This is the next little episode on the What-If Scenario of X-Force versus Defenders. Before reading the chapter, I just want to discuss the setting a little bit although you can skip it if you’re so thirsty.
This time I just wanted to talk about the setting. I have never been to Manhattan in my life but we’ve all seen movies and tv shows about the city. It was much easier to picture the general atmosphere of skyscrapers and dark alleys than some empty town in Kansas. You’ll see later we’ll spend an entire chapter in Hell’s Kitchen which was cool for me. Setting the story in NY, the biggest thing my mind always went to was a rooftop battle so that chapter had some of it but to be honest, these characters aren’t that strong for everyting I was picturing.
A big thing for me though was trying to keep the city accurate, so I looked up comic accurate locations to stuff like Strange’s house or Stark Tower. The Rand Building and Cage’s barber shop (from the Luke Cage show) I was fine with being everywhere. Then, because I wanted the story to only feature Manhattan scenes, I made it so that Parker goes to Columbia which is much closer to the school in Long Island. In order to keep locations accurate, I quite literally google mapped everything. I’d click on a road of HK, go street view, take a quick little tour up and down the street for a good background and the write the fight scene. Kind of fun to be honest. I’ll do a few more marvel stories so I can’t wait continue “traveling” to “New York”.
Now the time period of this story is kind of funny, to just me I think. Wade already referenced the twin towers so this story obviously takes place 2000-2001. There will be other references later on about the recent collapse of the Soviet Union and even the Gulf War which is all cool. But then you’ll remember that this story is anti-canon. None of that history matters and even this event itself is anachronistic. The most unforgivable thing is probably all of the musical references which will be much more recent than 9/11. The technology is all actually accurate. These people have easier phone access than they probably should but its not the iPhone 14 at least. Print media would still be relevant but I give the Daily Bugle a televised branch of news in addition for faster reporting.
In any case, there is still a history these characters exist in that they will all discuss with a backstory between Castle and Spector. So just to clarify a few things, superheroes in this timeline are still very fresh in 2001. Captain America is the only real hero but he existed in WW2 and died in action (we know he’s just frozen). Since then though, these new heroes attribute their activity to being expired by the Old Captain and that’s why some of them have the “same mask”. I detailed that in the story because the mask Marvel gives to Steve Rogers is actually quite weird. It covers everything on the face/head except for the mouth region. Why? The fuck? Keeping it open for the ladies or what? And it’s weird cause he’s not the only one; Wolverine, Daredevil, Bullseye, Hellcat, Iron Fist, Captain Marvel, etc. So in this story, they all adhere to the Old Captain from their perspectives. But when I realized this I just wanted to point out that it is kind of weird especially since I can’t imagine Peter Parker in the same style because his full face mask is so iconic. Deadpool’s too. Then there’s public heroes with no cover like Luke, Stark, Strange, Namor and others. But those guys are too cool to be hampered by some paparazzi.
Besides that, heroes are still very new. In marvel comics, I think Peter started being Spider-Man in his senior year of high school so that does translate to here where he’s a college sophomore so its only be like three years. Parker would’ve only been working at the Daily Bugle for the past two years. I’d consider Jessica 1 year older than him since she had a crush on him in high school. In the Daredevil show, Matt starts the legal office immediately after graduation while in the comics, he seemed to start both the Daredevil and lawyer career the same month. We’ll just say DD is as old as Spider-Man in vigilantism. Luke has been around Harlem for at least a year although I don’t give any history to Danny Rand. Even Strange, in this story, is a young sorcerer although I think the character is in his early 50s. Because of this, Strange won’t have any broken spells actually so no one can complain he didn’t just mind erase his opponents. I think that’s the funny thing about MCU Strange, he trained for an unspecified amount of time but even at the climax, no one considered him that good. He simply had an infinity stone. Yet after that film, his professionalism never makes it seem like he’s not a novice anymore even though he can’t know more spells than Wong or the spells the old Supreme knew. Now later in the story, Wolverine is described as a superhero but its only been a bit longer than these yankees. Hulk, Thor, and Loki will also be referenced but those are recent appearances. With all of this, there is no existent Avengers team, the Fantastic Four simply don’t exist, an X-Man team has not been established, and you will see Blackbolt has not started his own team. Stark will be in this story (spoiler) but he is the newest hero with only a few months in the business.
Now this will be a shorter than usual chapter only because I think the next part fits better all together.
tdwriter 