The announcement of Spider-Man: Spider’s Shadow and the return of the What If… line had this reviewer excited for several reasons. The story introduced me to the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange, and, most importantly, Spider-Man’s black costume. One of the first issues of that series that I read was What If… #4, “What if…the alien costume possessed Spider-Man?” Written by Danny Fingeroth and illustrated by inker Keith Williams and a still-relatively-up-and-coming penciller named Mark Bagley, the story saw Peter Parker unable to rid himself of the symbiote that had bonded itself to him, ultimately being consumed by the alien, which moved on to more powerful heroes like Thor and Hulk before finally being killed by Black Cat.

The series was my introduction to a lot of the major events of the Marvel Universe, and at a time when collected editions were scarce and the best I could do if I wanted to know more was to scour back-issue bins, the possibilities of the series, and of the stories on which it riffed, inspired a lot of imaginative wondering. I have a particular fondness for Marvel’s old What If… stories, particularly the series that ran from 1989 until 1998.

Download spider's shadow