What If? Spider-Man One Shot by Gerry Conway, Diego Olortegui, with Chris O'Halloran
Flash Fiction: What IF? Flash Thompson Became Spider-Man One-Shot
The opening narration’s the first feint. Longtime-fans familiar with military vet Flash Thompson will think they’re reading captions describing how his time in the service taught him the difference between heroes and “a thug with a gun.” But the chaos unleashed towards our perspective by Diego Olortegui’s art stems from ‘the good guy.’ For this is not the mature Flash cultivated by this very writer on his original groundbreaking Spider-Man run. This is no friend of Peter Parker, who walks up to our intrepid shutterbug spitting menace. The narrator? Our new version of Colonel Nick Fury, standing in for The Watcher after the events of Secret Sins as The Unseen, with a very different formula for seeing Infinity. His words are the weigh station to a parallel Earth, and the times have picked up in the heart of Spidey’s roots, where our writer discovered Spider-Man, himself. It’s Midtown High’s football hero, with great power- and little responsibility.
Gerry Conway recently revisited with me how he inverted the Peter Parker formula- and the science nerd/ jock bully dynamic- while discovering the story engine for his creation (with Al Milgrom on design & art on the brief initial run), Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. I wondered: would the writer who so fully humanized Flash in the Vietnam-era pages of Amazing Spider-Man, who delved into the athlete hero-as-underdog, bring him along gracefully to the duties of a true super-hero? The double-splash tableau tells us he’s gone all the way back to the Lee/Ditko conception of Thompson- and for that matter, Parker and Jameson- to unleash a self-styled hero who’s every bit the actual menace portrayed in the pages of the Daily Bugle! Watch the reactions of the innocent bystanders as Peter takes photo after photo of unbridled brutality. This is a modern story about the mind of a bully- once again delving into a less-understood perspective, and arming said bully with powers that mean, no military service, not even an Empire State University scholarship. Flash Thompson’s bitten by the radioactive spider, and now has everything he’ll ever need.
Why wouldn’t he think so? Without a chip on his shoulder – he is, after all, already the big man on campus- he’s prepared to respond with physical prowess and get the glory for stopping a runaway heist man. So Uncle Ben need never die, either. In true What If fashion, one life’s exchanged for another, and what seems a more likely pairing with Fate ultimately yields horror. No one saves John Jameson, astronaut, and so JJJ pours his grief into praising the new, violent vigilante to the skies. You can tell Conway thought about every trope of essential original Spider-Man, and asked how the change beneath the mask would invert them. He took everything that could streamline into a one-shot, and, as the veteran creator in the pairing, set the course, probably page-by-page, for Flash’s rise and fall.
It’s actually tradition with What If?: classic scenes return in their rejuvenated forms. The actual origin of May’s illness gets a gentle nudge away from being caused by Peter’s radioactive blood, but the need for ISO-36, and its theft by the Master Planner, remains. Before we ramp up that climatic arc, cue up the tale’s moments of profound despair and shocking horror. The O' Halloran coloring matches the foreboding, pervading mood. There's a hint of brightness and four-color wonder, but those expecting more vivid colors miss the tone. Even the difference in detail between the angular spider and the graceful silk-screened webs fit the level of skill and attitude of the costume creators. Peter, who invented his own web-shooters, would take the time to emphasize the marvel of spider-silk webs. Flash takes a rushed, unfriendly approach reminiscent of the era of violent protagonists. Nice job, Diego.
Let me pick up that remark I deliberately dropped about Fate, in the words of our recurrent narrator, Fate’s a flimsy pattern we affix to events based on our decisions. The Unseen, portrayed in his own Machiavellian heroic fashion, speaks more humanly about this that we might expect even than from an observant Watcher. He speaks eloquently of who we dream to be, and how we might wake to discover we are, what we truly are. How do we lose ourselves again in the dream? Is it attainable? Not without knowing who we are, what we’re working with- no. Flash begins with the assumption the cheering crowds were right; this excuses his methods and denies consequences in flagrant youthful fashion. His triumph brings an epiphany as deep and climatic as did Peter’s in the original scenario. Will the bully discover what makes a good guy? Check out What IF? Spider-Man One Shot, 2018.
(Sadly, it was the first thing I picked up when I was finally able to make it back to the last comics store standing in my hometown - the birth place of the West Coast Avengers, actually. But the store, filled with comics goodness, was in its last month. The name of the store? What If? Comics and Collectables.)
