VERY FINE/NEAR MINT Written by jeff parker & paul tobin
Penciled by clayton henry
Cover by john romita jr.
In 1987, peter parker followed wolverine to russia, who was on the trail of a friend working for the kgb. Realizing that the kgb would eventually kill his friend, wolverine wanted to put her out of her misery. Peter tried to stop him, but accidentally killed the friend instead. Haunted by his actions, peter fled home into the waiting arms of mary jane.
But what if…peter never went home? What if…the spider never came out of the cold?
"I barely remember the story this What If is based on (a one-shot from 1987), but Jeff Parker, Paul Tobin and Clayton Henry managed to come up with a modestly entertaining story despite that. What they put forward is really just ‘What If Spider-Man became a Black Ops spy during the Cold War, guest-starring The Wolverine and some girl you won’t care about’, but the idea of grim-and-gritty Spider-Man is actually kind of cool for twenty pages, and the relatively upbeat story kindly eschews the apocalyptic tones common to What If’s, even featuring a *gasp* ending to the story. Not a bad little book, all told."
THIS BOOK GETS 7 GRAHAMS OUT OF 10
