Clone Saga Revisited - Conclusion

This is the last entry for this series, so I'm going to add a few links in case you stumble upon it first. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

We're done going through the Clone Saga itself, but its impact was felt for a number of years afterward. The "Revelations" storyline ended with Peter and Mary Jane believing that Baby May was dead, when she had actually been taken to Europe by Norman Osborn's agent Allison Mongraine. As I said last time, this is a premise that could have led to some truly epic storylines. Imagine Peter and Mary Jane getting word from some mysterious source that the baby was still alive and Spider-Man adventuring through Europe searching for her. If they ever keep a series of Spidey movies going long enough without restarting it, that idea sounds like a winner. For a while, it seemed like Tom DeFalco was patiently building up to that.

In the "Identity Crisis" storyline, one of the last truly great Spider-Man tales before that rancid "One More Day" crap ruined the continuity, there was a subplot about all of this. Allison Mongraine met with members of the Cult of Scrier, who told her to hand May over and unsuccessfully tried to assassinate her. The Scrier cultists were ambushed by Kaine, who presumably rescued the baby. After all, as another clone of Peter, he's basically an uncle. Later, in the "Gathering of Five" storyline, Mongraine was killed and told Peter before she died that "May is alive." It all sounds pretty good so far, right?

Well, the brass at Marvel didn't think so. They intervened and tried to convince the readers that Mongraine was actually referring to Aunt May - you know, the ancient character who had passed away peacefully in a beautiful story during the Clone Saga? The writers were forced to bring her back, using the absolutely heinous rationale that the old lady who died was actually an actress who underwent plastic surgery to resemble Peter's aunt. Yes, I'm serious. This was one of the first salvos in a noxious campaign to undo Peter Parker's character development to try and appeal to the Johnny-come-lately fans who would have been more likely to make fun of comic readers on the playground until the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film made $400 million at the box office. This culiminated in the "One More Day" storyline (have I mentioned yet how much that one sucks?) but I was gone long before then. As an older fan, I could tell I wasn't wanted.

Years later, something caught my eye at a local pharmacy - an issue of "Spider-Girl." The cover featured a woman in the classic Spidey suit but also a visibly aged Peter Parker. I wondered to myself, "is this a series about Baby May?" There was only one way to find out, so I took a chance and bought it.

I loved it. Every panel of every page. With DeFalco at the writer's desk, this series was a lifeline to those fans who were left out in the cold and a chance for him to pursue storyline which had been wrested from him years earlier. It turns out Kaine really was the one who rescued the baby and returned her to the Parkers. He had a role too, as a mercenary working for the United States government who was often a mentor figure for May, now protecting New York City as Spider-Girl. Many readers latched onto this series as the "true" continuity. We were older and we were ready for Peter to be older as well.

I read the Spider-Girl comics faithfully for a number of years, but unfortunately a female heroine doesn't always inspire confidence in comics executives. The series was constantly canceled, un-canceled, and restarted until it finally vanished. Once again, I'm an aging Spidey fan without any Spidey comics that capture the stories I grew up with. So I wind up going back into the comics of the past, which is what I've done for the last 2+ years as part of this blog retrospective.

Since the Clone Saga ended, many of the creators have come forward with their views on why an otherwise promising storyline eventually imploded. "At its heart, the Clone Saga was a very simple story," DeFalco said. "[It] was a storyline designed to last a few months, but, for various reasons, kept getting extended and extended and extended."

J.M. Dematteis said that "it would have been a classic if the creators had been allowed to follow their original vision through to the end." Another writer, Todd Dezago, recalled when "we realized the train was being driven by indecision and sales figures." For an amazingly detailed look at what was going on behind the scenes during the entire Clone Saga, I'd suggest reading the Life of Reilly blog. It was a superb resource while I worked on this series.

