What If and Elseworlds
Where there are superhero comics, there are alternate universes. You can’t have one without the other.
If you lock a bunch of writers in a room with a Spider-Man comic, in ten minutes they’ll have come up with thirty story ideas about what he’d be like in medieval times or if he’d been bitten by a radioactive horse instead of a spider. They are incorrigible that way. But the way Marvel and DC have always handled their alternate universe stories has been dramatically different.
Marvel’s attempts came in the form of their long running series What If?, a comic book that looked at specific moments in a character’s history and asked what would happen if something went a bit differently. Examples include What if Jane Foster Was Thor? and What if Spider-Man’s Daughter Had Lived?
On the other hand, DC took the approach of doing prestige one-shots or miniseries that re-imagined their heroes in different times or places. For instance, Gotham by Gaslight, sees a Victorian Batman facing off against Jack the Ripper. Both interesting approaches, both approaches that I love.
