What If: Kevin Smith as Editor-In-Chief of Marvel?

For a while, I thought of a timeline where Bill Jemas had chosen Kevin Smith as EIC instead of Joe Quesada (which led to him remained as editor of Marvel Knights imprint). And while it may halt his directing career for the time being, it might give a different look at how Marvel Comics getting passed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy stage with anything else on the way.

Here's a rough outline of ideas from Kevin, Marvel and anything else...

Marvel Comics

Ultimate Marvel: The imprint still exists but finished its run in 2009 with 12-issue maxi-series Ultimatum (that's co-written by Jeph Loeb and Warren Ellis) and gave a brief "happy" ending to the continuity (up until its re-appearance in 2010 mini-series, Bullet Point).

U-Decide: Still happened but with the inclusion Kevin Smith's Daredevil: The Target (which never went to hiatus following the first issue) Joe Quesada's Ash (whom the character emigrated to Marvel continuity) and Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy II: The Rebirth Of Mar-Vell instead of Captain Marvel, Marville and Ultimate Adventures. The competition ended with Grant Morrison winning and led to an ongoing called Marvel Corps.

Wolverine/Origin: The mini-series is still released but with the added inclusion of Sabretooth as his long-lost half-brother. Also, Wolverine's son Daken never existed (but X-23 is still a clone and later Logan's adopted daughter).

One More Day: Never happened. Instead, it got replaced by Bullet Point which focused on Peter Parker trapped in an alternate timeline he caused thanks to his "wish" towards Mephisto that Uncle Ben never got shot. During that, he encountered the heroes of Ultimate Marvel Universe and New Universe.

The series then controversially ended with Marvel Universe returned but tweaked with the merging of New Universe that led to Brave New Marvel storyline (still ongoing at this time of writing).

Marvel Movies: Bryan Singer directed the three X-Men movies to date (with directing Wolverine: The Origin movies), Sam Raimi only direct the first two Spider-Man movies before being replaced by David S. Goyer (even after the disaster that is Blade: Trinity), Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise still exists but with few differences...

  • Joaquin Phoenix replaced Edward Norton as The Hulk instead of Mark Ruffalo.
  • Terrence Howard remained as Jim Rhodes for Iron Man sequels.
  • Jon Favreau directed the third Iron Man movie.
  • Brian Kirk directed Thor sequel (titled Thor: Ragnarok).
  • George Nolfi picked as director for Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • Clark Gregg's character Phil Coulson survived during The Avengers. Instead, Nick Fury "died" on the movie (but is actually a life model decoy secretly invented by Tony Stark).
Besides anything else, Man-Thing did hit the cinemas instead of being dumped to direct-to-television and flopped hard as a result.

Kevin Smith

His Work As Editor-In-Chief: Like OTL with Joe Quesada, he ended his work in 2011 and went back to directing with the long-awaited Jay And Silent Bob Strikes Back movie released in 2012. He's also scheduled to direct Mallrats II: Die Hard In A Mall.

Jay And Silent Bob's Secret Stash: The store in Red Bank, New Jersey is the one that closed down in 2007 instead of the store in Westwood, New Jersey. It still led to Comic Book Men reality series as hosted by Jason Mewes but canned after one season (its podcast counterpart The Secret Stash is still ongoing though).

Degrassi: The Next Generation: Kevin Smith still guest-starred in the show but in a different storyline entitled "The Kids In New York" with the cast visiting Marvel Comics offices.

Die Hard: Kevin Smith never appeared in fourth movie which is titled Die Hard: ReLoaded. The movie never gotten a PG-13 rating and became a more successful hit in TTL with the following two movies coming - but with the fifth taking place in Japan and the sixth in Russia instead of the other way around.

Jennifer Schwalbach Smith: Returned to USA Today in 2001 but as entertainment reporter before she's appointed by Larry Kramer as editor-in-chief in July 2012.

Other companies/franchises

DC Comics: With Bullet Point released by Marvel, there's no Flashpoint and The New 52 involved. Instead, it got replaced by Wild Skies with DC heroes battling against The Authority and other WildStorm heroes and with their core universes remained intact.

Also, Bruce Wayne is still "dead" in current DC continuity after the events of Final Crisis but there are plans for his return later this year.

Image Comics: Rob Liefeld returned to the company after the closing of Awesome Entertainment in 2000 instead of going to Marvel Comics. With that, Marc Silvestri is appointed as published instead of Erik Larsen.

