Category: What If?
Last article published: 20 February 2023
This is the 110th post under this label
When I quit doing What If? weekly write-ups, it was with a sense that volume 2 was too interested in then-recent events (like Galactic Storm) which I had no attachment to nor knowledge of. But it still sometimes went back into Marvel's deep history, like it did with today's instalment. So I'm not unhappy about rummaging through the Watcher's files once more as he asks, What if Namor and joined the Fantastic Four back in FF #4? (By way of Ron Marz, Gavin Curtis and Sam de la Rosa)
What If vol.2 #27 (May 1991)
Based on: Fantastic Four #4
The true history: While running frow a row with the Thing, Johnny Storm finds an amnesiac Namor living as a homeless man. He throws him in the ocean to jostle his memory. It works. Namor swims back to Atlantis and finds it destroyed, vows revenge on the surface world.
Turning point: What if the Invisible Girl had looked behind her and seen Johnny and Namor heading towards the beach?
Story type: Hockey Trade
Watcher's mood: Austere
Altered history: In this version of events, Sue is present when Namor regains his memories, and the attraction he feels for her prevents him from immediately going to Atlantis and seeing it destroyed.
Instead, he rejoins the Storms and is TOLD that it is (by know-it-all Reed Richards who is soon on the scene, and who also offers to help search for any survivors). Sue's influence tames his anger and he accepts her invitation to join the team, now known as the Fantastic Five. He even gets some trademark blue trunks, and takes part in the FF's early adventures as told by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, like Doctor Doom sending the team to pirate times to find and bring back Blackbeard's treasure. In the original story, Ben becomes Blackbeard, but here, Namor can just go down to the pirate's sunken wreck and get the actual treasure, power gems that he knows how to use against Doom.
But as before, this is a Doom-Bot, so there's no real change to the Marvel history. (And Marz cheats too, because Sue exhibits force field powers at this too-early juncture, but again, this doesn't change anything.) Where things start going sideways is that Doom shoots at her in this incident and Namor gets so upset, it's clear he's in love with her, and she reciprocates, once again taming his wild heart and violent impulses.
History continues apace, and Subby is there for the FF's various recorded adventures, and he's often the key to winning the day, perhaps a little faster than in the original timeline. More importantly, Sue's schoolgirl crush on Reed was quickly forgotten in favor of the Atlantean prince, and Reed, if he had feelings for her, never expressed them. Namor asks Sue to marry him and she accepts.
Clearly, there was something between Sue and Reed, because not only does she feel awkward about telling him, he resigns at the reception (way to make her big day about YOURSELF, Reed), stating devotion to his first love - scientific research. Back to Fantastic Four, with Namor nominally in charge. Villains continued to be defeated more soundly. The Mole Man struck up a friendship with Namor preventing any more attacks on the surface world (from both land and sea). Richards Technologies made leaps and bounds that started affecting mainstream society for the better. And Reed hire a research assistant who could become his second love (if he ever notices that she's falling for him)... except that she was secretly working for Dr. Doom! (And spiking his coffee with neurotoxin.)
Meanwhile, Sue's pregnant and, in her marital bliss, rooting for these two. So next thing you know, Reed is Doom's captive and he's using drugs to make him give him access to FF HQ so he can kill the team with Reed watching. But his feelings for Sue are enough to make him snap out of his drugged state when Doom goes for her first.
Doom retreats as the rest of the team show up, but not before Reed is killed, his last words how Sue was special to him. RECORD SCRATCH! Naw! His assistant rushes in and saves him with her doctorly skills! They are married almost as soon as he gets out of hospital, and she's pregnant by the time Sue is breastfeeding a little fish boy. And years later?
And the adventure continues for Marvel's First Family. Very interesting that Marz eschews big twists and shocks common to What If? in favor of showing how storylines would ACTUALLY have progressed over decades of Marvel history (give or take the bit where the heroes refuse to have the Rama-Tut adventure). It's not flashy, but it's more realistic from a comics publishing point of view.
Books cancelled as a result: Integrated into the FF so early, Silver Age Sub-Mariner comics are unlikely to have been published, though by the 80s, nothing would prevent a solo book for someone also in a team.
These things happen: The Sub-Mariner DID of course make friends with the FF, and there have been storylines where Sue might have left Reed for him. But generally, this did not come to pass, though I must point out that the true FF did have kids who then went on to wear a white FF-based costume as part of the Future Foundation. That last page certainly resonates.
Next time (when there is a next time): What if Captain America Had Led an Army of Super Soldiers in World War II?
My guess: Peggy Carter wouldn't have made the cut and in the early 21st Century, Siskoid would have bitched and moaned about it.
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