Several years ago, Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne published a loosely connected series of stories eventually collected as Back in the USSA. All they had linking them, really, was a common background--an alternate history 20th Century where the Soviet revolution had taken place in the USA--and a playful innovation which Newman had introduced in his novel Anno Dracula: the free mixture historical and fictional characters in building the alternity. Thus, Eugene Debs prepares the revolution for eventual usuper Charles Foster Kane; Russian court astrologer Isaac Asimov meets cosmonaut Pavel Chekov; and so forth.
What Newman had realized is that, once you've digested the first-level message of alternate history ("the past didn't have to be the way it was"), what you're left with is mostly just the enstranging thrill of spotting familiar figures in unfamiliar places. At its best, it's an impulse similar to surrealism or daDa; at its worst, it's just Where's Waldo on a big canvas. And when you're playing that game, what does it matter if the pawns are "real" or "fictional"?
Which brings me by commodius vicus of recirculation to Howth of Em. Er, to House of M.
So, despite myself, I'm buying House of M, which isn't particularly bad or good. (I'm indifferent enough that I probably have stopped with the main series after #2, but my wife likes it more than I do, and since I'm buying it anyway, I'm going to read it.) I've read two issues, and almost all of it is Where's Waldo. The only spinoff I've read--the first issue of House of M: Iron Man--actually has some emotional content, but it's coasting pretty hard on assuming the reader will care about a character just because he has the name "Tony Stark".
The thing that really makes me grumble about House of M is that Marvel has hit the alternate history well in too many high-profile projects over the last decade, to the point where is seems like the only "like you've never seen them before!" anymore is the way things are supposed to be.
Somewhere in another timeline, this post spins off into a long rumination on continuity, building a baseline "reality" to spin again, and all of that, but in this timeline, it's just going to trail off with a list how many times the well has been visited.
In the last decade or so, we've seen high- and low-profile "reinventions" of major Marvel characters and/or the entire Marvel universe in:
(Which last is finally colliding with Earth-616, an inevitability which took about three years longer than everyone was expecting.)
There are various shorter "as you've never seen 'ems" including Morrison's "Here Comes Tomorrow", Busiek's "Medieval Avengers", et al, and the more tangential Spider-Girl and "Marvel Next".
And that's not even counting the original or revived What If? Which was slightly different, but still tries to tap into the cheap cognitive estrangement of alternate history. Of course, What If? recently came back yet again, too--spearheaded by Mr Ultimate House of M, Brian Michael Bendis.
Stop him before he alternates again. Please? Let the well fill up again.
Posted by Kevin J. Maroney at July 13, 2005 10:16 PM