Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue at random, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

This seems oddly fitting, since it’s apparantly Spider-Man week here on Comics Daily!

One issue earlier, What If…? received an overhaul in which it dropped the familiar taglines, and retitled simply “What If… Starring…” in this case, Spider-Man. The stories also became incredibly dark. In the past, What If had suffered from similar problems to Sci-Fi anthology TV shows, and often ended with everyone dying or the world being destroyed simply to try and appear incredibly important, but its overhaul did away with all that in favour of tales of very disturbing personal destruction, becoming something more akin to a horror anthology.

Titled Arachnamorphosis, Issue #88 actually comes of some pretty good pedigree - a Marvel Editor at the time, Ben Raab, writes, and pencils are from Ariel Olivetti, of recent Punisher and forthcoming Cable fame. The story itself is, well, okay. In it, Peter Parker lives uneasily with his teenage son, Ben, and is works on controlling his increasingly frequent transformations into a savage spider-monster that are threatening to consume his identity – he’s craving blood and eating raw meat from the fridge. Meanwhile, Ben is being bullied by Flash Thompson’s son Butch because of his appearance – Peter’s altered blood has made Ben a mutant with Spider-like eyes - and he’s befriended only by Sara Joy Watson (no no-prizes for guessing who she is).

When Butch mocks Ben, saying he caused his own mother’s death, Ben gets into a fight and Sara runs to find Peter for help. Peter is in the middle of another cure attempt which goes wrong and triggers his transformation. He appears just in time to find a mob led by Flash Thompson attacking Ben after mistaking the spider-monster for Peter – in fact, Ben has also changed into a beast. Peter draws them away, and as he’s beaten to death, tells Ben he loves him and that he’s never been alone. The final page shows Ben arriving at Xavier’s school, where hopefully he can fit in.

It’s a bit of a twisty plot, and the art is of variable quality – there’s some a lot of mediocre stuff, though some excellent images do stand out – I’m especially fond of a panel where a desperate Peter slumps at his table with “FAILURE = DEATH” written on his notes. The ending where Ben goes to join Xavier’s is a little gratuitous and not really good payoff for the story, but it’s worth remembering that at the time, the X-Men titles were the biggest two in the industry and What If…? was practically an X-Book itself, with frequent X-Men characters starring because of how well they sold. The story could easily stand alone as a generic horror story rather than Spider-Man specific, one, and as such it’s never going to be essential reading, but it is fun, and that’s the real appeal of What If…?

Download What If…? v2 #88 in .cbr format here for a limited time, and there’s always more What If…? (v1) available to view online at Marvel Digital Comics.