Marvel What If...? was adapted for Disney+ in 2021, featuring alternate continuity takes on major MCU characters and moments, based on the company's long-running comic book anthology series of the same name, first published in 1977. However, another Marvel take on alternate continuities, the 1990s Timeslip series, proves that the TV series could be way wilder, and way weirder.
Perhaps the best example of this is the Timeslip Doctor Octopus – who, rather than a man with additional mechanical limbs, is re-envisioned as an actual octopus, "ruler of the underwater realm" that develops after Earth's oceans are contaminated by an "all-new radioactive isotope."
Conceptualized and designed by frequent Alan Moore collaborator John Totleben, the Timeslip Doc Ock is as radical a re-imagining of a Marvel character as readers will see – one that sends a clear message that Marvel's What If...? TV series could go much farther with its concept.
Timeslip Was One Of Marvel's Most Exciting 1990s Experiments
Timeslip was one of Marvel's more novel attempts to redefine itself and its many iconic characters in the 1990s. A series of two-page spreads, which ran in the Marvel Vision fan magazine, Timeslip offered creators the opportunity to re-conceptualize a character, often in remarkable ways. John Totleben, whose entry touts that he, "overwhelmed the world" with his work alongside Alan Moore on Miracle Man and Swamp Thing, as well as with Constantine, imagines a Marvel Universe where Otto Octavius does not become the mechanical-armed Spider-Man villain known as Doctor Octopus – though he does share in the responsibility for the creation of this world's Doc Ock.
Marvel Should Revisit Its Timeslip Creations
As Totleben's Timeslip spread explains, Otto Octavius was denied funding for his research in this continuity. In addition to not being fused with his mechanical-arm apparatus, it is stated that, "Otto did all he could to warn his superiors against the danger of an all-new radioactive isotope," explaining that it, "needed to be contained, that it was self-replicating in nature....that it's potential reach, if exposed, would be devastating to the Earth." Unfortunately, as the same paragraph brusquely concludes, "Doctor Octavius was shown the door." What happened next was an unimaginable ecological catastrophe, one that transformed the planet and its inhabitants forever.
The radioactive material was, "disposed of in the way all other radioactive wastes were in the early 60s," meaning dumped in the ocean. The result was the rapid evolution of underwater life, with the sea life of Earth developing sentience, and intellectually advancing well past humankind in short order. "Whole societies developed almost instantly. Schools of fish became just that." One of these transformed creatures was the new Doctor Octopus, who came to rule this new underwater world. Taking this wild concept a step further, Totleben's vision concludes as, "humanity itself was herded into the oceans, for they could no longer live on land. They could no longer breathe air."
John Totleben's Timeslip is exceptional for the way it takes Marvel's What If...? conceit, of seeing how a single minor change can radically alter an entire timeline, and dials it to eleven, then breaks the dial off and throws it away. It is the kind of groundbreaking thing the What If...? TV series should strive to do – and something Marvel Comics should do more with. The 1990s Timeslip character concepts have never subsequently been used, and many, like Totleben's Doctor Octopus, or the Timeslip Quicksilver, beg to be revisited. Hopefully, future seasons Marvel What If...? on screen, future Marvel Comics, will adventurously explore the alternate possibilities of their world as Timeslip showed they can.
