Random Happenstance

I know there are a few issues of Marvel's What If? with happy endings, but they're pretty few and far between. This issue somehow may qualify as both, maybe. From 1994, What If? #62, "What If Logan Battled Weapon X?" Written by Kurt Busiek, pencils by Ron Randall, inks by Art Nichols.

The cover has "What If Wolverine Battled" instead of Logan, probably because they had the Wolverine logo and didn't have to come up with a Logan one; but this predates his Wolverine days: when agents for the Weapon X project try and fail to put the bag on a bitter, drunken Logan; the project is forced to find a new test subject, going with ex-Mountie Guy Desjardine. While the procedure to insert adamantium into his skeleton works, albeit with some leftover spikes sticking out of his hands; the pain drives Guy insane. Attaching a regulator pack to Guy to feed him tranquilizers or adrenaline, the question then becomes what to do with him: the "Professor" of Weapon X sees him as a bomb, that's going to go off somewhere, so he dumps him on James Hudson and Department H, the precursor of Alpha Flight.

Or, at least it would've been: when Weapon X goes on a rampage, Walter Langkowski is the first casualty--presumably before he ever even became Sasquatch. Hudson's trainee heroes are forced to step up, and one by one they come up short. At least some of the trainees seemed to be created just for this one: I know Smart Alec was from Byrne's AF run, and there's a younger Snowbird, but St. Elmo and Stitch weren't familiar. Well, they're all dead now anyway, as is Hudson, whose pre-Guardian armor was not ready for that kind of fight.

Still, when Weapon X slices his way through Kenora, Ontario, he kills a friend of Logan's, and he starts following the trail of the Weapon X project, while preparing to stop Weapon X's killing spree, which has made it to Calgary--hold the phone! It's a relatively straight shot, but it's also like over 900 miles! Wouldn't they have killed him with an airstrike at some point? And how did a barefoot and insane X make it that far on foot? (Maybe he snuck a ride on a train or something.) The government takes a wait-and-see outlook on the Logan/Weapon X fight: sure Weapon X had killed a mess of people, but Logan had documents that were pretty embarrassing, so wasn't he equally as bad?

By fighting tactically, and not like an animal, Logan is able to outmaneuver and then decapitate Weapon X. Although he's cut up more than a bit and goes into a river, Logan still escapes and gets the documents out, bringing down the project, the Canadian intelligence community, and probably the current administration. But he would never be Wolverine, and that world would never have an Alpha Flight: you can guess which one they might miss more.