Exiles

Exiles is a fascinating series for anybody who’s a fan of the old What If? comics. In WI? comics, age old questions like “What if Captain America never thawed out until modern times?” or “What if Conan fought Wolverine?” were tossed around and explored – as a fan of pointless late night hypothetical assaults on comics continuity, this series was a godsend. But the series’ print runs were never that predicatble, and recent entries have been fairly lackluster.

So thank goodness for Exiles! This long running series reads like What If? with continuity. Originally launched and written by Judd Winick of The Adventures of Barry Ween and Real World reality TV fame, this book is all about upgrading favorite “non-continuity” characters into semi-official heroes, and exploring all the nooks and crannies of lost Marvel history.

The premise is this: a mysterious being called the Timebroker brings together a roster of alternate universe superheroes that have become “undone in time” – theirs and a whole bunch of other alternate realities have become damaged, threatening the greater multiverse, unless they can be fixed.

If nothing else, there are two great things about Exiles. First, the character list reads like a Who’s Who of fan favorite characters. The original roster stars Nocturne, daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch, Blink, of Age of Apocalypse fame, Morph, an alternate of the Age of Apocalypse alternate universe, Magnus, daughter of Rogue and Magneto, X-Man Mimic, and Thunderbird, Horseman of Apocalypse. The roster constantly changes, due to timelines getting fixed or people dying, so you also get people like Spider-Man 2099, Magik (Colossus’s demon sister), and a billion Wolverine variants later joining the team. The other is that these guys are constantly Quantum Leaping through some really fun universes from Marvel history, like classic Age of Apocalypse, Days of Future Past, Marvel 2099, and even Squadron Supreme. If nothing else, I love seeing what happened to these places after their series stopped, so it’s both fun to see these things from both a story and nostalgia standpoint.

Later volumes of the series (once Winick left for good and various guest writers and finally Chris Claremont took over the series) are a little too pedantic and origin-changing for me, but still good What If? fun. Give it a try!