WHAT IF? #7 (1978)

Issue #7 of What If? asked, “What if someone else besides Spider-Man had been bitten by the radioactive spider?” Yeah, that’s a mouthful of a title. As you can see from the splash page, above, the interior title was a little shorter–but not by much.

The story pays tribute to Amazing Fantasy #15 by showing Flash Thompson, Betty Brant, and John Jameson all get bit and go through a story with beats pretty similar to what happened to Peter Parker.

These are really fun stories, but the best part is this?

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The main reason I wanted to post on this is the panel above, in which the girl-spidey from this story has pupils, in a clear tribute to Steve Ditko’s classic mix-up in Amazing Fantasy #15….

Plus, #7 it did come true.  In Amazing Spider-Man #4, we learned that after Peter got bit that damn spider was still hungry…

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So every issue of What If? so far has had at least a kernel of 616 truth to it.

And finally, the letters page offered a poll for what questions readers wanted to see What If? address in the future. Many of these became future issues, and others are just fun to imagine…

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