Also, Invincible and The Walking Dead is published by Dark Horse instead of Image (while The Walking Dead television series still airing but more faithful to the original source meaning ie. no mention of The Dixon Brothers).

Star Trek: Enterprise still got cancelled in the fourth season but abruptly after the airing of In A Mirror, Darkly Part 1.

For the remaining episodes...

  • In A Mirror Darkly Part 2 debuted on fourth season DVD.
  • The two-parter Demons and Terra Prime compiled itself into a telemovie entitled Star Trek: The Terror Of Terra Prime.
  • The final episode These Are The Voyages... only appeared as near-complete bootleg workprint.
Doctor Who: Still happened but with Christopher Eccleston remaining in the series for second series before he got replaced by John Simm as the tenth doctor and Sean Pertwee as the eleventh doctor. Also, Catherine Tate is cast as River Pond while Alex Kingston played an incarnation of Rani. Benedict Cumberbatch also appeared as The Master.

That's all I can think of for the moment (I'll get to more shortly). If anybody has good additions to this and anything else, go ahead and drop a line.
 
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Hmm this is an interesting premise. I like the ideas you've put forward so far and would like to see more detail about both DC and Marvel in this universe
 
Interesting. I'm sure a certain fedora wearing online comic reviewer is happier, because One more day and Marville don't exist.
 
If Favreau directs Iron Man 3, that either means the Iron Man Franchise does not grow into a connected Marvel Universe franchise, or he is given directing duties on the Avengers. He left because he felt the needs of the larger franchise had screwed him over on Iron Man II, and because of the fact that he was not the director on Avengers, mostly because he costs more to hire than Weadon. If Iron Man II is still a mess, if the Avengers os the same, there essentially is no way he directs the third installment.
 
On One More Day, you have to take into account the extent to which the Editorial Staff hated the marriage, and at times Mary Jane as a character. Mostly on the grounds that bring married to a supermodel detracts from Peter being miserable, or that said marriage is unrealistic. A strange argument, considering they were the ones who made her a supermodel in the first place. Yes she was always attractive and realistically out of his league, but she was not treated originally as being considerably more attractive than Gwen Stacy.
Point is the staff wanted the marriage gone and did not like Mary Jane as a concept. I have suspicions that this is part of the reason OMD was so bad, they did not respect the character or the marriage enough to give it a respectful send off. Also the age issue factors into this, since it is the reason that simple divorce was out of the question. They want Peter young and having him be a divorcee is counterproductive.
Anyway, I have no idea whether Smith shares these sentiments. But I suspect he might, which means ending the marriage without divorce and without killing Mary Jane as had already been attempted, which means One More Day.Which is not to say that the resulting story could not be improved.
Partially this is a generational thing of the writers wanting what they grew up with, so in a. decade or two, whenever the people who grew up with the marriage and with Mary Jane as the only real love interest take over the company, look for an equally controversial return to the marriage status quo
 
Sometime next week, I'll begin giving my take on Late 2000/Early 2001 and while I did read Glass Onion's comments involving Iron Man and OMD, I got few ideas on it and plan to do those in the near future and it might be interesting but for now, I'm going chronological.

Oh, and Mr. E, I'm surely you're talking about a certain critic who's living with a kid obsessed with 90s and a obscure comic character who's high on cocaine. Correct?
 
Sometime next week, I'll begin giving my take on Late 2000/Early 2001 and while I did read Glass Onion's comments involving Iron Man and OMD, I got few ideas on it and plan to do those in the near future and it might be interesting but for now, I'm going chronological.

Oh, and Mr. E, I'm surely you're talking about a certain critic who's living with a kid obsessed with 90s and a obscure comic character who's high on cocaine. Correct?

Indeed, that is true. Anyway, looking forward to more on this concept. It is truly fascinating.
 
Do you have reason to think these are decisions that Kevin Smith would have made? If so, awesome. Also, how much authority does the Editor In Chief have over movies? Granted, if he doesn't have much power, I can imagine the Editor in Chief being given greater power over movies if he has experience with them, so that might be a non-issue.
Also, how do these changes lead to those specific changes to DC, and to any changes to Dr. Who? And was Kevin Smith ever seriously considered for this position or any similar one? I'm not saying he'd be bad. I think he'd be better than a lot of people, but I've never heard of such a notion until I've seen this post.
Should I just think of this as a timeline where a lot of cool things happen just because you'd like it to be that way? You have some good ideas; I just don't see their connection to Smith.
 
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