Videos for Alternate Historians #7

How I look when someone mentions their favorite conspiracy theory.

Since we didn't have a Weekly Update on Monday, lets watch some history warping television in Videos for Alternate Historians. First up, the horrifying future presented in Nolan's Interstellar where students are taught the Moon landing was faked:

What an infuriating scene. Just thinking about makes me sick. Speaking of the moon, Space Nazi film Iron Sky is coming out with a sequel. Check out the teaser trailer below:

Does anyone else see an influence of Worldwar in this flick? Finally, there is going to be a Marvel Attack on Titan crossover and the alternate history genre is responsible for making it happen:

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Worlds Apart: What if Marvel Never Merged With DC? by Ben Ronning

Entry for the DBWI Writing Contest.

It is almost impossible to imagine what the DC universe would look like if you did not see Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark attending the same cocktail parties or Spider-Man slinging with the Teen Titans yet such ideas would have been inconceivable thirty-five years ago. Marvel Comics seemingly brought DC, the giant that survived the moral panic that shut many of its competitors down in the fifties, to its knees in the sixties, struggled to stay afloat in the seventies, and vanished completely by the dawn of the eighties. Interestingly, Marvel’s demise did not come from the quality of its product but from deteriorating market and lack of editorial direction. The departure of Roy Thomas as editor-in-chief in 1973 left a gaping void within the company since there was no senior management to groom any replacement, which led to a revolving door of editor-in-chiefs and missed deadlines that came to a stop when Marvel’s parent company, Cadence Industries, suspended operations in 1981 and sold its assets to Warner Communications in 1983 in what many in the industry called a coup. However, the question of comic book aficionados and alternate historians is, “what if a more capable editor took the reins of Marvel Comics in the late seventies?” Would Marvel Comics still be in existence, and who could have been up to the task? One only needs to look to Jim Shooter for the answer.

Shooter was already something of a legend in the industry because he was the teenage prodigy who wrote the adventures of the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics from 1966 to 1970. He had left the industry by time he reached maturity and despite a few brief forays throughout the seventies, he did not return to the fold until after Marvel had collapsed. By this time, several other professionals like Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, and Jim Starlin grew dissatisfied with DC’s policies towards freelancers who saw no benefits or royalties for the characters they had created. Shooter seized on this opportunity to attract these disaffected creators and exploit the burgeoning direct market by forming Epic Comics, which promised creators royalties should their title reach certain sales benchmark or if their if the character crossed over into licensed mediums like action figures and animated series. Had Shooter worked for Marvel in the late seventies it is likely that rising titles like Claremont’s X-Men would have possibly reached greater heights had the company not imploded. Many comic book historians and even Claremont himself admitted that The Outcasts was essentially a continuation of X-Men run but never regained its predecessor’s momentum. Even Frank Miller revealed that he meant for his hard-boiled revival of the Golden Age Daredevil to be a re-imagining of his Marvel namesake, which begs the question if Marvel missed out on a renaissance and what could have been if former Marvel staples like Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Thor remained with their mother company?

No doubt a revitalized Marvel would have had a ripple effects on its main competitor, DC Comics. While Epic’s titles enjoyed critical acclaim and robust sales, the company could not challenge the DC juggernaut, especially after the relaunch of several former Marvel titles (which all took place on Earth-4) reeled in old “Marvel Zombies.” However, sales became relatively stagnant in the mid to late eighties, as DC remained more or less complacent without any major competitors. Declining sales forced DC to completely reboot its entire line when Alan Moore, who ironically rose to prominence for his work on a character named Marvelman in the United Kingdom, destroyed the old DC Multiverse and folded all the characters in Twilight of the Superheroes in 1987. Would a viable Marvel forced a major change earlier? In my opinion, it would have. Many editors and writers complained that the concept of multiple universes was confusing with a Justice League on one earth, a Justice Society with older counterparts or copies on another earth, an evil “mirror universe” version of the Justice League on another, the Avengers on yet another, and so forth. A viable Marvel would have likely prompted such a drastic change perhaps two or three years before Twilight hit the shops and the newsstands of our world yet I will not complain as the event streamlined the DC line and renewed interest in its homegrown characters.

