And then there was the time The original X-men became purse snatchers...

[wizardru]

I've been going through my comics and inventorying them and selecting what to sell...so I've come across lots of stuff, lately. Here's one I forgot about.

So the year was 2001 and the title was "Fantastic Four: Bigtown". The conceit of this "What If..." story is a simple one. What if Tony Stark and Reed Richards actually went ahead and changed the world? The results are....not what you'd expect.

Manhattan now is one super future city that has expanded over the rest of the five boroughs and Newark and beyond. Things have improved so much that Johnny Storm's girlfriend Soledad is heading over to a much nicer Newark to buy him a present.


But there she's ambushed by....The Mutts?!? Yes, it's actually the original five X-men, working as the world's least efficient street thugs.



Soledad gets saved by THE X-SQUAD. The only guy I know in that group is apparently Speedball...the rest are all original and non-descript characters. They are a product of a collaboration between...really...Hank Pym and Charles Xaiver making artificial mutants to act as cops. (Ruin? Wrecker? Who are these people?)

This doesn't sit well with everyone...especially The Brotherhood! You know, the group with Havok, Storm and Wolverine?



The Avengers and FF show up and put them down. There's also a subplot how all of the biggest villain names in the MU are trying to organize against the status quo. A meeting with the Red Skull, Dr. Doom, Magneto, Ultron, Namor and the Hulk that goes about as well as you might expect. There's also some subplots about Hawkeye and Mockingbird's marriage fragmenting after she kills a guy to save his life.

It's kind of a weird comic that is trying very hard to be an elseworld title. Just thought I'd share.

Comments

[shanejayell]

Nice art, anyway.

I understand it got chopped down from a longer story, too.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

You'd think that a group that's 40% female wouldn't call itself "The Brotherhood."

And, I know Quicksilver is the fastest man alive, but it still must take a while to shape his hair, eyebrows and upside-down goatee like that each morning.

[cleome45]

Well, for that matter: Why is that other team still known as X-MEN?

[q99]

That's what he does in his spare time while waiting for everyone else to not be so slow :)

[nemryn]

Not that long! He can manage it in eleven seconds flat.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Maybe he should take another two seconds for reflection. When Wolverine laughs at your eyebrows (and I have no doubt that he would have laughed at that) it's time to reevaluate your look.

[sianmink]

Worth it, to look 20% cooler.

[equinox216]

Yeah, but who in comics actually knows the word 'sodality'?

[amancalledblaze]

I remember hearing about this long ago and was really curious about the concept, I was taking part in a Marvel RP that was trying to do a little of this same idea, what if heroes try to actually change the status quo in marvel. Sort of forgot all about this though so neat to see it again!

[q99]

How does it resolve?

[thanekos]

The bad men commit their legions to an attack- Atlanteans, the Red Skull's legion of fanatic Odin worshippers, Doom's Knights of Latveria and mentally dominated Silver Surfer, and the Brotherhood descend on the city.

A surge of heroes rises to meet them; subplots are resolved, the attack is turned off, and Doom is last seen confronting a freed Surfer.

[q99]

That... sounds kinda badass. Like I want to see it :)

[wizardru]

Regrettably, I don't think I have any other issues. I think I was underwhelmed enough by this issue to not bother....or it may have been when I was unemployed and had to drop comics. One of those.

[auggie18]

This incapsulates one of the things that really bothers me about alternate universes. You don't get any backstory about how certain characters got into the situations we see them in. Four out of those five people came from steady homes. Two, maybe three, out of those four came from well off families. Four of them graduated college. How did they find themselves in a position in which they would need to go out and mug people? Why couldn't Jean just telepathically make Soledad give her her purse? Why isn't Jean Psych? Who would honestly think that the codename Grrl is a good idea, particularly seeing as she appears to be in her thirties?

I know, I know. Limited space to tell a story and all.

[long_silence]

Psych sounds like Cyke. That's the only reasoning I can come up with.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought. My second was "Wait a minute. That makes no sense."

[biod]

I suppose Dys/Eutopian(?) gang members aren't the best bunch to pick names for superheroes.

[sevarem]

Your sensible logic can never defeat comic book logic!

[wizardru]

Yeah, there's not a lot about the alternate reality that actually makes sense in that context. There are lots of ways to do alternate universe stories: one is to recast everything but keep an evocative context to the originals (such as in another comic I may post: "Batman: The Doom that came to Gotham"). Here, they've gone with the: everything is familiar but different approach...but much of the stuff is shorthand and not really explained. Some stuff is explained in a single panel, such as Hank Pym flashing back to his first adventure and instead of saying "Hey, this shrinking stuff could be AWESOME!", he said "OMFG I AM NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN SERIOUSLY GUYS THIS IS DANGEROUS!".

All in all, I'm not really sure what this mini was trying to accomplish, other than suggesting that the MU wouldn't really be that better off if Reed could cure cancer, or something.

[mullon]

Ha, "Grrrl". That is so lame.

[espanolbot]

"Oh no, we're being attacked by Grill!"

[sianmink]

[sevarem]

Well, that is a pretty mighty looking spatula.

[eyz]

Cyclops is channeling sort of a Booster Gold vibe here!

[arbre_rieur]

What Steve Englehart had to say about this series:

An almost total disaster.

Conceived as a gift to Marvel - a new franchise with unlimited possibility - it ended up edited by people who couldn't understand it (and it ain't that hard). It was approved as six issues, plotted as six issues, and then cut to four. The first issue was printed with pages out of order and characters dumbed down. The title was changed to FANTASTIC FOUR: BIG TOWN, even though it featured all the major groups. And then #4 had non-sequiturs edited in for no reason anyone's ever been able to explain. (My favorite is a caption, "The very core of the earth," as the Silver Surfer soars into New York.)

Nice covers, though.

http://www.steveenglehart.com/Comics/Big%20Town%201-4.html

[q99]

Ahh, that makes me a bit... less tempted to hunt down the rest of the series.