As I’m writing this, the new Doctor Strange isn’t out yet, so I can only guess what will happen. We’ve seen from the Disney+ What If…? series that there is a darker Doctor Strange, zombies, and Captain Carter, among other things. Spider-Man: No Way Home made all three recent cinematic webcrawlers canon in the MCU. Will the X-Men or other mutants finally make their MCU debut? Will the dream cast of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt appear in a new Fantastic Four? Come on, future reader, use your own multiversal powers to reach back in time and tell me! Okay. That was confusing. That’s the multiverse for you. While the MCU focuses pretty hard on the timeline element to differentiate their multiverse, the comics have nearly as many reasons for different universes as they have universes themselves. Parallel dimensions, time travel, buying other comic book companies, on and on goes the list. Can’t get enough of these always-exciting and often-confusing multiversal adventures? Here are the absolutely mandatory multiverse comics for you to read. Disclaimer: Comics being comics, particularly with Marvel and DC, means this list includes too few women. This list should have your one-universe mind spinning sufficiently, and it doesn’t even include stories that happen in only one alternate universe. Comics, y’all, we love them partly because of their complexity. So there’s nothing more comic bookish than a multiverse.