However, the liquidation of Cadence Industries in 1986 indicates that the company would have sold Marvel to a new owner but to who would be a good question. Take News Corporation’s acquisition of Epic Comics in 1992 as an example. Superheroes became big business in Hollywood in the wake of Batman’s blockbuster outing in 1989 and the buildup to James Cameron’s Spider-Man in the winter of 1993 after the massive success of Terminator 2 two years prior. Though Shooter had guided Epic with a steady hand for the better part of a decade, his dictatorial methods as an editor eventually alienated most of the industry’s talent. Alan Moore even sardonically compared Shooter to Hitler after his very public fallout with Epic in the late eighties. With sales declining in the early nineties, Shooter’s partners ousted him from the company and accepted News Corps’ buyout after a failed bid by Ron Perelman. Whereas Warner Bros. and DC touted Spider-man and the slightly darker Batman as family entertainment, 20^th Century Fox wanted to bring the genre to the 18-34 demographic and gave Frank Miller free reign over the line. Many comic book fans view Frank Miller as one of the godfathers of deconstruction alongside Alan Moore but where the body of Moore work was both intellectual and subtle, Miller had all the refinement of a sledgehammer. Sentinels (based off of the Charlton characters Epic acquired in 1988) was the “forbidden fruit” of my generation because of the gratuitous violence and overt sexuality ostensibly meant for adults also titillated teenage boys by the hundreds of thousands and spawned countless imitators. Fans recollect the Epic Comics of this period as poorly written, extremely lowbrow, and almost absurdly horrendous portrayal of the human anatomy, which makes it a popular source of Internet memes to this day. It is hard not to find someone wearing a shirt with the infamous “Answer the Motherf***in Question!!!” panel silk-screened on it at a comic convention today.

Epic’s content drew ire from the usual suspects; evangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson called it “pornography” peddled to corrupt the morals of “Today’s” youth and found unlikely allies in the feminist movement who decried Miller’s treatment of women in the books. (An allegation that is impossible to dispute considering how Nightshade’s costume was essentially duct tape placed over her breasts and genitals.) Miller was defiant in the face of his detractors when he publicly criticized parents for not paying enough attention to what their kids were buying and that he was not their “godd**n babysitter.” The growing public furor raised interest in Epic Comics with Sentinels continuing to sell in the neighborhood of one million copies each issue and raised the profile of the film adaptation in the short term. Video games also came under intense scrutiny over the intense violence in games such as Mortal Kombat, and this combine Epic’s continued defiance towards its created the perfect storm that led to the moral crusades by the alliance of the Moral Majority, women’s, and parents’ groups. The nationwide boycott of comic books, video games, and other media deemed “unfit” for minors devastated both Epic Comics and forced hundred of comics specialty shops to go out of business. To make matters worse, the critically maligned 1996 Sentinels film flopped at the box office when it returned less than a third of its 75 million dollar budget. Roger Ebert famously remarked that, “This film is nothing more than pornographic snuff with special effects, and not enough good snuff at that.” The failure of Sentinels resulted in mass cancellations at Epic Comics and left a barren landscape of defunct publishers in its wake throughout the late nineties.

While comic fans did not witness a repeat of the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that saw the end of EC Comics forty years prior, the so-called “Epic Backlash” brought more rigorous control of content in the medium. The Comic Code Authority was no longer the “internal affairs” of the industry but a third party that enforced a rigorous ratings system where the Authority forced retailers to sell titles with “adult” content like Sentinels under the counter. While innocuous at first, the Comics Code Authority eventually earned a reputation as an industry censor when it rejected books deemed “subversive” after the terrorist attacks on Grand Central Station and Wall Street on September 9, 1999. For its part, DC Comics weathered the storm through its offering of “family entertainment” in contrast to Epic’s edgier offering. The Batman and Spider-Man sequels continued to turn a profit despite the mounting kitsch of the later films. It was only until recently the Edwards administration that the banality of the “vanilla” oughties is wearing off. DC Comics is finally experimenting again as new generation of writers ushered in an era of “reconstruction” in contrast to the postmodern deconstruction of eighties and nineties. Comics today borrow the imagination and weirdness from the innocent days of its Silver Age but with a subtle adult sensibility that would not have been possible fifteen years ago and it appears that the DC Juggernaut is invincible after the three-peat successes of Green Lantern, Flash, and Wonder Woman. A humbled Epic Comics is still in business today but relies more on licensed properties like Star Wars and nostalgia from its heyday to maintain its anemic twenty percent market share. Had Jim Shooter started at Marvel at that crucial period in the seventies I imagine we would see a completely different landscape in comics. While Spider-Man and Captain America retain their iconic status, some heroes like Thor and the X-Men fell by the wayside in the last thirty-five years. Perhaps The Avengers would have been the film to draw almost two billion dollars worldwide instead of Justice League.

