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What If? (1977) book cover 1
What If? (1977) book cover 2
What If? (1977) book cover 3
What If? (1977)
Series · 4 books · 2010-2015

Books in series

The Legacy of Captain America book cover
#4

The Legacy of Captain America

2011

Captain America - a hero for the ages, no matter who's behind the mask! In 1941, watch as Cap and Bucky take on the Red Skull for the first time! Learn the secrets of the men who wore the mask after Cap died! In 1987, witness Johnny Walker become a government-sponsored Cap! And in 2008, see the long-thought-dead Bucky take over as the new Cap! Plus: one young man who donned the mask for only a day! COLLECTING: Captain America Comics (1941) #1; What If? (1977) #4; Captain America (1968) #155, #333; Captain America (2005) #34; material from Captain America (1968) #178-183
Thor, Vol. 2 book cover
#10

Thor, Vol. 2

Who Holds the Hammer?

2015

Collects Thor (2014) #6-8, Annual 1, What If? (1977) #10. Who is the new Thor? That's the question on everyone's lips. Most especially the original Thor! And now he starts to narrow down the list of suspects. Meanwhile, tensions continue to flare between the All-Mother and All-Father, Malekith the Dark Elf forges his most dangerous pact yet, and the new Thor prepares to face her greatest challenge: the unstoppable machine of death and destruction that is... the Destroyer! As the battle for Mjolnir rages on, an unexpected character makes a shocking return-and the new Thor's identity is revealed at last! Plus: Young Thor enters a drinking competition! The new Thor takes on a surprising foe! In the future, King Thor's granddaughters quest to find him the perfect birthday gift! And more!
X-Men book cover
#27

X-Men

The Dark Phoenix Saga

2010

Collects Uncanny X-Men #129-138, X-Men Classic (1986-1995 Classic X-Men) #43, Bizarre Adventures (1981-1983 Magazine) #27, Phoenix: The Untold Story (1984) and What If (1977-1984 1st Series) #27 When the Dark Phoenix rises, suns grow cold and universes die! Gathered by Charles Xavier, the X-Men have dedicated their wondrous abilities to protect mankind - even those who hate and fear them. Now, these incredible individuals embark on an adventure that will span the expanse of the cosmos. One of their own, Jean Grey, has unwittingly attained power beyond conception - and been corrupted, absolutely. The X-Men must decide: Is the life of the woman they cherish worth the existence of an entire universe?
John Byrne's Fantastic Four book cover
#36

John Byrne's Fantastic Four

Artist's Edition

2013

IDW is pleased to offer more than six issues worth of Fantastic Four stories by John Byrne in the Eisner Award-winning Artist's Edition format. Included in this volume are issue 232 (the first one with Byrne on as writer & artist), issue 238 (the first story), plus issues 241, 243, 247 and 261 as well as the classic What If #36 story,"What if the Fantastic Four had not gained their powers?" There is also an art gallery included that showcases more than a dozen covers. Nearly all of the pages in this book have been scanned from the actual original art that was drawn by John Byrne. This Artist's Edition measures 12 x 17 inches and is 168 pages long. While appearing to be in black and white, each page was scanned in color to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—for instance, corrections, blue pencils, paste-overs, all the little nuances that make original art unique. Each page is printed the same size as drawn, and the paper selected is as close as possible to the original art board.

Authors

John Byrne
John Byrne
Author · 88 books

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name John Lindley Byrne is a British-born Canadian-American author and artist of comic books. Since the mid-1970s, Byrne has worked on nearly every major American superhero. Byrne's better-known work has been on Marvel Comics' X-Men and Fantastic Four and the 1986 relaunch of DC Comics’ Superman franchise. Coming into the comics profession exclusively as a penciler, Byrne began co-plotting the X-Men comics during his tenure on them, and launched his writing career in earnest with Fantastic Four (where he also started inking his own pencils). During the 1990s he produced a number of creator-owned works, including Next Men and Danger Unlimited. He also wrote the first issues of Mike Mignola's Hellboy series and produced a number of Star Trek comics for IDW Publishing.

Roy Thomas
Roy Thomas
Author · 80 books

Roy Thomas was the FIRST Editor-in-Chief at Marvel—After Stan Lee stepped down from the position. Roy is a longtime comic book writer and editor. Thomas has written comics for Archie, Charlton, DC, Heroic Publishing, Marvel, and Topps over the years. Thomas currently edits the fanzine Alter Ego for Twomorrow's Publishing. He was Editor for Marvel comics from 1972-1974. He wrote for several titles at Marvel, such as Avengers, Thor, Invaders, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and notably Conan the Barbarian. Thomas is also known for his championing of Golden Age comic-book heroes—particularly the 1940s superhero team the Justice Society of America—and for lengthy writing stints on Marvel's X-Men and Avengers, and DC Comics' All-Star Squadron, among other titles. Also a legendary creator. Creations include Wolverine, Carol Danvers, Ghost Rider, Vision, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Valkyrie, Morbius, Doc Samson, and Ultron. Roy has also worked for Archie, Charlton, and DC among others over the years.

Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Author · 252 books

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics. With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

Ed Brubaker
Ed Brubaker
Author · 145 books

Ed Brubaker (born November 17, 1966) is an Eisner Award-winning American cartoonist and writer. He was born at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland. Brubaker is best known for his work as a comic book writer on such titles as Batman, Daredevil, Captain America, Iron Fist, Catwoman, Gotham Central and Uncanny X-Men. In more recent years, he has focused solely on creator-owned titles for Image Comics, such as Fatale, Criminal, Velvet and Kill or Be Killed. In 2016, Brubaker ventured into television, joining the writing staff of the HBO series Westworld.

Jason Aaron
Jason Aaron
Author · 123 books

Jason Aaron grew up in a small town in Alabama. His cousin, Gustav Hasford, who wrote the semi-autobiographical novel The Short-Timers, on which the feature film Full Metal Jacket was based, was a large influence on Aaron. Aaron decided he wanted to write comics as a child, and though his father was skeptical when Aaron informed him of this aspiration, his mother took Aaron to drug stores, where he would purchase books from spinner racks, some of which he still owns today. Aaron's career in comics began in 2001 when he won a Marvel Comics talent search contest with an eight-page Wolverine back-up story script. The story, which was published in Wolverine #175 (June 2002), gave him the opportunity to pitch subsequent ideas to editors. In 2006, Aaron made a blind submission to DC/Vertigo, who published his first major work, the Vietnam War story The Other Side which was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Miniseries, and which Aaron regards as the "second time" he broke into the industry. Following this, Vertigo asked him to pitch other ideas, which led to the series Scalped, a creator-owned series set on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation and published by DC/Vertigo. In 2007, Aaron wrote Ripclaw: Pilot Season for Top Cow Productions. Later that year, Marvel editor Axel Alonso, who was impressed by The Other Side and Scalped, hired Aaron to write issues of Wolverine, Black Panther and eventually, an extended run on Ghost Rider that began in April 2008. His continued work on Black Panther also included a tie-in to the company-wide crossover storyline along with a "Secret Invasion" with David Lapham in 2009. In January 2008, he signed an exclusive contract with Marvel, though it would not affect his work on Scalped. Later that July, he wrote the Penguin issue of The Joker's Asylum. After a 4-issue stint on Wolverine in 2007, Aaron returned to the character with the ongoing series Wolverine: Weapon X, launched to coincide with the feature film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Aaron commented, "With Wolverine: Weapon X we'll be trying to mix things up like that from arc to arc, so the first arc is a typical sort of black ops story but the second arc will jump right into the middle of a completely different genre," In 2010, the series was relaunched once again as simply Wolverine. He followed this with his current run on Thor: God of Thunder.

Steve Englehart
Steve Englehart
Author · 77 books

See also John Harkness. Steve Englehart went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After a stint in the Army, he moved to New York and began to write for Marvel Comics. That led to long runs on Captain America, The Hulk, The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and a dozen other titles. Midway through that period he moved to California (where he remains), and met and married his wife Terry. He was finally hired away from Marvel by DC Comics, to be their lead writer and revamp their core characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern). He did, but he also wrote a solo Batman series (immediately dubbed the "definitive" version) that later became Warner Brothers' first Batman film (the good one). After that he left comics for a time, traveled in Europe for a year, wrote a novel (The Point Man™), and came back to design video games for Atari (E.T., Garfield). But he still liked comics, so he created Coyote™, which within its first year was rated one of America's ten best series. Other projects he owned (Scorpio Rose™, The Djinn™) were mixed with company series (Green Lantern [with Joe Staton], Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four). Meanwhile, he continued his game design for Activision, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Brøderbund. And once he and Terry had their two sons, Alex and Eric, he naturally told them stories. Rustle's Christmas Adventure was first devised for them. He went on to add a run of mid-grade books to his bibliography, including the DNAgers™ adventure series, and Countdown to Flight, a biography of the Wright brothers selected by NASA as the basis for their school curriculum on the invention of the airplane. In 1992 Steve was asked to co-create a comics pantheon called the Ultraverse. One of his contributions, The Night Man, became not only a successful comics series, but also a television show. That led to more Hollywood work, including animated series such as Street Fighter, GI Joe, and Team Atlantis for Disney.

Chris Claremont
Chris Claremont
Author · 111 books

Chris Claremont is a writer of American comic books, best known for his 16-year (1975-1991) stint on Uncanny X-Men, during which the series became one of the comic book industry's most successful properties. Claremont has written many stories for other publishers including the Star Trek Debt of Honor graphic novel, his creator-owned Sovereign Seven for DC Comics and Aliens vs Predator for Dark Horse Comics. He also wrote a few issues of the series WildC.A.T.s (volume 1, issues #10-13) at Image Comics, which introduced his creator-owned character, Huntsman. Outside of comics, Claremont co-wrote the Chronicles of the Shadow War trilogy, Shadow Moon (1995), Shadow Dawn (1996), and Shadow Star (1999), with George Lucas. This trilogy continues the story of Elora Danan from the movie Willow. In the 1980s, he also wrote a science fiction trilogy about female starship pilot Nicole Shea, consisting of First Flight (1987), Grounded! (1991), and Sundowner (1994). Claremont was also a contributor to the Wild Cards anthology series.

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