What If Wednesdays #7: What If Someone Else Had Become The Amazing Spider-Man?

On Wednesdays, The Amazing Justin Palm! gets drunk as shit and reviews an issue of Marvel Comics’ “What If?” so that you, the reader, can enjoy his drunken ramblings about a comic book whose sole purpose is to talk about shit that never happened, so it doesn’t matter at all. Dear Internet: You’re welcome.

Oo! Triple Threat this week! Three stories all based on the same idea, which... is in the title. We get to see what happens when (Peter Parker’s bully and Spider-Man’s #1 Fan) Flash Thompson, (Peter’s first girl friend and J Jonah Jameson’s secretary) Betty Brant, and (JJJ’s hero son) John Jameson all get Spider-Man’s powers instead of, you know, Spider-Man. Who lives? Who dies? Who gets sexy with nerds?

Alright, after three pages of Spidey rescuing a kid who invites him to dinner, than a quickie Spidey-origin, we’re off. In story one, while Peter Parker is attending the science exhibit that would accidentally give him his powers, Flash Thompson busts in, mostly because he can (and also two impress two girls, I guess?). Anyway, the spider lands on Flash, not Peter, and thus gives him spider powers. After being bitten, Flash brushes it off, and leaves with the girls. Peter, meanwhile, realizes that the spider might somehow give someone super powers, and swipes it.

As Flash and the girls head outside, a car speeds towards them, about to kill them all. Flash instinctively grabs the girls and tosses them out of the way, and then pulls the driver out of the car and freaks him out. Realizing he’s suddenly super strong, Flash decides this is a good time to take up professional wrestling. Just like in Amazing Fantasy 15, a now super powered Flash wrestles with Crusher Hogan to make $100, only Flash, unlike Peter, is unaware of his own strength, and accidentally breaks Hogan’s neck. Flash is pretty freaked out by this, as it was purely an accident, and when the cops show up to arrest him, he responds in the worst way possible, by punching them and making a run for it. What can I say, he’s just a stupid kid.

Realizing that almost everyone saw his face and he is totally screwed, Flash decides to... make a costume that looks almost exactly like Spider-Man’s, and fight crime as (I’m not kidding) “Captain Spider.” Captain Spider fights the Chameleon, the Tinkerer (oy, early Spider-Man stories) and finally the Vulture. It’s this last fight that gets him in trouble, because Flash’s Captain Spider lacks Spider-Man’s web-shooters. So, in mid-ariel battle, the Vulture gets off a good punch, and Flash plummets to his death. Peter Parker happens to see all of this happen, and rushes to Captain Spider’s side, but it’s too late. Peter realizes that Captain Spider was actually Flash, and is touched that his former bully was actually a hero all along.

In story two, it turns out that the scientist giving the demonstration is actually a “close, personal friend “of J. Jonah Jameson, and JJJ promised him top billing in Sunday’s paper. The fact that JJJ refers to his ‘friend’ as “that egghead” is never further addressed. Anyway, Betty Brant is with JJJ to take notes for the article. Peter spots Betty and realizes he wants her in the biblical sense, but just then the radioactive spider bites her, making her feel ill as she gains powers.

Peter catches Betty before she can fall, and also pawns the spider for further research, and cons Betty into going out for coffee with him. For a nerd, Peter Parker is a smooth motherfucker, everyone. Peter asks her about her work at the Bugle, and Betty just freaks out because she hates Jameson, accidentally breaking the table they’re sitting at in her rage. Peter then cons Betty into letting him visit her in her apartment, to put her through a serious of “experiments” to “test her powers”. One assumes they get sexy here.

After testing out Betty’s powers, they make her a (truly awful) costume, Peter invents webshooters for her, and Spider-Girl is born! Seriously, this costume is the worst. It’s Spider-Man’s mask, gloves, and boots, with a blue corset and bikini bottoms and webwings that don’t attach anywhere. It’s like someone looked at Spider-Man’s costume, said “how can we take this, put it on a lady, and make it as unflattering as possible while still looking like we thought it might be sexy?” It is truly, truly terrible.

Anyway, Peter sells photos of her to Jonah over at the Bugle, who of course thinks she’s a menace. Betty is kind of freaked out by her powers, but with the webbing and everything, she rarely needs to really use them. One night when Peter is taking her picture, a mugger runs past, and Spider-Girl- afraid of her strength, remember- doesn’t stop him. The cops chew her out for that, and at this point you can probably see where this is going.

Peter and Betty learn that someone has killed Peter’s Uncle Ben, and Betty heads off to catch him. After dispatching him, she realizes that it’s the same thief she didn’t stop earlier, and that pretty much ends her career. She can’t take the guilt and her own weakness (ugh, that is an awful thing for someone to have to write...), and we get a bit of Spider-Man: No More!, as Betty leaves her costume in a trash can. Peter looks on at the outfit, and wonders....

Story three! This time, JJJ’s son John Jameson is at the science experiment, because why the hell not. If you saw Spider-Man 2, you know that Jonah’s son is an astronaut, and if you didn’t I just told you. Anyway, he gets bitten, has powers, and is awesome. Jameson discovers his son has superpowers, and immediately decides that this is great, and decides to make it public, so John Jameson dons a jetpack and another horrible Spider-Man rip-off costume to become (groan) Spider-Jameson!

Spider Jameson goes off to rescue the space capsule that he himself would ride in normal continuity, and ends up sacrificing himself to save the astronauts on-board. Jameson builds a memorial to his son, and decides to support all future superheroes, because in this universe JJJ has some weird thing called compassion.

The epilogue to all three stories is the same. Having witnessed the potential in Captain Spider/Spider-Girl/Spider Jameson, Peter Parker uses the spider left over from the experiment to create a serum, and become the Amazing Spider-Man! And thus, a new hero is born for a new age! Or something!

So, honestly, I’m a little disappointed with this one. It’s a nice enough idea for a What If, but the execution feels both rushed and off. Like, it would have been better if this had been three separate issues, to let the stories breathe a bit. Also, I hate that all three end with Peter as Spider-Man. It kind of defeats the point if at the end, the story basically goes “and now back to your regularly scheduled universe.” It undermines the whole thing. And only one of these stories brings up Uncle Ben and guilt (the entire point of Spider-Man, guys) which logically doesn’t make sense in terms of the timeline of his death.... oy. And don’t even get me started on the outfits. Apparently, one of the by-products of being bitten by a radioactive spider is dressing in blue and red spandex with a web motif.

Next time! What If The World Knew Daredevil Was Blind? Hopefully it won’t be like that time his identity was outed to the public.