What If We Kissed on the Blue Area of the Moon? 02 – What If...? Thor #1

“What if Thor got Spider-Man’s Symbiote suit?” by Torunn Grønbekk, Sergio Dávila, Aure Jimenez, Bryan Valenza, and Joe Sabino

Like the first of this year’s crop of What If...? issues, the second has some problems for this ol’ friend of Uatu. Unlike the first, it tells a coherent single story rather than a series of montages punctuated by truncated scenes. The premise is very simple: instead of Spider-Man getting the Symbiote as a new costume on the Beyonder’s Battleworld during Secret Wars, Thor does. Throw in Torunn Grønbekk on writing and I figured that this issue would be fairly good given her recent history writing the Thunder God in various places in recent years. It’s not bad by any means. It’s a bit worse than that. It’s solid. And, really, the only part that I tend to question is, like the first What If...? issue, is the way it works with the premise of the book.

As I said last time, the way What If...? works is to proceed from a single point of change where everything that happens up until that moment is the same as the regular Marvel Universe continuity. From that point on, things play out differently due to the change – but should still adhere to the same general logic of the original stories where anything that is different should flow from that specific change. Now, this idea has been played with in a whole bunch of different ways and stretched fairly far – particularly in the mid-90s ‘dark’ period of the title where the stories were rather large deviations, often without a clear single moment of change. So, I get that there isn’t any true ‘hard and fast’ rules for the title, except maybe in my own head. And I’m not entirely convinced that Grønbekk actually breaks those rules with the story she’s written – but knowing that means really knowing your continuity as the seeming point of change is not, in fact, the point of change.

On the surface, the point of departure seems to be that moment on Battleworld where Thor uses the machine that Spider-Man did in Secret Wars to obtain a new costume and receives the Symbiote instead. From there, Thor’s mood and tone is immediately altered/influenced by the Symbiote, which grates a little at first given that the changes for Spider-Man were much more gradual – but that’s easy enough to forgive given the one-off nature of the story requiring things to speed up a bit and, possibly, explained away by two things: Thor’s differing nature/temperament to that of Spider-Man making that side of his personality come out much easier – and that, in this world, the Symbiote was targeting Thor. See, the real ‘What if?’ in this issue isn’t “What if Thor got Spider-Man’s Symbiote suit?” it’s “What if Thor never slew Knull’s Grendel?” which leads to him getting the Symbiote.

The main plot of this issue has Thor, bonded with the Symbiote, investigating an issue with Frost Giants on Earth, revealing their bonding with Symbiotes. As Thor and the Asgardians battle them, he eventually finds himself confronted with a Symbiote dragon and, then, once captured, Knull. In the regular Marvel Universe, Knull was, at this point, still imprisoned, not on Earth. A key bit of dialogue is Thor looking at the Symbiote dragon and thinking, “IT IS LIKE NO DRAGON I HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE,” implying that Thor never battled and killed the Grendel when it arrived on Earth, thus never weakening Knull and causing him to be imprisoned by the Symbiotes. Instead, Knull has been on Earth this entire time, preparing to take it – and the Battleworld Symbiote was sent to bond with Thor specifically to aid in that process. I think. It’s not 100% clear and I’m relying on what I’ve been able to research online about the history of Knull. My first instinct was to dismiss the appearance of Knull and that plan as a wild deviation that breaks the rules of What If...? by altering what happened before the point of deviation... until, reading how Thor killed Knull’s dragon, it occurred to me that that was the point of deviation: Knull and his dragons arrived on Earth with no opposition from Thor. It’s a clever little nesting doll of ‘What ifs’ that I’m not entirely sure I’ve seen before.

The only problem is that, at first glance, it takes you out of the story to a degree – or it did for me. Instead of focusing on what was happening, I spent the rest of the comic half-wondering if I was wrong about Knull being off the board at the time this story takes place and what was going on. Now, I know that “What if Thor never killed Knull’s Symbiote dragon?” isn’t quite as catchy a title/hook as the one we got, but, if that’s the true difference and it’s not a story you’re willing to stand behind as a concept, why do it at all? Why bait and switch? And, if I’m reading it wrong, why completely deviate from established continuity in a manner that doesn’t work for a story that, honestly, is fairly by the numbers in the way it plays out with Thor influencing the Symbiote more than it influences him? As I said, it’s a solid story that plays out largely how you’d expect once Knull is revealed. It’s a banal plot that comes with a big question that may be a clever twist that just raises more questions about the creation of the book.

Visually, the book is fine. Sergio Dávila is a capable artist with good instincts and character work. An oddly specific focus of mine is the look of Thor once he receives the Symbiote suit. Spider-Man’s Symbiote costume (and the ensuing design of Venom) is iconic to the point where there’s legitimate arguments to be had over if it’s an improvement on his original costume (which is an all-time great). Dávila’s design is, like the Spider-Man costume, all black with white highlights and brings to mind a combination of the Olivier Coipel, Esad Ribić, and Nic Klein designs for Thor’s costume. Definitely a modern sheen to it and an effort to make it fit with the logic of how Spider-Man’s costume changed. But, like the plot, it’s a little dull and straight forward. If you were to give an assignment for an all black Thor costume that suggests he’s under a dark influence, this is pretty much what you’d get back nine times out of ten. And, while that is correct, it’s also underwhelming. The Spider-Man Symbiote suit is great because it’s striking, has key elements from the original, but also stands apart. This mostly looks like a Thor costume that’s coloured black instead of blue and red. Hell, I would have been satisfied with a variation on how Thor looked in What If...? #4 during that final battle with Spider-Man when the Symbiote goes hero-hopping. Ah well...