But as Stan Lee famously said at a convention twenty years, “Just imagine.”

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Aspiring writer and platypus enthusiast Ben Ronning has lurked the AH.com boards since June 2006. When he is not roaming the multiverse, he can be found at his blog, Thoughts of a Platypus.

Alternate History and Superheroes

Guest post by Ben Ronning.

Superheroes and alternate history are two subgenres of science fiction that have always appeared to compliment one another but very few writers ever dared to combine and exploit to its fullest. One reason for this is continuity, the holy grail of all comic book geeks. Ever since the debut of Superman in 1938 and the Fantastic Four in 1961, the Big Two of the comic book industry more or less rely on a floating timeline that prevents their characters from aging (though continuity is far murkier for DC after two major reboots and countless smaller retcons.) Superman could be BFFs with Joseph Kennedy in 1963 then be shaking hands with Ronald Reagan twenty years later without aging a single day. Another reason is because both companies, especially Marvel, pride themselves on verisimilitude by making their universe superficially similar to ours so neither company has fully addressed the social and geopolitical implications of the effective demigods in their midst until recent years with Marvel’s Civil War and DC’s 52.

However, one can consider Marvel’s What If? titles and DC’s Elseworlds line alternate history to some extent. These titles largely centered on the individual histories of their characters like “What if Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?” or “What if Sgt. Nick Fury Fought World War II in Space?” rather than historical events from our world. Some scenarios such as “What if Captain America Were Revived Today?” from What If? (vol. 1) #44 possesses some trappings of alternate history. For example, Namor the Sub-Mariner took a different route when the Avengers pursued him in Avengers (vol. 1)  #4 so he never discovered the group of Inuit who worshiped a frozen Steve Rogers and thus never hurled Captain America into the ocean for the Avengers to find. The Avengers eventually disbanded without Captain America, but more disturbingly, a janitor working at a government facility awakened the mentally unstable 1950s Captain America and Bucky from suspended animation and convinced them that the United States was in danger from subversive elements. As such, the impostor Captain America and Bucky became involved with a political movement that transformed the United States into a police state until a crew of American sailors found the true Cap in the Arctic.

Marvel, aside from a dalliance with a robot Stalin, waited almost twenty years to dip their toe into the alternate history ocean with Neil Gaiman’s 1602. While not technically a What If? issue, the mini-series has a point of divergence (a Captain America from a potential future goes back in time to the failed Roanoke colony and aids in their survival) that causes various Marvel characters to appear nearly four hundred years before they should have. Instead of being the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury is Elizabeth I’s chief intelligence officer whose apprentice is Peter Parquagh, an ersatz version of a nameless friendly neighborhood webslinger. However, one of the more intriguing elements of Marvel 1602 is Gaiman weaved themes from X-Men into late Elizabethan history, particularly James I’s persecution of the “witchbreed” or mutants and how Magneto is ostensibly a grand inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition but hides his illicit activities behind his position.

This fascination with alternate history continued with the fourth volume of What If? in late 2005. Unlike most issues of the title, which were largely self-contained worlds, this volume of the series took place within in a single timeline where Captain America’s genesis occurs in the American Civil War as opposed to World War II and the Fantastic Four were Russian cosmonauts. Being more of an aficionado of American history, I prefer the Captain America one and appreciate how Cap because more of a physical manifestation of the American spirit during one the nation’s most troubled periods rather than symbol. Because of this Cap’s presence shortens the Civil War, prevents Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and his origins in Native American mysticism sparked a cultural craze that prevented the Indian Wars of the 1870s. Out of the six What If? (Vol. 4) one-shots, only Captain America and Fantastic Four address the broader strokes of alternate history whereas the other four are more character-focused. Unfortunately, Marvel did not revisit this timeline as they did Marvel 1602, but they are well worth the effort of searching through the odd long box for.

