As mentioned in my previous post, hypothetical and deliberately out-of-continuity comic book stories can really be hit or miss. A hit can be read not only as a lens on the existing characters, but as a contained continuity on its own - "Gotham by Gaslight" and its sequel "Master of the Future" deal with a Batman operating in the Victorian Era, and the former especially works on just about every level. Meanwhile, a miss wrongfully assumes that simply transplanting the heroes into an alternate timeline or reality is enough to merit the existence of the piece in the first place - "What If Spider-Man Had Six Arms?", while admittedly moving along as a story and boasting some new characters, turns out to be as absurd as the title would suggest. So for better or worse, both DC and Marvel produce the comic lines Elseworlds and What If?, respectively, which deal exclusively with these character-twisting, timeline-jumping, reality-altering takes on familiar superheroes. Conan the Barbarian comes to the 20th Century, Wolverine and Batman both become vampires, and Spider-Man ends up dying in just about every imaginable way. Most of these are plot points that would ruin or effectively end these characters as we know them if they occurred in regular continuity, but having their own stage really lets these tales shine. After we've had our fun with Communist Superman, we can go right back to the Big Blue Boy Scout - that is, until the next theoretical Superman arises. I've focused only on Elseworlds and What If? here, but there are plenty of other non-canon stories that are worth checking out. The Elseworlds predecessor Imaginary Stories features the fantastic Alan Moore encomium "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" while Neil Gaiman's "1602" is not technically a What If? story, and one also could certainly argue that any DC/Marvel crossovers are spun from theoretical yarns as well. For now, strap yourself in for 10 bizarre and unmissable variants of characters you only thought you knew.
