In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

Today, based on a suggestion from my pal, Martin Gray, we look at when the first "What If?" comic book story debuted.

At its simplest form, you have to realize that "What If?" is one of the fundamental driving forces of all fiction. Pretty much everything that has ever happened in any sort of media has revolved around the idea, "What If....something?" For instance, "What if an alien lands on Earth as a baby and has superpowers?" "What if we turned the Shadow into a superhero who likes bats?" So really, almost EVERY comic book, under a certain theory, would count as a What If? story. But obviously that's not what Martin is looking for here. We're talking about a comic book story where the "What If...?" idea is specifically part of the comic in an open fashion.

Along those lines, then, I would have to discount the frequent usage of the term "What If?" in humor comic books, with Mad Magazine's first usage occurring in 1958's Mad #42, "What If You Did What They Told You On TV?"

This occurred a lot in humor comics of the era. In this instance (by writers Dee Caruso and Bill Levine and artist Bob Clarke), it was a simple case of imagining what would happen if you actually tried to do the things that they told you to do in commercials. Really basic stuff, but that was the driving force of a number of similar gags in other humor comics from this era (both Mad and its various copycat competitors). Just a general, "Hey, what if this happened?"

So, if you're looking for the first comic book story that actively worked "What If?" into the feature, then this would be the answer, but again, I assume we're specifically talking about a comic book where it is an alternate reality centered around asking "What If?," right?

In other words, something like Archie and Me #9's "What If?" by Bob Bolling and Jon D'Agostino, where Mister Weatherbee wonders what it would be like if Archie was his son...

Naturally, it would not have turned out well, and by the end of his wondering about the scenario, Weatherbee keeps thinking of how bad Archie would be as a son that he ends up yelling at Archie for no reason when he next runs into him. That 1966 story would be precisely what Martin is looking for, but sadly (okay, "sadly" is a stretch, but when an answer is predictable, it is kind of sad for me), the answer is precisely the story that Martin thought it would be when he wrote in to me. He asked if 1965's Detective Comics #347 was really the first and it looks like it was, in fact, the first "What If?" story in comics (where the "What If?" suggests an alternate reality story).

The lead feature in Detective #347 was written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella and it dealt with a brand-new villain known as the Bouncer. The Bouncer had an elastic costume that allowed him to bounce all over the place, but he also had weapons made out of the same special elastic material, so he had a gun, for instance, that he could bounce off of a wall and have it fire.

Batman and Robin, though, realize that if they freeze his costume and his gun, it can remove the elasticity from them both, so when the Bouncer goes to throw his gun to bounce off of a wall and fire on Batman, it instead breaks on the wall and Batman knocks him out cold. That, of course, is how the story OFFICIALLY ended.

This, though, then led to a special detour where Gardner Fox took readers into his own home and show them his "What IF?" room. This is the place where he goes to think about stories that he has just completed and debate how the story could have taken a drastic turn depending on different circumstances. He then decided to show one such alternate scenario to the readers.

This time around, the Bouncer quickly figured out what Batman and Robin were trying to do. In the original story, Batman stalls him long enough for the freezing effect to take control. Here, though, since the Bouncer cops to their plan, he makes his move sooner, and throws his elastic gun before it can be frozen and it does its trick and it bounces off of the wall and fires upon Batman, killing the Dark Knight in cold blood (but not cold enough to freeze elastic material).

Fox then shows the Justice League come to pay tribute to their fallen comrade and Robin vows revenge on the Bouncer. This time around, since the gun trick worked, the gun was left behind as evidence and Robin was able to experiment on it and discover a way to use elastic fatigue to break down the Bouncer's elasticity in a different fashion. When they fought against each other, Robin was able to win and arrest Batman's killer.

However, then Batman shows ups...alive! It turns out that the Earth-2 Batman found out about what happened to his Earth-1 counterpart and decided to travel to Earth-1 to take over his fallen counterpart. Earth-2 Batman was older, and nearing retirement on Earth-2 anyways. In addition, Earth-2 Batman brought along Earth-2 Alfred to help cheer Robin up, as Earth-1 Alfred had been killed a year or so earlier.

The issue ended with readers being asked if they wanted to see more of these "What If?" stories. However, soon after this, the Batman TV series debuted, and Fox and the other Batman writers had to spend their time writing stories similar to the TV series and the "What If...?" approach was forgotten (or maybe fans wrote in and said they didn't want it. I doubt it, though).

Thanks for the suggestion, Martin!

If anyone else has a suggestion for/question about a notable comic book first, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!