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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover how What If…?’s resurrection was from a Steve Ditko-drawn story that had sat in a drawer unused for YEARS!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and tenth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
A Steve Ditko-drawn issue of What If…? that sat unused for years later helped to resurrect the What If…? series.
STATUS:
Apparently True
I’m literally just repeating myself from last time, but as you know, Marvel launched a new series in 1977 called What If…? that was based on the idea of taking notable Marvel moments and then asking, “What if things had gone a different way?” The first one opened up with what if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four when he tried to join the team way back in Amazing Spider-Man #1…
The format of What If…? was that it was a every other month release that was double-sized, so there were often multiple stories in every issue. Since these stories often attracted good talent, that was a lot of pages to “steal” artists from other books and so in 1984, Marvel abruptly cancelled the series in 1984, while then regular (or close to regular) writer Peter B. Gillis had some stories in development, including what I presume would have been a 50th issue two-parter.
Gillis explained why the book was canceled to the always informative Jarrod Buttery in TwoMorrows’ Back issue #111, “As I said, doing a regular double-sized book and plundering top-tier artists for it was a major production headache. By all accounts, sales were good. But the axe came quickly and unexpectedly. I had gotten paid for the [touted] two-issue double-sized X-Men monster, which was more or less Magneto forming the X-Men. I am fuzzy about the details of the story, and don’t have the thing itself, but I was looking forward to working with Jerry Ordway with a hunger that passeth all understanding. It would have been so damn good. But we did have our revenge….”
I wrote about that X-Men story in part one of this installment’s legends, and Jerry Ordway was nice enough to explain how that story never happened on Twitter, “When I went to Marvel to ink Fantastic Four over Byrne, they gave me What If? plots to work on in my spare time:) That never happened, as I was suddenly inking Crisis On Infinite Earths at DC, overlapping the Byrne stuff by a solid month as they begged me to start on #5, not #6.”
Well, as I noted last time, in 1985, Marvel announced plans to then publish the unused issues of What If…? that Gillis has worked on as special one-shots, but obviously the X-Men one had not even gotten past plots, so that never happened, but another one of the stories had actual art drawn by Steve Ditko. Gillis noted in 1985 to Peter Sanderson for Amazing Heroes’ 1985 Preview, “Then there will be a story drawn by Steve Ditko and written by Gillis. ‘There is an Iron Man story,’ Gillis says, ‘predicated on what would happen if’ in the origin story of the original Iron Man, when Tony Stark first built his armored suit while being held captive by Communists, Stark didn’t figure out how to use the iron suit in time and is forced to work for the Communists’ as Iron Man. ‘Interestingly enough,’ Gillis pointed out, ‘Steve Ditko is the only artist currently working for Marvel who ever drew the original Iron Man in his original armor.’ at the time those early Iron Man stories first appeared. Nick Fury, Thor, and the Fantastic Four will be guest stars in the story.
As noted, the 1985 one-shots never came about (perhaps because they lost Ordway to Crisis?), but unlike the never-drawn Ordway stories, since Marvel had actual art on this one, after a few years, someone at Marvel said that they really ought to just use these pages that were already paid for and it wasn’t like they would clash with continuity since it was specifically an alternate reality story.
So What If…? Special #1 came out in 1988, with an Al Milgrom cover…
Pat Redding did finishes over Ditko…
The Communists force Tony to work for him, but eventually the Fantastic Four figure it out and Reed saves Tony’s life and sends the armor back to the Commies as a bomb…
The issue was a surprise hit! Gillis recalled to Buttery, “We already had the Iron Man What If?—the one drawn by S*T*E*V*E D*I*T*K*O—in the can when the book was cancelled. And since Marvel had already paid all that money for it, they eventually decided to put it out as a one-shot. As it turned out, the book sold so well that—as it got told to me, and I can’t vouch for this absolutely—they were told to revive the book. Except that by then, I was on my way out the door from Marvel, for a whole mess of reasons.”
Roy Thomas had returned to Marvel since the original series had ended and so he wrote the first issue of the new volume, just like he had of the first volume!
Thanks to Jarrod Buttery, Peter B. Gillis and Peter Sanderson for the information!
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed – Discover the odd reason why Loki was cut from a filmed cameo in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
PART THREE SOON!
Check back soon for part 3 of this installment’s legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com
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