What If?…Secret Wars #1: A Molecule Man Eats His Food

Let’s get this out of the way up front, the original Ultimate Universe DID in fact survive the end of Secret Wars 2015. This was shown in two separate occasions, first as a sort of “post-credits scene” at the end of Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli’s Spider-Men II, and next near the end of the Donny Cates’ critically-acclaimed Venom run when the Maker was forcibly returned there following a fight with Eddie Brock and Venom. Now the second of these moments would be mostly ignored in favor of Jonathan Hickman’s creation of the new Ultimate Universe (which itself was a pivot from Cates’ original plans following his accident), but I digress. The bottom line is that the original Ultimate Universe is still alive, well, and still around for Marvel to ignore.

Now with all that preamble out of the way, does this issue do right by its premise? All in all, I’d say it does, but not without a couple of caveats.

Alex Paknadel weaves a tale where the little knots and wrinkles therein are what contribute to some of the more massive changes. In the original story, Miles and his loved ones were saved all because he gave a “starving” (he doesn’t need to eat or drink) Molecule Man an old burger that was in his pocket. Here Peter is the one that offers the pseudo-deity a meal, but unlike Miles Peter is the ONLY one that survives the transition. Paknadel does a great job of juxtaposing Peter’s sensibilities from his universe against the darker reality of Earth-1610. The main flaw of this book is that it’s just one issue. There are a bunch of very interesting questions that are raised by Peter being on Earth-1610, but sadly there is not enough time to explore most of them. If given just two or even three more issues, this story could have been even more fun.

Cafu’s art has the same lowkey energy that helped the Ultimate Universe stand out in its prime. David Curiel’s colors also fit the dreary tone of this story, but also stand out like Peter’s new Scarlet Spider suit (which would look great as a video game skin). The action is a bit stilted, but that’s par for the course for Marvel books these days.