What are some alternate history stories that involve superheroes in either comics, novels or films? The only one I can think of is that excellent book by Mark Millar, Superman: Red Son.
Alternate history stories with superheroes
- Thread starter A Piece of History
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There's Watchmen although I haven't gotten around to watching or reading it (have it on my long list of shit to partake in).
And I don't mean to be outrageously self-serving but the TL in my signature counts.
And I don't mean to be outrageously self-serving but the TL in my signature counts.
I'd add Worm to the mix, since its whole ethos is divergence based on the arrival of the entity that provides superpowers.
Uber and Uber: Invasion technically count.
Although it's less Superheroes and more just Superpowers.
Although it's less Superheroes and more just Superpowers.
I don't know if you heard about it but I highly recommend Marvel: 1602. It's basically a comic where Marvel superheros start popping up in the Elizabethan Era. It weaves the colonization of America, alchemy, and the Age of Discovery seamlessly into the Marvel mythos. Of course, there are some differences like the survival of the Roanoke colony, the treasure of the Knight's Templar being real, and the generation of mutants that are commonly known as witchbreed. I highly rate this comic and suggest you check it out. It has excellent art by Andy Kubert and the dialogue and story is provided by Neil Gaiman.
There were some novels and short stories by various authors including George RR Martin called the Wild Card series. They had an evil genius unleashing a virus that turned 10% of the population into Jokers (freaks) and 1% into Aces (superheroes). This all starts at the end of WW2. Quality of stories varies, but the idea was good.
There's this
http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-cws-next-dc-animated-series-stars-a-gay-superhero-i-1797174108
(Nazis win--Supergirl, Flash and Green Arrow are NOT the good guys)
http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-cws-next-dc-animated-series-stars-a-gay-superhero-i-1797174108
(Nazis win--Supergirl, Flash and Green Arrow are NOT the good guys)
To some extent I think all superhero stories are Alt History. They represent a change in society from today's world. The present of a Superman (or Batman) would change many aspects of life - with a Superman the interaction of nations would be different (A Superman could eliminate threats to the US) and the there would be changes in the way crime and the justice system would work.
well, there is a story called "Thor meets Captain America", but it doesn't involve Steve Rogers or the MCU Thor...
That's sort of the premise of the Watchmen movie (maybe the comic too - I haven't read it). It seems that Dr. Manhattan fought on the U.S. side in the Vietnam War and enabled them to win, and that somehow this afforded Nixon enough popularity to get the Constitution amended to let him run for additional terms of office.
Oh how that happened is easy. Alan Moore has no idea how the US government works, but thinks he's much smarter than he actually is, so he decided it would be cool to include that as a jab at the Reagan administration. Same reason he had Vietnam annexed by the US and made into a state in the comic.
I'm really happy DC is making this. They have plenty good ideas for parallel universes in the comics, but they rarely flesh them out. Around 1970 DC made a world where Nazis won World War II, and they used characters DC purchased from Quality Comics, like Phantom Lady and The Ray. They wrote one decent story on that Earth, then never really fleshed it out, and then they destroyed the multiverse, and brought back the multiverse and destroyed it again numerous times, without using the Multiverse for much of anything more than to show a few attractive pictures of alternate superheroes looking dramatic. Universes that DC actually bothered to tell stories about are few and far between, and the stories are always quite short. A couple years ago they had a small portion of a story take place in a new version of Earth X, where the Freedom Fighters had diversity. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't do anything more with that idea until this TV show.
Some other alternate history comics I'd recommend are Superman: Red Son and The Superman Monster. It portrays Superman as Frankenstein's Monster, and is better than you'd think. Atomic Robo (which I think is from Circle Five Comics) takes place in a world with more pronounced alternate history themes than most comics books have. It's about a robot who was built in the 19th century, and Tesla features heavily in his backstory. And there seems to be a lot of new alternate history comics about female fighter pilots in the world wars and in wars that are analogous to the world wars.
Max Sinister
Banned
Hm. I don't think this is a good idea to turn established superheroes into fascists to fight fascism. Many fans like e.g. Batman and don't think much about politics. So if you say "Batman = Nazi", you also kinda say "Nazi = Batman". Last thing you want is people thinking "Nazis are cool" or "Nazis are effective fighting crime".
On the original Earth X, there were no superheroes except for the Freedom Fighters. In DC's new one, the Freedom Fighters are still the heroes but there's a Nazi justice league. The Germans had found baby Kal-El and his spaceship in 1938, and used him and reverse-engineered spaceship technology to conquer the world. The Nazi Justice League members had different names and looks but your point is still relevant. The story had other problems too, but I didn't mind it so much. I think the new Ray series is promising.
You have all the Elseworlds titles done by DC in the past. While they fell into silly territory at times, there are some genuine gems among these one-offs and miniseries, exploring interesting ATL takes on various DC characters and their histories.
Marvel did similar What if ? comics, including things like Spiderman becoming the fifth member of the now-renamed Fantastic Five. Marvel's own specialised equivalents to Elseworlds seemed to have been the various Marvel 1602 (superheroes and villains reimagined in a 17th century setting), Marvel Noir (superheroes and villains reimagined in a film noir setting), etc. ranges.
The old (and often darkly satirical) Authority comics by Warren Ellis had a main cast that included the likes of Jenny Sparks, "The Spirit of...". Her surname, exact moniker and powers changed with each century she lived through. So, she's "The Spirit of the 20th Century" while in the 20th century, has electricity-manipulation powers, and the adopted surname "Sparks". The 21st Century version of her that Ellis did years later has a different physical appearance and is able to manipulate modern electronics, including all digital devices. She dies when a century is coming to a close, and is reborn at the start of the following century. Sparks is a bit of a Forrest Gump or Flashman like figure, meeting all sorts of historical personalities in each century and often influencing them.
There are plenty of superhero comics by smaller publishers and independent authors that are set in explicit alternate histories.
I forget the name, but there was some series that was a Watchmen-like deconstruction of how things would be if WWII era powers developed their own high-powered superheroes. Trouble is, these people are basically living superweapons, and plenty of them are quite unstable. The whole series apparently has a "You think WWII tech-wank and superpowers without limits would be cool and not create a dystopia ? Think again !" type of tone. Can't say I fault it for adopting that sentiment.
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Frankly, I think the entire superhero genre has to be in the waters of alternate history, purely because there have never been superheroes in the real world. If you have fantastical superpowers, then some properties of the natural world have to be different to make those superpowers work. Basically, fantasy/ASB. If you only have tech-and-skills based superheroes, it's still rather AH, because such people didn't really occur in OTL. If you rob the techie heroes of whatever plausible science fictional tech they might have, they basically just turn into costumed vigilantes. And even minor things, such as fictional cities, fictional countries, fictional companies and the like existing, can easily make superhero stories into AH.
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