What If #27: Phoenix didn't die

[lordultimus]

Comments

[scorntx]

-"What happens in this reality is perhaps worse!"-
Hmm, gee, ya think, Uatu?
Let's see.
Option 1: Woman / energy construct gets fragged, Cyclops is heartbroken but the world keeps on spinning.
Option 2: Woman / energy construct gets lobotomised, then eventually regains her phenominal cosmic power, kills her friends and family, then cracks the entire earth like an egg, followed by everything else.

Pretty easy to tell which outcome is worse, no?

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

I always had a really hard time reading this one when I was young, because, well, the meat of the book is about Jean killing my heroes one by one. That's the whole draw. It was never easy to read. :(

Appreciate your leaving out Kitty's death, though.

[tcampbell1000]

"If the Phoenix had not died... then the Phoenix WOULD have died, just along with LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE."

[rfmcdonald]

Is this panel-by-panel destruction of the X-Men Grand Guignol?

[freezer]

So this boils down to "The universe dies because Scott Summers was a putz?"

[philippos42]

This was the first What If...? I ever read, probably when I was eight years old, and I didn't even know that What If...? was a series, let alone that they mostly ended with over-the-top terrible no-good bad endings. So I really took it as, "This is why the Jean Grey Phoenix had to die." I've disliked Jean ever since.

[stolisomancer]

This one's rough.

I think there's probably a reason why it's the only one that got effectively retconned in volume 2, with a plot by Claremont and George Caragonnes (who'd go on to be the brains behind Penthouse Comix). That one's at least as much of a slaughterfest, but it's not as bad and it's got a much stronger ending.