Random Happenstance

This might have been from a stretch in the Spidey titles, where everything was a conspiracy. Symbiotes everywhere? Conspiracy. Clones? Conspiracy. Dead parents return? Do I need to say it? Honestly, I'm not sure the conspiracies against him ever ended, either. From 1994, What If? #61, "What If Spider-Man's 'parents' destroyed his family?" Written by Kurt Busiek, pencils by Jim Amash, Kirk Jarvinen, Andrew Wildman, and Derek Yaniger; inks by Sam de la Rosa, Bruce Patterson, and Jim Amash.

That's kind of a lot of artists for a single comic, and it's a bit jarring; especially since most take a rather light art style here. So, it looks like an episode or adaptation of the Spider-Man cartoon, even as Aunt May and Mary Jane are murdered...! "See something, say something" goes horribly awry in this universe, as Aunt May calls out the returned Richard and Mary Parker as fakes, since they had gotten some facts wrong. Peter hustles May away, thinking she might have just finally gone a bit senile, but did his Spider-sense twinge there? Their mission in jeopardy, they call their boss, who tells them take out anyone who knew the secret: if that meant killing Spidey, do it, even if the boss is disappointed he wouldn't be there to see it. The robo-parents do just that, first exposing Peter as Spider-Man to a confused Aunt May, then hammering May and MJ to death. (It's a bloodless death scene, possibly because this would've been a newsstand title.) Peter takes the fight to his robo-parents, who have weird half-crazed parent faces, half-robot. Unable to kill him quickly or quietly, they take on their parent forms again, duck out, and go to the cops to destroy Peter Parker's credibility, by exposing him as Spider-Man and blaming him for the deaths of May and MJ.

Spidey had torn into a crowd, looking for not only his parents but for May and MJ, since he may have wanted to believe this was some sick scam of Mysterio's. Photos from that, somehow not taken by Peter, make the Bugle front page. While Flash (with an unidentified blonde, maybe Felicia miscolored?) still believes in Peter, J.Jonah Jameson is somewhat less enthusiastic than you might expect: how did he not see it, and were there any other menaces in the office? Spidey confronts JJJ, even swatting Robbie aside, to get the skinny on where his 'parents' were hiding: in protective custody, at Avengers' mansion. (Which should have scanners up the wazoo and recognize them as fakes, but let that go.) Captain America and the Human Torch try to stop Spidey, but he escapes; possibly because neither of them can believe Spidey was going vengeance-crazy like this.

Catching up with Scorpion and the Chameleon, Spidey breaks the Scorpion's arm and kills the Chameleon, after the latter confirms his parents had been robots throughout their 'return' then tries to weasel out by taking Mary Jane's face. Bad idea there. Later, Spidey catches up with the parents, but their fight is not seen by the Torch or any other witnesses; and the robots end it by letting Spidey 'kill' them--but in their human forms, so it looked like Spidey had murdered them as well. He's then confronted by eighteen super-heroes, and one cop, facing him like a jury. (No Torch on that page, he probably hadn't caught back up.) Spidey briefly wonders, could he explain, would the evidence exonerate him...but May and MJ would still be dead, and he can't see the point. And in the shadows, an unseen figure laughs...pretty sure that's Norman Osborn, but he hadn't yet returned in the main Spidey titles, and they weren't going to spoil that here!

On the final page, Spidey considers if Reed Richards could have figured out the parents were fakes, but on the confrontation page it's Sue in her cut-out '4' costume and Ben with a facemask, which maybe meant Reed was 'dead' at the time. Well, Spidey had a lot on his mind, and maybe didn't necessarily believe that, either. Feel like Daredevil could've figured it out, like immediately, though. It's not unlike the ending of the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" in that sure, they're lugging the hero away to the nuthouse, but the truth might out later...if Spidey had anything left in the tank, which was doubtful.