Thread by @Exalted_Speed

One of the things I like to do is to find obscure little niche titles or events that don't get talked about today, or written up. Today were looking at a unique "crossover" that is very different today we are look at the comics of the Marvel Universe.

So Backstory even since the 60's in Fantastic 4 there has been an In universe comic company who makes comics based on their adventures. This has been used as a running gag throughout the decades at Marvel.

Now as funny a gag it is, the comics can't exactly be 100 percent what we read in the real world right? For one while it's uncommon now many heroes had secret identities and some where out right hated. What would they be actually like is at least a fun question.

So Marvel produced this 5th week event, these are events meat to fill up an odd schedule and have creators imagine what they comics would be in universe. Let's take a look at some of them.

The Fantastic 4 one is the one "that is as true as possible" because the FF unique niche at the time was that they were in the public so it's a marketing book meant to show them off filled with info about them and having an educational bent.

It's the most NORMAL one and it's a fun FF adventure with great art and writing. After this were going to go off the deep end just a little.

The next one Captain America is where the meta gets tilted, so first at the time Captain America HAD a secret identity despite being well known. He also had a regular job. I know I know. So what was this comic like?

So this comic written by "Rick Jones" and Drawn by some schmuck named "Steve Rogers" is the comic that is presented to us. Actually written by Peter David and other artist this fun little cheeky adventures has a heavy meta comedy bent.

So yeah for people who don't know Steve's actual day job was being a comic artist, see Steve actually designed his own costume for Captain America, Nomad and the like and for a long time this was what he actually did as a normal life.

The comic is presented as part 5 in an ongoing story like we just picked a random issue, and the comic has many winks and nudges to like cliches at the time. To be Fair it's written By Rick Jones this makes total sense with his sense of humor.

The Secret identity of Cap is revealed to be Roger Stevenson. I mean I knew it all along who didn't?

The comic is a fun comedy but maybe a little too meta for it's own good. TO be fair that's what also makes it very fun, I feel this is the one that did the bit the best. Still it's going to get weirder from here.

What about Thor he can't be too weird right?

Well you would be wrong see some people in Universe don't believe that Thor is a god, so what is he? He has been around before, so what gives? Well in the comic it presents Thor as a superhero legacy passed around in a family.

Still something never change and even this Thor has his own sinister brother, one downfall of this might be the fact that the comic doesn't maybe explain the other asgardians but hey you only have so much space.

The idea isn't actually too dissimilar to Ultimate Thor. For people who have not read it, Ultimate Thor was initially presented as possibly being insane and using tech to fake being a god before it was revealed he was actually Thor. Now this is interesting a reason well get to.

Daredevil as presented is the weakest in concept but still kind of fun, Daredevil in the story is presented as a devil trying to get into heaven still I wonder if there is a little clever reference in here.

Daredevil secret identity in the comic is him taking care of a bunch of orphans which is what the Golden Age Daredevil did. So I imagine this is little tip to the hat to the original public domain hero.

not a bad little story just overall not as fun as the other and honestly not that weird. It's a very bog standard supernatural superehero book and the nods are eh. It does have a cool take on the yellow costume though. The idea of people thinking DD is actually a demon is cool.

Still what about someone who might be a menace? Some heroes are not looked on too fondly and what must the public think of them?

So there is an extra book in the event called the History of Comics that goes into the inner workings and history of the company that explains a unique aspect of the Spider-man one, that they were sued by the Daily Bugle for using there likeness. JJJ couldn't stand for it.

In it Spider-man is portrayed as a monster with a mysterious motive, he might be a good guy but the comic does not tell us showing a creature that would not be out of place in a 70's Marvel horror comics, also look how they interpret "Peterson" I wonder who he could be.

The comic present this Spider-man as an Alien Creature and the viewpoint character is well "TT Thomas" who is basically JJ, this plays on the idea JJ hates Spider-man for messing with his son's rep as a "real hero" and it's him trying to bring "Spider-man" down.

He is not the only changed for legal reason character, meet a version of Doc Ock you probably haven't seen before.

Still the comic present an interesting explanation for Spider-man in universe and it's probably why JJ sued. It implies that Spider-man is actually HIS SON! See JJ is actually acting out against his boy who is now a monster!

This does actually make sense in universe it wouldn't be the first time John Jameson went to space and got weird fucked up superpowers that turn him another species. So the idea that he might be Spider-man isn't the most far fetched one.

But what about the X-men? The world hates and fear them but they do protect it what does the Marvel universe make of them?

The X-men are presented not as a traditional super team no they are essentially the suicide squad, who have to prove to humanity they are not evil despite being filthy muties. This is one of those case of satire actually kind of landing very well.

Now this was published in the 2000 and I'm going to ask you to pay close attention here, you see this was written by Mark Millar and if you know Ultimates your looking at the pilot for the style he would bring to it.

The comic goes deeper not only promoting the mutant hunting as good, but Doctor Strange as a possible supervillain. Again this does feel like a pilot for how how the Ultimates would handle the characters when Millar would take over not all of them but Colonel has elements.

Still this comic ends with a death as befitting any Suicide Squad homage, Wolverine bites it and goes down "like a man" this is actually a nice satire on the Thing story but also adding a nice racism bite to it.

This even never had a follow up, which blows because I feel more can be done, but I can also see this being a confusing event, it took me a while to find info on these books and I thought it was something like Tangent comics where creators could only use the name.

The event is by it's nature kind of inside baseball so I can imagine not wanting to something like that again because how do you tell reader these are in universe comics? It's an odd duck of an event that I never seen any company do before with the premise.

This event totals out to about 7 books including the history one and while it's not the best thing ever it's a fun idea that presents a look into Marvel, an event about pure world building rather then a simple crossover. It's a fun little reminder that events could be like this.

I also find it funny that the idea for Ultimate Thor came from this obscure comic event that Mark Millar was worked on. It's amazing to see a how some ideas come from little corners you never looked at before.

This did kind of get a follow up but it's OBSCURE. There was a series of backups around the early 2010's called the Masked Marvel who worked for Marvel in universe. The Spider-man crossover story actually references the comic.

Anyway Marvel still does the meta joke and it's been used in Dan Slott's She-hulk extensively and by other creators. Maybe in a couple years well see what some other heroes look like to Marvel's population.