1980 – Whatever happened to the Claremont/Byrne What If Magneto Had Formed the X-Men?

Let me be upfront. I actually couldn’t find out about what happened to this issue. On his forum, John Byrne couldn’t recall its ultimate fate. Maybe it evolved into the “What if Magneto had formed the X-Men with Professor X?” special published in 2004.

Byrne revealed the following in an interview in the Art of John Byrne (1980):

The basic premise was that Charles Xavier had faced Lucifer, and the dead bolt fell on him – the thing that crippled him. Only this time it killed him, so there was never a Charles Xavier. It was Magneto who formed together the first band of X-Men which were not called the X-Men, they were called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

They were Cyclops, Angel, Iceman, Marvel Girl, Beast, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver, with somewhat different names. Cyclops was still Cyclops, the Angel was the Arch Angel, and carries a flaming sword. Iceman had a different name, I can’t remember it right now. Marvel Girl became Psyke. Beast was still the Beast, and Obviously Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch still had the same names.

The story was essentially that with that particular team forming the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Magneto beats everyone. He destroys the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, in their earliest stages. In order to destroy the Fantastic Four, they team up with Doctor Doom. Doctor Doom then turns on them (this is an earlier form of Doctor Doom, the one of about issue #10 of the FF). He turns on them and Magneto magnetically, simply crushes the Doctor’s chest plate (laughter) ‘So much for you fella!” Then, all the other super heroes are either imprisoned or destroyed. Those who are not killed are imprisoned on Asteroid M and Magneto rules the world!

We show that it’s not all that bad a place, really. Homo Sapiens are not the top dogs anymore – the world is ruled by Homo Superior. And everything is going along real cool and neat, until one day, along comes the Silver Surfer, followed immediately by Galactus.

And in this case, since the Thing was killed in the destruction of the Fantastic Four, there is no Alicia to soften the heart of the Surfer, so the Surfer doesn’t turn on Galactus, so Galactus eats the world. Of course, Asteroid M with all there superheroes on it, which is in orbit, goes drifting off into space with Spider-Man and Daredevil and all the other survivors.

Apparently Claremont and Byrne had plotted it, Byrne was to draw it and Claremont script it.