, so Jean was technically in the clear for those genocides as she was unconscious in the bottom of a river, healing from massive solar radiation damage.

Anyhow, What if The Guys Who Wanted to Kill the Dark Phoenix Were Better At Their Job?

Good news is that they’re not really overachieving in that category; they just knock Phoenix out rather than killing her. This is partly because of a courtesy to the X-Men who helped save the Shi’ar from their insane former emperor D’Ken and partly because when Phoenix repaired the M’Kraan Crystal she poured part of her own life force into it and the Shi’ar were worried that killing her would undo those repairs and imperil the Universe all over again. So instead of an execution, they elect to surgically remove Jeans X-Gene and access to her telepathy (and with it; her access to The Phoenix Force)

And from a Super Hero Comic Book Standard, this doesn't result in much of a change to the status quo; in the 616 Scott mourned Jeans death then hecked off to Alaska where he met his fiance/wife Madalyn Pryor; a woman who had no super powers and was otherwise exactly like Jean in all ways (grossly simplifying things in a way beyond the scope of this story). In this story, however, things go down a very different path; for one thing Scott moves to Arizona instead where he’s happily married to a depowered Jean.

Well, he’s happy, Jean is… excessively not, judging from the vast number of cigarettes all around her and the sleeping pills she’s strongly implied to be trying to kill herself with. Seems that when the Shi’ar de powered her, they weren’t just giving her a slap on the wrist for her genocide, they also made sure she *firmly* remembered that she killed billions of innocent people and resquiggled her brains so that every time she falls asleep she relives all her atrocities commited as Dark Phoenix.

Luckily, Cyclops doesn’t have long to worry about the dangerous mental spiral Jean is on, since, like, two seconds after realizing that Jean has a lot of sleeping pills for someone who hates going to sleep and her lack of telepathy means she lost her primary means to interacting with the world, Magneto appears, blows up most of their house and says “Good news; this is one of those times when I’m also an absurdly talented engineer;I can give you your powers back!” And yoinks her off to a rebuilt Asteroid M.

Jean, to her credit, isn’t actually swayed by Magnetos offering of restoring his powers. Timeline is pretty fuzzy, admittedly, but this one of those periods when Magneto is pretty much pure evil as opposed to a guy who has a pretty justifiable distrust of humanity or a monster seeking atonement, and Jean figures that he probably has ulterior motives for trying to restore her to a state of Godhood.

Also the rest of the X-Men reach Asteroid M and a big fight breaks out while Jean has a pretty fierce internal debate about whether it’s worth restoring her mind and body at the risk of reawakening Dark Phoenix. Eventually she decides not to and destroys the machine Magneto built to restore her. However, much more significantly, her powers started coming back WITHOUT so much as touching the machine since, again, this version of Jean is quite literally a God Incarnate, not a person, even if she isn’t aware of that fact, and even Shi’ar science can’t put that particular cork back on the bottle.

Regardless, intentionally rejecting her power winds up being pretty good therapy for Jean who gets over that suicidal ideation pretty much completely and happily settles into the No Powers, Helpful Support Staff for the Xavier Institute; eventually taking over as Headmistress and the leader of the New Mutants, and gives birth to a l’il scamp that is Rachel Summers.

Riiiiiiiiight up to the point where the Secret Wars happens, (Jim Shooter, ruining everything again); and while in the 616 there was a kind of time-blip thing going on so the whole Secret War happened over the course of, like, an afternoon for everyone not involved in the fighting, in this universe it took place over the course of several weeks. Reasonably sure that’s me just no-prizing a minor plothole, however.

Anyway, while all the X-Men and New Mutants are off on Battleworld Jean is left home alone with her baby which wouldn’t be too big of an issue since most of the people who hate those teams were sent there as well. All except one; Jason Wyngarde, Mastermind; the very guy who trying to psychically manipulate Jean into being Dark Phoenix, and got his brain shredded in retaliation when the full scale of what a bad idea that was came to light.

Seems ol’ Jimmy Win never properly recovered from having his consciousness expanded beyond the limits of the universe and he’s been holding a grudge against Jean ever since. And, because that’s not quite bad *enough* it seems that being given entirely too open of a mind means that he is *much* more creative with his ability to create mind-breaking illusions which he’s happy to torture Jean with; convincing her she’s gone to hell where she’s being slashed apart by demons, burned to a crisp and eaten alive by bugs, while being forced to watch her friends and family subjected to the same punishments; up to and including seeing her infant daughter getting impaled by rusty spikes.

No discretion shots either; that’s all fully on panel.

Then we get ourselves ANOTHER little twist after Jean points out that Mastermind still has limits to his power and this is a bit beyond them and he admits that yeah, that’s well beyond Jason Wyngardes power but that’s not who’s got their hands on the steering wheel right now; it seems that Dark Phoenix blowing Masterminds soul apart left a spot perfect for the malevolent psychic demon The Shadow King to claim squatters rights and take over his body so he could have a corporeal form again.

And because this ain’t The Shadow Kings first rodeo when dealing with psychic mutants, he decides to be prudent and just shoots Jean stone dead with a normal ass gun rather than try to duel her for supremacy on the Astral Plane like he usually does. He also steals Rachel with the intent to groom her into being a perfect host body for him, and then leaves because… well… nothing else to do here.

