Something is wrong. Someone is changing things, and the effects are rippling across the multiverse. In this world, Betsy Braddock, the misfit sister of Captain Britain, knows someone is missing. She can’t tell you who it is or where they’re missing from; she can just feel their absence. Sorta like a phantom limb. Together with Kitty Pryde, the White Knight of the Hellfire Club and a very unwilling ally, she is on a mission to find out who is missing and bring them back at any cost. So…What if…Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? (Answer from author Rebecca Podos).
[Warning: My review of What if…Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? contains some spoilers!]
An ache that can’t be soothed
Kitty has spent the last ten years of her life feeling like something is wrong. Nothing in her life has worked out like she thought it would. And there’s that lingering fear that she’s losing her mind thanks to her occasional “slips”, as she calls them. Kitty’s power is phasing through matter, but every once in a while it’s like she’s phasing to a completely different universe. One where her life is good, she has friends, she’s…happy. But these glimpses never last and then she’s thrust right back into her awful life.
One night a slip happens at the worst possible time. Right in the middle of a very important job that her boss, Emma Frost, was counting on her to pull off. Instead, the slip messes up everything, and suddenly Kitty isn’t just worried that she’s going crazy, but that her boss might be done with her too. And the Hellfire Club doesn’t exactly just hand out pink slips, you know?
Just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, her mind is invaded by someone claiming to be Betsy Braddock and who needs her help. If she hadn’t just seen someone with that exact name in her last slip, she probably would have flown the coop without ever seeing them. But the coincidence has her curious. She meets up with Betsy, ready to run, but the more Betsy talks, the more curious Kitty becomes. Betsy tells Kitty that someone is missing. She doesn’t know who is missing, where they’re missing from, or how they went missing. She just knows that something is wrong. She’s looking for them by following a kind of psychic trail, and so far it’s led to Kitty. Now Kitty isn’t the one who’s missing, but she’s connected somehow. Betsy thinks they need to go into the past to find out more. And she thinks that if they work together, they can solve the problem and make their world a better place in the process. Kitty is skeptical, but after her botched job for the Hellfire Club, she’s ready to try something new.
Time travel, yea!
The two women tear off to Latveria and Doom Castle to hijack his time platform (don’t you dare call it a time machine!). They manage to take themselves back to 1975. That’s when Betsy’s psychic trail says that whatever caused their missing person to be missing in 1980 happened. They still don’t know exactly when, where, or who they need to save, though. And they’re being chased by Doom for invading his castle. Luckily for them, the X-Men show up, and Betsy picks up the psychic trail again. She follows it all the way to Jean Gray.
Then surprise! America Chavez shows up. She’s given up being a Watcher (but have the Watchers given up her?) to save the multiverse. She knows Doom is the one causing the problems (well, a version of him; it’s complicated). He’s hunting down Nexus Beings and trying to steal the essence that makes them so special. She isn’t sure what he wants to do with it, but handing out free ice cream in July probably isn’t it. She confirms Betsy’s theory that someone is missing from her timeline, and they figure out what they have to do to fix that, save Jean Gray. But this is Doom we’re talking about. No matter how well they plan, he’s two steps ahead and has some secondary goals that no one even knows about. Can they stop whatever his goal actually is and save the multiverse? Heck, Kitty will settle for just saving the universe she’s in. So can they?
A series weak point
What if…Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? is the 4th book in the five-book Marvel What If… series. The first four have all been very enjoyable. The frame story that holds the individual what ifs together may have been a little shadowy at first, but that was the general idea: to slowly pull the two together. In What if…Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? They are fully integrated, which is exciting. America Chavez is an interesting character with a strong moral compass to steer the other characters, especially her laissez-faire Watcher colleagues.
Unfortunately, though, the novel as a whole falls flat. There are just too many timelines with too many characters to feel like a coherent story. I understand that Podos is trying to show how Doom’s actions are rippling across time and space, but it’s just too much. Several times, multiple pages are given over to characters, places, and events that don’t actually matter to the main story and are never talked about again. It kept me from feeling truly invested in the characters and left me bored with the story. Hopefully, the fifth book, What if… the Multiverse was Doomed? will finish the series strong when it comes out on August 4th.
Rating: 6/10
What if…Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? by Rebecca Podos is available now!
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
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