We’re two issues in and, so far, the 2026 What If...? revival is a bit of a let down – albeit, in this case, an almost interesting one with the way that the true “What if?” question is buried and left unasked, which is something. Just not enough.

What If We Kissed on the Blue Area of the Moon? 01 – What If...? Uncanny X-Men #1

“What if Cyclops has stayed with Madelyne Pryor?” by Gerry Duggan, Jan Bazaldua, Arthur Hesli, and Clayton Cowles

I don’t always dip back into the periodic return of What If...? as I find the modern versions often unsatisfying. When I was a child, I was always fond of the monthly series that was so random in its offering of what bit of Marvel history would be warped. Every issue featured a recap of how it went down courtesy of Uatu the Watcher and, then, how it’s all changed in the issue at question. Part of the charm was in how mundane it all was. How ephemeral and temporary due to the monthly cadence and self-contained nature. If an issue didn’t quite land, well, next month would be something entirely different. Each issue was like a mini-event unto itself. The modern iterations group together to be a mini-event of sorts. They tackle ideas so broad that there isn’t always a coherent point or story to be told.

That’s what I found with the first of the 2026 batch of What If...? issues, focused on exploring how things would have been different had Madelyne Pryor not died in Inferno and been redeemed in the process. Somewhat shockingly, this isn’t territory ever covered by What If...? with the only Inferno­-based stories asking what if the X-Men had lost or what if Wolverine had been lord of the vampires during the event. That this issue is also written by Gerry Duggan, one of the main recent X-Men writers during the Krakoa era suggested something that would probably tie into that era of the title, presumably when Nathan Summers would be coming of age – possibly to supplant the roles of the likes of Nate Grey or Hope Summers. While What If...? doesn’t need to follow such logic, it’s pretty typical to try to play off what actually happened when possible, giving ironic twists of known events. Duggan doesn’t opt for that.

Instead, the issue unfolds with random, haphazard choices. The timeline of events is shuffled randomly from the regular Marvel Universe for reasons unclear and nonsensical. The breaking point is the conclusion of Inferno where, here, Pryor is saved and Jean Grey, in her anger at Scott choosing his wife, takes revenge on Mr. Sinister, wiping his mind of the knowledge of cloning her and the existence of Nathan Summers. This means Nathan is no longer a pawn in the Sinister/Apocalypse conflict, and is never infected with the Techno-Organic Virus. Instead, Scott quits X-Factor to remain a devoted husband and father. It’s not until Nathan’s mutant abilities manifest that the Summers family becomes a little superhero team that participate/help stop such events as Atlantis Attacks and Acts of Vengeance, two events that were published at the same time as/immediately after Inferno, but, here, randomly take place a good decade later... after we also saw Wolverine and Emma Frost in their Morrison/Quitely New X-Men era costumes, which, somehow, preceded the Fantastic Four wearing their Claremont/Larroca era costumes. And, eventually, it all leads into Sinister regaining his memory and launching the Mutant Massacre on the Mansion... despite that story happening before Inferno. There’s a sense of all of Marvel history happening whenever desired despite there being no cause and effect or logic at play. It’s incredibly distracting – and breaks from the logic of What If...? where it’s the Marvel Universe that we know until the point of departure. Then, things unfold differently, but would still have the same broad sense of progression unless there were specific moments that would result in a change. Duggan just lobs out names of stories and events at random.

Also random is the way that Nathan Summers is handled. He gets his powers and wants to be a hero, which is fine. That makes sense. The Summers Family as a hero unit is an idea with legs that isn’t explored at all. For some reason, Nathan still has the codename Cable despite there being no reason for it other than that’s what his future self calls himself in the regular universe. Nathan is largely used only to be threatened in the new Mutant Massacre at the hands of the Marauders alongside other students and Madeline dies (which Cyclops is blinded) to inspire Cyclops to lean heavily into dark ops X-Force style actions to obtain revenge. And that’s largely a detour until the Krakoa era that ends with the conflict with Arakko going poorly for the Krakoa mutants and Earth at large. It’s a bit of a speedrun through X-Men history that doesn’t do anything interesting with how it’s different, aside from Cyclops eliminating Sinister means that Krakoa doesn’t have the Resurrection Protocols. That seems to be the big point of emphasis for Duggan: saving Madelyne means Sinister is eventually eradicated, which means Krakoa is weaker, which means Earth is weaker...

You can squint and see the logic, but it glosses over doing anything interesting with Nathan, a mutant of immense power. With no Hope Summers, would he have filled the mutant messiah role after M-Day (which isn’t here) or what about Utopia? Or any other of the endless X-events? In fact, part of the hole here is that Krakoa largely seems to exist as normal, except without a key element to its function, the Resurrection Protocols. The original sin of partnering with Sinister is lacking, as is the sense of power that would be at the heart of the nation. It’s glossed over how exactly Krakoa would develop almost identically when missing such a key element – in fact, the primary visual that begins the Krakoa period is the Resurrection Protocols. Moreover, there’s something unsettling that the core idea of this comic is that the bargain with Sinister was the morally correct thing to prevent the destruction of the Earth. The comic winds up being an argument for why it was the right thing to do... rather than one that actually tells an interesting story with the characters at hand.

None of which is necessarily a bad thing or makes for a bad issue of What If...? honestly. Big, broadly glossed over stories are as much a hallmark of the book as tightly plotted character pieces. This one, though, is so uneven with where it decides to focus, particularly in how it ignores the usual flow of events, that it doesn’t do either well.