Review: What If? Spider-Man #1 brings us Flash Thompson

What If? Spider-Man #1 gives us a look at a world where Flash Thompson becomes Spider-Man instead of Peter Parker.

What If? Spider-Man #1 has more than one difference from the universe we’re used to. Not only is Flash Thompson now Spider-Man, but Uncle Ben is still alive, J. Jonah Jameson loves Spider-Man and Nick Fury is the Unseen. Some of these differences are welcome, but others aren’t.

Fury narrates part of the issue and this is where I feel like it falls flat. He tells us what we already know about our usual Spider-Man and how he’s different from Flash Thompson’s Spider-Man. I don’t imagine that this would be the first issue someone picks up if they want to read Spider-Man, so it felt unnecessary to tell us what we’ve already seen from Peter’s Spidey.

Instead, the issue could have spent more time on Flash Thompson and just showing us those differences. To an extent, they do that, but this issue just didn’t feel quite as good as it could have been. While I do like that Flash does the right thing in the end, he’s never really the hero in this story.

The art from Diego Olortegui isn’t spectacular, but it’s serviceable. He does a nice job with facial expressions so that we can see Flash’s anger at all the right moments. However, it only really works when we see close-ups of the faces.

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Overall, this issue was more sad than anything else. Flash Thompson had a big fall from grace between his high school years and now. He’s made huge mistakes, especially considering the fact that he literally kills Peter by punching him. This is a hard version of Flash Thompson to like and he wasn’t very likable in the regular universe since he’s bullies Peter around. What If? issues can be pretty hit or miss and this one was more of a miss, unfortunately.