Okay, since have access to pretty much every What If…? issue ever, I’ll be taking your requests for reviews.

A full list of every What If…? scenario can be found at this Wikipedia page, so scope it out and if you’d like to know what happens in the story I will be more than happy to read it and tell just what would happen if Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive stink bug or whatever.*

Keep in mind that I have some “special posts” already planed, so I may not be able to answer all of your requests in detail without becoming redundant, but I should be able to do most anything people what too see.

Also, this is my contribution to National De-lurking Week, so if you’re reading this please make a comment. Please, massage my ego and tell me someone is reading the crap I post.

*Mary Jane, Aunt May, Black Cat, Green Goblin, Daredevil, The Owl, Rhino, Wolverine, and Flat Man all die.

Branching off of Nostalgia Week, I’ve decided it is time to take a good, close look at a series that holds a very special place in my heart: What If…?

What If…? is the quintessential comic nerd series. The basic premise, for those who do not know, is to explore alternate outcomes for famous Marvel storylines. Every alternate scenario is presented as a question. Its with this series that we get the final answer for the burning questions like, What if the X-Men lost Inferno? or What if Captain America came back today? or What if Longshot didn’t have a mullet? The truly important stuff! I had a subscription to What If…? as a kid, and I probably didn’t really know anything about the original stories, but I still loved seeing weird, over-the-top scenarios every month. What If…? was the best.

And for all of those people out there who draw a parallel between What If…? and DC’s Elseworlds books, please stop it. There is a pretty noticeable different between the two and the difference is what makes What If…? the more superior series as a whole. As I said, most every What If…? is based on an existing event in the Marvel canon, only with a different outcome.* This is a lot different than Elseworlds, which are all about creating totally different universes for the characters to exist in, therefor telling stories of Batman being De Vinci’s apprentice, Steel being an slave during the Civil War (the real one, guys) and Hal Jordan being a Nazi. Other than that last one, none of those premises have any basis in mainstream continuity. A lot of Elseworlds are really, really good, but the concept of What If…?, being grounded in canon, provides much more nerdy fun than seeing Robin dressed up as a samurai.

But there is a dark side to What If…? You see, I have a theory that one of the main purposes of the series, other than hypothetical nerdy delights, is to put fanboys in their place. What If…? proves that if events happened any differently than what is published everything gets completely fucked up! Everyone dies. For instance, for all fans annoyed with the happenings in Spider-Man: The Other can just read the recent What If…? based on the story to see just how fucked up things would be if Spider-Man had not made all huggy with his inner arachnid. Essentially it is a “Shut up and quit whining” from Marvel to fanboys having hissy fits. So it’s a rule: nothing ever comes out right in a What If…?, so be happy with the way things are, bitch.

Body counts and unavoidable apocalypses aside, What If…? is almost always fun, if only for how ridiculous the stories get. So let’s take a Journey Into the Hypothetical and check out some of the best What If…? scenarios of all time. I’ll still be blogging about other stuff, but for the next few weeks/month/however long until I get tired of it, we’ll be regularly checking out classic What If…?s. Who knows what’s in store for Continuity Error!?**

*Yeah, I know there were some What If…? that had premises a lot like Elseworlds, but there’s only a few of them. So, I don’t care.

**The Starjammers all die. Sorry, it’s just what happens.

I obsessively track my blog’s traffic using Google Analytics, which is pretty sad considering how little traffic I actually get. But one of the best features of Analytics is the ability to see what words people were Googling when they visited your page.

I wrote about this a while back after I started getting a ton of traffic from people searching for “incest” and “incest comics.” This was after I blogged about the theme of incest in the Dr. Thirteen backups in Tales of the Unexpected. If fact, I even got a comment on the post by some pervert defending his “perfectly normal desires” to have sex with his daughter. I deleted the comment by the way. Anyway, I now have a few more posts under my belt, some more content and so new hilarious, if not a little creepy, keywords are popping up.

The most popular new trend (but still way behind the incest-related searches) are concerning Psylocke, who I blogged about during Nostalgia Week. There is “betsy braddock” and “betsy braddock nude” (first result, baby!) and then there is my favorite so far, “psylocke costume wedgie.”

Other popular searches are “spiderman penis,” “mantra boob” and “she hulk nude.” Nerds just love their fictional characters naked, don’t they?

Of course there are plenty of normal, healthy searches that land people here. I’m the second result for “jla vs predator” and terms related to Nightwing and Civil War are among my all time most popular search results.

But they will aways be outweighed by the pervy searches looking for nasty porn and naked superheroes. And of course the funniest thing is that the posts that are getting all the dirty attention are in opposition of the concept that is being searched for. My Dr. Thirteen post takes a strong stance against incest and the irresponsible use of it as a theme in fiction. The Psylocke post is about the absurdity of her oversexualization and the Spider-Man penis one was basically about how seeing his wang is no big deal. Only the She-Hulk post, part of Cheesecake/Beefcake Appreciation Week, supplies some naughty thrills. But even then she was wearing clothes.

I would give anything to see what people were searching for when they stumbled across entries on other feminist comic blogs like When Fangirls Attack, One Diverse Comic Book Nation, Comic Book Thoughts, Pretty, Fizzy Paradise and Written World. I’m sure most of them will be along the lines of “wonder woman naked” “batgirl rape pics” or “amanda waller nude fan art.”