But, again, this isn’t Jean Grey; this is a Capital G God made of meat and bone (or Fire and Life Incarnate, as the book reminds us a whole bunch of times) and after Shadow King leaves, all that Fire and Life leaves her husk and rebuilds itself a new body with a confused jumble of thoughts of both Jeans life as a human and the Phoenixs existence as a cosmic entity of raw flame and power and, thinking Jean would probably try to usurp it if the truth ever came out, vaporizes Jeans still comatose real body before leaving on a quest to get revenge on the Shadow King.

And Uatu says “Oh crap; it’s a god committing first degree murders now. That’s… maybe worse than second degree planet-killing?”

TO BE CONTINUED…

BUT DID IT HAPPEN?!?
Withholding full judgements until the stories done, but near the end of the issue when Jean and the spirit of the Phoenix and commune with one another in a strange astral plane it seems very much to be the White Hot Room that I think Grant Morrison introduced in their run of X-Men, like 15 years later.

Also in one panel, The Shadow King looks a hell of a lot like a Critter, from Critters.

 

[Octopus Prime]

We’ve got days of the futures which have past, presented when George Carragonne and Rod Ramos tell us What If The Phoenix Rose Again

The cover has a slight hint of the direction this story is going.

Anyway, after a two page recap of important context (mostly summing up the previous issue, partly summing up Phoenixs origin); we’re off to the races… and wrapping up the cliffhanger ending from the previous issue in record time.

Phoenix, having some real identity issues in being unsure if she’s a firebird goddess incarnate or a woman who tapped into cosmic power, tracks down the Shadow King to Muir Island where he’s used the islands Mutant research technology to turn the infant Rachel into an adult so he can possess her.

And Jean says “Oh… nah” and incinerates the Shadow Kings astral body and rearranges Rachel’s molecules until she’s a baby instead of an adult. This is all over in, like, two pages.

Jean says “Okay, little slip up there but I gotta make sure to not use my vast cosmic energy anymore.”

And so she does for what the caption box tells us is 8 years (Rachel still seems to be a toddler, however, but everyone is wearing their Jim Lee era costumes, so… make of the timeline as you would) when we get another plot line popping up that was briefly inferred in the previous issue, but you’d be forgiven for missing it.

Seems that anti mutant sentiment had been percolating in the background, as it does every few years, and the new President, who rode in on a platform of racism thanks to the assassination of Senator Kelly, has decided that Mutant Registration is definitely a law he should sign into legislation.

Jean pays attention to the news and says “Well… can’t have that” and zips off to the White House and brain-blasts him to remove all the racism from his perosnality.

This immediately gets him assassinated by his constituents; gun-toting mutant hating militia, and replaced by the unnamed Vice President; a guy who hates Mutants even more and immediately puts the Sentinel Program into full effect, and the new incarnation of Master Mold immediately takes over the country since… we’re doing Days of Future Past now and you’re going to get a bit of Terminator in the stew when you’re cooking with that spice.

Furthermore, based on hearing Rachel saying she had a bad dream that her mother turned into a fire bird, Wolverine decides Jean must have gone Phoenix again and tries to nip that in the bud by stabbing her a bunch as soon as she walks in the door.

He's correct but a *wild* leap based on the available evidence and kind of uncharacteristic way for him to treat her.

Luckily “several knives” are pretty far under the water mark of things Phoenix has to worry about being threatened by, so NBD, but she does elect to leave the X-Men because being repeatedly stabbed by Wolverine ruins the team dynamic a bit.

And, like, a minute after she leaves, the Mansion is attacked and destroyed by an army of Sentinels.

Seriously, they practically pass each other by; it’s not clear if this was a deliberate move from Jean or not.

Anyway, DoFP largely proceeds from here, but on an accelerated timetable. Half the X-Men died in the initial attack, most of the less impressive Mutant population shortly thereafter, and most of the super powered community along with them, and Master Mold and the Sentinels rule over the country, Skynet style.

Then Jean decides she’s done sulking over being stabbed a couple of times by the also-ran in her love triangle and opts to rejoin the X-Men, now hiding in an abandoned Sentinel factory along with whatever other survivors they could scrounge up, and, after quickly assuring them that, yes, she’s wearing red and gold instead of green and gold but she’s regular Phoenix, not Dark Phoenix, she’s welcomed back on the team.

And with several big guns, in the form of Jean and Magneto who was apparently sitting things out for the past decade, restored to them, the X-Men launch a plan to destroy Master Mold and cripple the Sentinel army; which also leads to the deaths of most of the remaining X-Men, but Phoenix lives after single handedly destroying the entire legion of robots and Kitty flings herself into Master Molds head and telefrags his brain, which is *pretty boss*. So the world is saved.

Then Destiny, who inexplicably survived all of this despite pushing 100 years old, tells Phoenix “Well… thanks for stopping all this stuff I really should have seen coming. But there are *zero* potential futures where you stay on Earth and don’t wind up incinerating the planet. And that’s the best case scenario.” And Jean says “Yeah, I thought as much” and leaves the planet to go off to… wherever Gods go when they’re off the clock.

Omnipotence City I guess?

BUT DID IT HAPPEN?!?
Provisionally, at least. As stated, this is largely a retelling of DoFP (albeit with a comparatively happier ending), and this whole two part story was somewhat revisited in the recent Jean Grey miniseries where Jean tries to figure out if any of the instances of her accepting or rejecting the Phoenix Force over the years would improve things, and many of the stories in that series had echoes in this.

NEXT TIME: It’s another silly jokes issue, which are hard to recap so… *something else*, I guess.