What If... Spider-Man House of M? (Story 3)

 Posted: Jan 2010

Background

When stories run short and issues need additional pages of filler, editors turn toward a a series of unrelated gags to reach the predetermined page count. This is a collection of the aforementioned unrelated gags.

Story 'Say What? Spider-Man: House of M'

  What If... Spider-Man House of M? (Story 3)
Summary: several Alt Spider-Men appear
Writer: Mike Gallagher
Illustrator: David Manak

Page #1: A full page parody of Amazing Fantasy #15 in which Aunt May gains superpowers and swings from pink apron strings.

Page #2a: Peter sells tickets to a cat fight between Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson.
Page #2b: Instead of changing costumes when reality shifts, heroes and villains change loyalty to their favorite sporting teams. (It makes slightly more sense when you see it, but it's still lame.)
Page #2c: The Green Goblin's glider has modern safety features installed.
Page #2d: The writer employs a complex, run-on sentence that confuses the reader and Gwen Stacy, who's inside the panel.

Page #3a: Gwen uses Oscorp's computer to access her Facebook account. This one is very lame.
Page #3b: Richie Parker brings a toy to show & tells about his father's other wife.
Page #3c: Venom and the Masters of Evil break into Bernie Madoff's prison cell instead of Norman Osborn's

Page #4a: Gwen kicks Dr. Strange is his crystal balls when he tries to kill her to save reality.
Page #4b: Richie Parker uses Spider-Man's mask as a hankie.
Page #4c: Editor Justin Gabrie questions his sanity when he agreed to work with Mike Gallagher & Dave Manak on this series (as do I).

General Comments

Lame, lame, lame, lamity lame lame. I have no idea why they did this. They could have given each story an additional two pages rather than add this to the issue. Only the Bernie Madoff joke was remotely funny and it barely qualifies as humor.

The saddest part is that this was chosen OVER other options, including the one that I suggested. It would have been less painful to have three additional parody covers similar to the Aunt May joke. That way we wouldn't have to see just how many bad - yet somehow acceptable - ideas were turned in.

Overall Rating

0.5 webs. This was crap.

 Posted: Jan 2010