It’s almost hard to be believe that it’s taken this long for a proper series of Marvel prose novels to emerge after the widespread success of the MCU. After all, Disney’s other big sci-fi franchise, Star Wars, has been releasing novels for decades – including many fantastic series like Alphabet Squadron and the High Republic since the buyout in 2012.

As such, it’s nice that fans of licensed spin-off novels—myself included—finally have some Marvel books to sink their teeth into. The second of this new What If series, What If: Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? is proof that we’re long overdue some proper Marvel prose novels.

Taking place outside of mainline MCU continuity, this series explores the vast diverging timelines as viewed by this book’s Watcher, America Chavez – who film fans will remember from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In this timeline, Richard and Mary Parker rescue an abandoned Wanda Maximoff from Latveria, leading to her being raised as a sister to Peter Parker. As they both discover their powers and own individual superhero identities, their sibling bond has to contend not only with that, but the remnants of Wanda’s past that won’t let go.

Cover art for What If: Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings?

It’s an interesting concept that really earns the full-length treatment, as opposed to the half-hour segments we often see in Marvel Animation’s What If TV series. The book gets the luxury of charting their entire relationship, with the Watcher acting as our conduit for skipping to the most noteworthy anecdotes.

It’s much more Wanda-heavy from a storytelling perspective, focusing on the development of her powers, how she learns to tame them, and how her past plays a role in her development as a hero. That said, it does cover very well-trodden ground in Spider-Man lore, so it’s interesting to see how Wanda’s presence alters not only the reaction to, but the course of some of the hero’s most tragic moments.

Author Seanan McGuire imbues Spider-Man with more personality flaws than he’s often afforded, with him often being jealous, overly defensive, and at times downright spiteful. The luxury of a much longer medium compared to a film or show means not only can we dig deeper into the conflicts that arise between Peter and Wanda, but have them resolved without feeling rushed or contrived.

But this is Wanda’s story at its core, and it’s nice to see this glossy-eyed, innocent presentation of the character as opposed to the hardened, more cynical version currently in the MCU. The book doesn’t shy away from her Romani roots and the occasional racism she faces as a result, and even has something interesting to say about the treatment of female heroes by the public, and how they’re immediately assumed to be love interests rather than being taken seriously of their own merit.

Without the burden of licensing and actor contracts, too, it means that a veritable who’s-who of Marvel characters can crop in and out of the story in a really nonchalant way. I won’t spoil any of them here, but it feels just like reading a comic book or watching a Saturday morning cartoon as beloved characters crop up for brief periods before returning to their business. It makes the wider universe established in the novel feel so much larger, and provides the stage for unique character interactions to take place.

That said, the novel definitely takes a long time before getting to the inciting incident that produces the dramatic backbone of the plot. The first 200 pages or so are nearly entirely focused on Wanda and Peter’s adolescence and origin stories, leaving the true ‘villain’ of the novel—including their motivations, complications, and ultimate defeat—stuffed into the final third. Fortunately the character work is engaging enough to never leave you wanting, but when it does eventually come around it feels like the primary conflict is over and explained away just as quickly as it happened.

But that doesn’t detract from how refreshing it is to read a proper Marvel prose novel that isn’t a movie or video game tie-in. These What If novels are the perfect opportunity for unique stories to be told in a way that isn’t beholden to wider continuity or the pre-established rules of a universe. I could easily read one of these every few months, as a chance to see Marvel characters taken to task in a different medium that allows the character work to flourish.

★★★½

What If series, What If: Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? is out now from Del Rey Books.