WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO: JOE QUESADA PANEL

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- Marvel Comics announced plans for the return of What If? on Friday at Joe Quesada's panel at Wizard World Chicago.

It will be a fifth-week stunt in December 2005 with various teams on seven one-shot issues.

The line-up includes:

* What If Jessica Jones joined the Avengers?, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos, cover by David Finch.

* What If Magneto had formed the X-Men with Professor X?, by Chris Claremont and Cully Hamner, cover by Jim Cheung.

* What If General Ross had become the Hulk, by Peter David and Andrea DiVito, cover by Gary Frank.

* What If Aunt May had died instead of Uncle Ben?, by Ed Brubaker and artist to be announced.

* What If Victor Von Doom had become the Thing?, by Karl Kesel and Paul Smith.

* What Huh?, an all-humor issue drawn Jim Mahfood, written by Bendis, Mark Millar, Joseph Michael Straczynski, Brian K. Vaughan, Claremont, Mark Waid and Robert Kirkman.

* What If Karen Page had not died?, by Bendis, Kevin Smith and Alex Maleev, with a cover by Joe Quesada.

In other news from the panel:

* Quesada announced Marvel's "Young Guns" initiative, featuring six up-and-coming artists: Finch, Cheung, Adi Granov, Olivier Coipel, Trevor Hairsine and Steve McNiven.

A Young Guns logo will be featured on titles that include the artist's work. In addition, the artists will be drawing variant covers to the New Avengers title, which is drawn by Finch.

McNiven will be doing #1 featuring Spider-Man; Hairsine #2 featuring The Sentry; Coipel #3 featuring Wolverine; Cheung #4 featuring Luke Cage and Spider-Woman and Granov #5 featuring "mystery characters." Finch will be doing the regular covers.

Quesada will be doing the sketch for the sixth cover. All of the covers will link to make one poster.

* Quesada said he has finished Daredevil: Father #2. "It's 31 pages and it should be out very, very soon," he said.

* There will be a "surprise," in Astonishing X-Men #4, Quesada said.

* Frank Cho, now exclusive to Marvel, has nearly completed his Shanna mini-series.

* The Ultimates Vol. 2 will launch in December. "It will be monthly," Quesada said.

* Ultimate Nightmare is actually the start of a trilogy of mini-series written by Warren Ellis. The next one, Ultimate Secret, will be drawn by Steve McNiven and starts in December.

* Runaways returns in 2005. Cebulski said the series will be by the same creative team and will pick up a few months after the previous series.

* Publisher Dan Buckley said he's not sure what will become of Weapon X, although he is paying attention to the fan's reaction to its announced cancellation.

* Buckley said there will likely be a second Mary Jane mini-series announced in the next three to six months.

* Cebulski said there will be something "new and old" with the Age of Apocalypse in 2005, which marks the 10th anniversary of the event.

* Quesada said there will be a follow-up to 1602, but he wants to take time with it.

* Quesada said Stracyznski has plans through 2005 for Amazing Spider-Man.

* Quesada has NYX plotted through #7, but then will see if he wants to continue.

* Bryan Singer, director of the first two X-Men movies who is now working on the Superman movie, is still involved with Ultimate X-Men.

* Spider-Man: The End will be written by Stan Lee. "It's going to take a while to get there because the artist is a little busy," Quesada said.