What if a woman had the power of Thor? (What if 66)

[ozaline]

Before the view announced Thor was to be replaced by a woman, before Thor Girl, there was one of my favorite issues of What If...

What If #66: What If Rogue Possessed the Power of Thor





I'm not sure if the use of the Watcher was still the common method of introducing What If stories at this point but the story begins instead with Destiny and the other members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants inprisoned on Rhyker's Island during the events of Avengers Annual #10 (a really great book in it's own right that introduced Rogue, addressed the rapey treatment of Ms. Marvel in Avengers #200, plus had Spider-Woman). Destiny has a vision of a possible branching path that the world might take.






Rogue's syntax becomes a mix of her own southern accent and Thor's pseudo-Shakespearean speech, and with her new found might she is able to destroy both the Vision, and Jocasta.




In Asgard Odin morns the loss of his son but dispatches Sif and the Warriors Three to Midgard to deal with the threat of Rogue. Meanwhile the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants make good their escape from jail.



Rogue throws the Blob out of the plane, and Pyro retaliates by attacking her, igniting the fuel in the jet in the process and killing everyone aboard but Rogue, who grieves in the wreckage until a kind stranger comes along to give her new life purpose.





Rogue and Loki attack Asgard together and though the combined forces of Asgard's defenders, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four are able to stop Loki's army he and his new protge are able to make it to Odin's throne room.








"His heart soars. For he knows now that though he has lost a son-- he has gained a daughter!"

Comments

[misanthr0pe]

Rogue's accent has always seemed kind of half assed to me. If you're going to go southern and show it through spelling, you really need more than just I as ah.

[shadowpsykie]

Ah don't know what you mean shug.

[misanthr0pe]

Ah mean they ah many otha ways of showin southen leanins.

Say it out loud and you'll be understood pretty much any where in georgia.

[shadowpsykie]

heh. i took Drama in High School and have always loved doing Southern Accents (yes, the mexican boy likes the drawl) so i used to practice during church (okay okay istill do:>). Some of the prayers are ideal for a southern accent. i get a few stares sometimes.

[shadowpsykie]

have the What if's always been kinda cheesy and dramatic? almost all the ones i have read have been (not bad at all just uped to 11) even some of the modern times, or are they reflections of the silver aged cheese?

[misanthr0pe]

I've been binging on elsewheres lately and this seems like the best place to interject. Do they ever get creative? They all seem to be "slight to moderate change of origin" and subsequent story that rolls out from it.

[shadowpsykie]

they don't always change origins, sometimes they show what would have happend if event B happened instead of Event A. What if Captain America Won the Civil War? What if captain America was thawed during vietnam? what if X-Men Beat the Avengers?

Most of the time the outcome is actually better than the original (in particular to events like AvX or Civil War... which honestly after those events feels like salt in the wounds)

[donnblake]

Only in terms of modern comics! I remember the old ones being fairly terrible scenarios. If Spider-man joins the Fantastic Four, Reed Richards and Johnny Storm become crazy anti-Atlantean Knights Templar, for example.

[shadowpsykie]

heh

[misanthr0pe]

That might be the difference between elsewheres and what ifs. Elsewheres seem to all be about taking the same origin but tweaking it. Sometimes quite a bit, sometimes superman is a brit, and sometimes batman is a bloodthirsty vampire or a despotic ruler of a forsaken land.

[shadowpsykie]

well it depends.... Elseworlds are usually in graphic novel or miniseries form, where as What ifs are single issues. Else worlds really gets into it. Like, the vampire batman wasn't an Origin, it;s like it takes place on a day where batman happens to be fighting dracula and then gets bitten. rather than a "Bruce's parents were killed by a vampire, he is bitten by the vampire as well, but a young james gordon appears and the vampire runs off, the vampire bite, thought not completely turning him, did give him some vampiric powers and over the years he seeks to use these powers in order to track down and kill all blood drinkers until he falls in love with one who, like him, is able to keep her blood lust in check"

[donnblake]

Whereas in that one What-If run, we got "What if Logan had been a prohibition bootlegger," "What if Captain America had his origins in the Civil War," What if Namor was raised by his human father," and "What if the Fantastic Four were Soviets?"

[misanthr0pe]

Yeah I was really hoping for more crazy out of the elseworlds. More like the one with the lovecraftian horror, or the conjurers one where the world was dependent on magic. Something that does something really different and interesting. Unfortunately a lot of what's different isn't really interesting.

[shadowpsykie]

i don't know. I loved Kingdom Come. Wonder Woman Hiketea is GREAT. JLA: A League of One is AMAZING. heard good things about The Nail

[writeofway]

The Nail and it's sequel Another Nail are fine stories, actually. I don't just say that as a huge fan of Alan Davis and Mark Farmer's collaborations, though.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

"What if captain America was thawed during Vietnam?" They didn't really do that, did they? I mean, aside from hundreds of comic books published during the Sixties and Seventies.

[shadowpsykie]

ahahhaha i don't think so. though... it's possible. the closest i have seen is this: http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1021014.html

which REALLY brought tears to my eyes... it's one of my favorite Captain America Stories.

....though it seems like the user is overdrawn on thier image allotment....

[donnblake]

A fair amount of them are "What if this specific storyline had gone differently?"

[icon_uk]

Including pretty much my favourite

[salamangkiero]

One of the best What If's I found, and still found cheesy, was "What if Elektra had lived?"

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Before this, there was a What If where Jane Foster becomes Thor. It ended with Don Blake becoming Thor as he was destined to and Odin marrying Jane Foster, which seemed at least three forms of creepy when I read it.

[shadowpsykie]

now Picture Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkin snogging :D

[bruinsfan]

Actually *less* creepy than the leering expression on Odin's face in that final page. I still remember it decades later.

[icon_uk]

No, that's actually a rather interesting mental image....

[halloweenjack]

"Cripes! Thor's being trashed--by a woman?!" Who wrote this mess? (I'm pretty sure that it's McFarlane on the art.)

[northstarfan]

Simon Furman on story (probably best known for some 90's issues of Alpha Flight and Northstar's generally horrible mini series from the same era) and John Royle on art.

[skemono]

Furman's probably better known for his Transformers work. And he didn't handle women well there, either, from what I've read.

[northstarfan]

Yes, this. It's weird. I know Furman's done reams of TF work, and yet it always slips my mind.

[ozaline]

But the line also appears in Chris Clairemont's Avengers Annual... the moment of change here is that in the comics Rogue does use Thor as a shield as she thinks about here, so Furman can not be blamed for the line.

[bruinsfan]

To be fair, it is Hawkeye that's speaking, and I think political correctness would have been pretty out-of-character for him, especially back then. Claremont does take pains to give Carol Danvers a voice and point out the Avengers' complicity in letting Marcus manipulate her at the end of the same issue.

[ozaline]

Oh for sure sexist character does not equal sexist writer and the Annual as you say exists to address the very rapey subtext of Thor and Hawkeye's previous actions.

All I was saying is you can't point to this line and say, "oh that Furman," because he's copying it over from Clairemont.

But on point with Furman, I should post the UK TF comic "Prime's Rib" sometime... it's... interesting.

[icon_uk]

I've thought about posting that, but the 1/3 rule stymied me, good luck!

[bruinsfan]

Anyone else look at those scans of Rogue on the airplane and immediately think of Madeline Kahn going "Oh, you men are all alike!" in Young Frankenstein?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWdU0tmNFgw

[blues32]

When I was a kid, I once went to my mother's office with her. I was sick and she couldn't just leave me at the house. I brought ONE comic with me. This one. I read it over and over and over.

And now, decades later...I realize this was all just a vision Destiny had.