In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover whether a What If...? comic that was too dark for the current TV show was also too dark for the Comics Code!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and tenth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment's legends. Click here for the second part of this installment's legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
A Spider-Man What If...? comic book that was too dark for the current What If...? TV series was also too dark for the Comics Code!
STATUS:
False
A few days ago, I wrote about how there was a 1996 issue of What If...? that was deemed to be too dark to adapt to the new What If...? TV series on Disney+ and still keep it as a PG-13 rated episode.
As I wrote then...
{w]riter A.C. Bradley was on The Post Credit Podcast and she was asked about ideas that didn't make it into the What If...? series and among others, she noted, "There were a couple of episodes that were just a little too dark. There was an original What If run where Spider-Man turns into a real spider, and that was just too dark and too body horror for their PG-13 (rating)."
The original comic book was June 1996's "Arachnamorphosus" from What If...? #88 by writer Ben Raab, artists Ariel Olivetti and Agostin Comoto, colorist Marie Javins (with additional enhancements by Malibu Coloring) and letterer Richard Starkings. The book was the second issue in a then-new approach for the famous alternate reality comic book series, where the series would spotlight specifically "darker" alternate realities.
In "Arachnamorphosus" (which has a strikingly disturbing Olivetti cover), the story takes place in the future, where Peter Parker and his son live a secluded existence. Peter is constantly studying both his and his son's body chemistry, hiding the fact that Ben is a mutant. Throughout the story, Peter starts to lose control of himself, as he turns into a disturbing human-spider creature.
After Ben is attacked by the son of Flash Thompson, his mutant powers reveal themselves and Flash's child is badly (possibly fatally) injured. Flash forms a mob to get revenge, but Peter sacrifices himself so that his son can escape. At the end of the issue, we see that Ben has traveled all the way to Westchester to arrive at the Xavier Institute for mutants.
The story would have adapted well, but it certainly had very scary visuals, so it was too much for modern animation to keep from getting to an R rating.
The thing that struck me, though, was how amusing it was that a comic book that passed the Comics Code Authority in 1996 would be too much for a PG-13 in 2021. But then it I noticed that the cover of What If...? #88 was noticeably missing the Comics Code stamp, which WAS present on all of the other issues around it...
including another striking Olivetti cover on the following issue...
And I noticed a few places online suggested that that one issue WASN'T Comics Code approved. That seemed a bit fishy to me, though, since I didn't think Marvel was doing that in the 1990s (they DID at other points in time). So I asked Marvel Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort about it and he explained that Marvel policy did not allow for books to be released without Comics Code approval at that time, so it was just a mistake that the comic didn't have the stamp on the cover.
So we can go back to it being amusing that a 1996 Comics Code approved book couldn't pass for PG-13 in 2021!
Thanks to the always informative Tom Brevoort for the information!
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - Discover the odd reason why Loki was cut from a filmed cameo in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.
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