The comics industry has been no stranger to close calls over the years. The inception of some of the world's most famous fictional icons has come down to a knife-edge more times than not, and the same goes for their ownership too; you only have to look at the many, many legal disputes that have arisen between Superman's creators and DC for confirmation of that.
And it's not just a case of changes off the page having a profound effect on the medium either - quite the opposite. Creative decisions that have gone on to define entire comic book universes very nearly didn't happen, and some of the world's most famous comic book storylines could have - in many respects - looked drastically different than the finished product.
We all love a good alternate history or two, and no medium more-so than the comics one has set about exploring them so emphatically. With that in mind, it’s probably a good idea to turn the tables, at least to consider, for a second at least, how different it all could’ve been.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