Meanwhile, DC, like their marvelous competition, has only dabbled in the realm of alternate history with its Elseworlds line but there are a few notable examples such as Batman: Holy Terror written by Alan Brennert and illustrated by Norm Breyfogle. The point of divergence for this story is that Oliver Cromwell lived ten years longer and the United States became a totalitarian, theocratic state. While I have never read the issue on account that it has been out of print for over twenty years, a cursory glance of the synopsis on Wikipedia was enough to pique my interest and should do the same for other alternate history enthusiasts. DC’s Tangent imprint, introduced in 1997, operates under a similar premise where there are not only vastly different versions of Superman, the Flash, the Atom, and even obscure characters like the Sea Devils but the presence of superpowered beings radically altered history from what we know. The central premise behind the imprint is that an alternate version of the Atom intervened in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which resulted in the destruction of Florida and Cuba. As such, Atlanta became an underwater city populated by merpeople, their technology advanced further than the mainstream DC Universe, and the hippie movement was in its infancy when the nineties rolled around.

Dan Jurgens, the man who killed Superman and the brain behind Tangent, justified this divergence when he told Comic Book Resources:

“While the DCU Earth is essentially the same as our own, no more advanced in terms of technology or communications despite the existence of those qualities within the super-powered community, Earth Tangent is greatly influenced by all of that. Earth Tangent's economic, geographic and political landscapes are defined by the superhero community, whereas in the DCU those aspects exist unaffected by the superhero community.”

Jurgens brings up an excellent point about a medium that birthed the trope, “Reed Richards is Useless.” Take the Flash’s rogues gallery for example, Captain Cold and his cohorts possess technology that can generate temperatures near absolute zero, alter weather patterns, and even transmute the 118 elements. Why did the scientists and business leaders not reverse engineer the technology after the Central City Police Department confiscated it? The Tangent imprint gives something of a look at such a world and is perhaps a blueprint for how ambitious writers should combine the two genres.

Some could argue that Superman: Red Son is an alternate history and I suppose it is to some extent. The premise is simple enough: baby Kal-L lands in Ukraine in 1938 instead of Kansas. However, my impression of the mini-series is that if it is alternate history, it is about squishy as bag full of marshmallows (or a Type X on Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility.) Its writer, Mark Millar, makes reference to even greater civil unrest in the late 1960s under surviving JFK, a war against communists in the South Pacific in 1983, and a second American Civil War in 1986 without too much elaboration. Granted, there are constraints to the medium but it is clear that the focus is more on Superman as a seemingly benevolent leader of the Soviet Union and his rivalry with Lex Luthor than on the butterflies that a Soviet Man of Steel would create. That is not to say Red Son is not worth reading, it is more fantasy than alternate history.

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is the mirror image of Red Son in terms of realism and setting. In fact, the world of Watchmen could be a reflection ours until 1938 where the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 inspired a wave of costumed vigilantes, and again in 1959 with the creation of Dr. Manhattan. Alternate history is one portion of Watchmen’s complexity that Moore executes extremely well. Dr. Manhattan essentially gave the United States the strategic advantage in the Cold War and practically won the Vietnam War single-handedly but that also becomes a disadvantage because he is also the lone reason why the Soviet Union stays in check. Hence, Moore makes the consequences of his departure realistic as evidenced by the Soviet invasion of Pakistan and bringing Earth closer to the brink of Nuclear War. However, there are also several other economic and cultural consequences as well. The good doctor’s ability to synthesize lithium allows for the mass production of electric cars, hence reducing the United States’ dependence of foreign petroleum, and the appearance “real” superheroes essentially led to the death of the medium in the late forties so pirate comics like “The Tales of the Black Freighter.” (Though I wonder how Indian fast food became so popular with the American public instead of McDonalds.) Watchmen is practically required reading for all comic book fans, but to read it again from the prism of an alternate historian demonstrates how well the two genres blend.

One of the things I admire about alternate history is that it posed a question Marvel asked when they released a new title in February 1977, “what if?” Personally, I am not as interested in the typical “What if the Axis won World War II?” or “What if the Confederacy won the American Civil War?” as I am interested in smaller events like “What if a more moderate candidate sought the democratic nomination in 1972” or “What if Lucille Ball decided not to sell Desilu Studios to Gulf+Western?” because even the smallest pebble can create many ripples. Marvel 1602, Tangent Comics, and Watchmen demonstrate that alternate history can blend with the fantastic as peanut butter tends to do with chocolate, and they are only the tip of the glacier. In a universe populated by gods, aliens, and immortal cavemen who could alter the flow of history well before the 20th century, the myriad of scenarios to use as story fodder is practically endless. Is there a writer ambitious enough to push this hybrid genre to its creative limits?

Only time will tell.

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Aspiring writer and platypus enthusiast Ben Ronning has lurked the AH.com boards since June 2006. When he is not roaming the multiverse, he can be found at his blog, Thoughts of a Platypus.