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Review: What If? Spider-Man

By | December 16th, 2010
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Written by Mark Sable
Illustrated by Paul Azaceta

WHAT IF SPIDER-MAN KILLED KRAVEN THE HUNTER? At the rollicking conclusion of this year’s modern classic GRIM HUNT, the Amazing Spider-Man had his undead arch-foe Sergei Kravinoff at his mercy – and let him live. But what if Spider-Man had crossed the line from hero to killer? See how one fatal decision changes the life of a man and the people he loves! By Mark Sable (Unthinkable) and Paul Azaceta (AMAZING SPIDER-MAN)! PLUS, What If: The Venom Symbiote Possessed Deadpool – Part 3!

I haven’t read a What If? for a while, so I decided to pick up this one based off of the closest thing Brand New Day had to a climax (sorry One Moment In Time and Origin of the Species). Follow the cut to see if I was pleasantly surprised.

Okay, so I’ll admit first thing that I was expecting certain things from this comic that would have been very restricting to writer Mark Sable. But you know what? I don’t think I was in the wrong having those expectations. During “The Grim Hunt” readers were given a look at what would have happened had Spider-Man killed Kraven the Hunter, and I found it particularly interesting because it looked like it was tied into the bleak future JMS had hinted at during his Amazing Spider-Man run. Crazy, huh? Well, this issue was set to tell the events following Spider-Man going down that dark path and… well, none of it happened. Now, I’m all for doing your own thing as a writer, especially on a What If?, but when the source story specifically says certain things happen as a result of the change in actions, I figure the best idea is to work within those boundaries. There’s still a lot of room to move around in, after all, and you’re working in a framework built by Joe Kelly and JMS, two comic legends. Hell, I would pay to work within those boundaries!

Now, to lambast the entire comic for this single reason would be silly, and I wouldn’t do that. But there honestly wasn’t much to phone your friends about in this issue besides what I just discussed. In a typical What If? fashion, Sable had to fit a lot of story into very little pages, and while you have to give him some slack because of the difficulties this can present, he didn’t really handle the job as well as he could have. Despite my problems listed above, the story could have been interesting were it serialized; unfortunately, the decisions that Sable had Peter make seemed to rushed and thus quite out of character, even with the drastic changes this reality had put him through.

Paul Azaceta’s art was probably the comic’s saving grace, complementing Michael Lark’s gritty style from the original arc without aping it. There was also a back-up What If? concerning what would happen were the symbiote to bind itself to Deadpool, but I read a few pages and found it boring and a bit stupid. Maybe the first couple of installments were better, but I doubt that. As is, this issue doesn’t give me much hope for Marvel’s current What If? line, though I suppose there’s more of an issue-by-issue variation with these titles than normal ongoings. This is worth a flip-through, but at $3.99 that’s about all its worth.

Final Verdict: 5.8 – Browse.


Walt Richardson

Walt is a former editor for Multiversity Comics and current podcaster/ne'er-do-well. Follow him on Twitter @goodbyetoashoe... if you dare!

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