The opening narration’s the first feint. Longtime-fans familiar with military vet Flash Thompson will think they’re reading captions describing how his time in the service taught him the difference between heroes and “a thug with a gun.” But the chaos unleashed towards our perspective by Diego Olortegui’s art stems from ‘the good guy.’ For this is not the mature Flash cultivated by this very writer on his original groundbreaking Spider-Man run. This is no friend of Peter Parker, who walks up to our intrepid shutterbug spitting menace. The narrator? Our new version of Colonel Nick Fury, standing in for The Watcher after the events of Secret Sins as The Unseen, with a very different formula for seeing Infinity. His words are the weigh station to a parallel Earth, and the times have picked up in the heart of Spidey’s roots, where our writer discovered Spider-Man, himself. It’s Midtown High’s football hero, with great power- and little responsibility.
Gerry Conway recently revisited with me how he inverted the Peter Parker formula- and the science nerd/ jock bully dynamic- while discovering the story engine for his creation (with Al Milgrom on design & art on the brief initial run), Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. I wondered: would the writer who so fully humanized Flash in the Vietnam-era pages of Amazing Spider-Man, who delved into the athlete hero-as-underdog, bring him along gracefully to the duties of a true super-hero? The double-splash tableau tells us he’s gone all the way back to the Lee/Ditko conception of Thompson- and for that matter, Parker and Jameson- to unleash a self-styled hero who’s every bit the actual menace portrayed in the pages of the Daily Bugle! Watch the reactions of the innocent bystanders as Peter takes photo after photo of unbridled brutality. This is a modern story about the mind of a bully- once again delving into a less-understood perspective, and arming said bully with powers that mean, no military service, not even an Empire State University scholarship. Flash Thompson’s bitten by the radioactive spider, and now has everything he’ll ever need.
Why wouldn’t he think so? Without a chip on his shoulder – he is, after all, already the big man on campus- he’s prepared to respond with physical prowess and get the glory for stopping a runaway heist man. So Uncle Ben need never die, either. In true What If fashion, one life’s exchanged for another, and what seems a more likely pairing with Fate ultimately yields horror. No one saves John Jameson, astronaut, and so JJJ pours his grief into praising the new, violent vigilante to the skies. You can tell Conway thought about every trope of essential original Spider-Man, and asked how the change beneath the mask would invert them. He took everything that could streamline into a one-shot, and, as the veteran creator in the pairing, set the course, probably page-by-page, for Flash’s rise and fall.
It’s actually tradition with What If?: classic scenes return in their rejuvenated forms. The actual origin of May’s illness gets a gentle nudge away from being caused by Peter’s radioactive blood, but the need for ISO-36, and its theft by the Master Planner, remains. Before we ramp up that climatic arc, cue up the tale’s moments of profound despair and shocking horror. The O' Halloran coloring matches the foreboding, pervading mood. There's a hint of brightness and four-color wonder, but those expecting more vivid colors miss the tone. Even the difference in detail between the angular spider and the graceful silk-screened webs fit the level of skill and attitude of the costume creators. Peter, who invented his own web-shooters, would take the time to emphasize the marvel of spider-silk webs. Flash takes a rushed, unfriendly approach reminiscent of the era of violent protagonists. Nice job, Diego.
Let me pick up that remark I deliberately dropped about Fate, in the words of our recurrent narrator, Fate’s a flimsy pattern we affix to events based on our decisions. The Unseen, portrayed in his own Machiavellian heroic fashion, speaks more humanly about this that we might expect even than from an observant Watcher. He speaks eloquently of who we dream to be, and how we might wake to discover we are, what we truly are. How do we lose ourselves again in the dream? Is it attainable? Not without knowing who we are, what we’re working with- no. Flash begins with the assumption the cheering crowds were right; this excuses his methods and denies consequences in flagrant youthful fashion. His triumph brings an epiphany as deep and climatic as did Peter’s in the original scenario. Will the bully discover what makes a good guy? Check out What IF? Spider-Man One Shot, 2018.
(Sadly, it was the first thing I picked up when I was finally able to make it back to the last comics store standing in my hometown - the birth place of the West Coast Avengers, actually. But the store, filled with comics goodness, was in its last month. The name of the store? What If? Comics and Collectables.)
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