User blog comment:Nausiated/Alternate Realities, Time Travelers and other Paradoxes that make my nuts sore./@comment-122657-20101220184032/@comment-61022-20101231205607

A lot of the old What If? Stories kind of ended that way. Where it started off with some different path being taken and then in turn going back to the status-quo of Earth-616 (There were a few Spider-Man ones like that, and the one where Dr. Strange was a minion of Dormammu ended that way as well)

And you are right, for the most part, it always seems that whatever charges are brought about in these alternate realities tends to be something negative, bad, or at least comparatively worse to regular events on Earth-616.

But I think that's really the nature of story telling, there has to be some sort of conflict, and when we're talking comic books it's got to be action orientated. So a story where you would think Spider-Man gets that living happily ever after feeling would be really boring.

The one good one I can point out is the issue of What If (the issue number escapes me) where Spider-Man saves Gwen Stacey. We're all figuring, well that would have been the best thing to happen to Peter Parker in his entire career and he would live a good life right? Well not entirely.

The story ends with Harry Osborn revealing Peter Parker's identity to the Daily Bugle and Parker's attempted arrest on his wedding day.

It's a bit of a hack ending in that it was rushed at the very end (In most cases What If stories are just one issue, which makes sense given the premise of the series)

But I find with a lot of the really good What If stories is that a "better" outcome in the Marvel Universe is always creates a linchpin. Life is all about cause and effect. I think the best writers out there that do great alternate reality stories can find those niches that could make something a bland "happily ever after" (Like a lot of DC Comics early Imaginary Tale stories) into a more interesting story.

I'm really digging through my memory here to try and recall a story that actually had a happy ending. I think the What If story where Jessica Drew accepted the invite to become an Avenger had a pretty positive outcome. She stops Avengers Disassembled/House of M from happening... Then again I haven't read that story in a number of years so I could have forgotten something.