In late 2009, DeFalco and fellow Spidey-writer Howard Mackie wrote a six-issue mini-series called, (what else?) Spider-Man: Clone Saga. This was an interesting attempt to do-over the Clone Saga and was likely very cathartic for the creators who watched that original storyline spin out of control. It's a fascinating, highly entertaining take on the storyline that basically fixes every wrong turn the first version made. Here's the list.

-In general, Peter Parker is much more reasonable. He does scuffle with Ben Reilly during their first meeting but is in a more sensible place by the end of the first issue. When it's "revealed" that Reilly may the original, Peter simply says "I honestly don't care if I'm the clone. The way I live is more important than the way I was born." Uh...yeah! Very refreshing indeed.

-Judas Traveller, Gaunt, Seward Trainer, and the Cult of Scrier are completely excised. The Jackal's role is also mercifully less grandiose. I'm sure Marvel got a lot of angry letters about this...maybe even one.

-Kaine defeats Doctor Octopus but doesn't kill him. This obviously means that Lady Octopus and all her "cyberwar" nonsense doesn't come up.

-The mastermind turns out not to be Norman Osborn, but Harry Osborn, who had been dead for far less time. As for Norman, he does show up as a clone. Interestingly, he winds up as one of the good guys. Perhaps because the clone was unburdened with the insanity that eventually twisted the original Norman Osborn?

-Aunt May survives her stroke and Baby May is returned to the family by Kaine shortly after her kidnapping. Ben Reilly also survives the final battle and eventually heads off to seek new adventures.

As you can see, there were many improvements but I don't think this mini-series is perfect either. If over two years worth of comics was way too much, six issues isn't quite enough. It feels a bit too breezy and there are pretty big time skips between the issues that you couldn't get away with in a main continuity. Twelve issues would have been just right...but I don't want to sound ungrateful, this was a very valuable effort!

I suppose that brings us to the end. It's been very satifying to get some additional insight by revisiting this saga and I hope these write-ups provided some of that same insight. But Oscar season is in full-swing once again, so this blog should remain busy!

Clone Saga Revisited - Part Eleven

The sixth and final "Ben Reilly Epic" collection, the eleventh in total with the five other "Clone Saga" collections, finally offers the conclusion to this storyline. Given how far this plotline had spun wildly out of control, actually ending it in a way that would satisfy frustrated readers (the ones who hadn't already left) would be challenging indeed. Did they pull it off? Well, kind of. We'll get to that soon enough, but first there are a lot of loose ends to manage.

This final collection opens with a two-part story that brings the subplot about Fortunato, a new crime boss and Jimmy Six, the thug who has been hiding out with Ben Reilly, to a climax. Turns out Jimmy is Fortunato's son, but he still can't condone his father's methods, so he works with Spider-Man (not knowing the Reilly connection) to foil his dad's plot. Daredevil helps out too. The next story's task is to get a handle on one of the saga's lamest characters, the demigod Judas Traveler. This is a much tougher problem although only one issue is devoted to it.

This story tries to convince us that Traveler isn't really all-powerful, he's actually just an X-Men-style mutant with illusionist powers. It sounds reasonable at first...unless you go back and check out the older Traveler stories - that heinous "Crossfire" story in particular. If you recall, that was the story where our buddy Judas supposedly took Peter Parker into a future where New York was destroyed but then had to be saved by Parker when he was too reckless with the space-time continuum (you really have to be careful about that!). So if we're now being told that all these incidents were illusions, why did Traveler want to fool Spider-Man into thinking he was an incompetent idiot? Oh well, the two Spider-Man save him from The Rose and in the process, they discover that his mysterious assistant, "Scrier," is actually just one member of a huge cult where they all dress like the Grim Reaper. This is kind of important later.

Next, we have to resolve the "Great Game" storyline where various super-powered folks fight each other and wealthy jerks bet on the results. Reilly's been drawn into this silliness a number of times and it's pretty satisfying to see him finally teach these guys a lesson. In a surprising twist, this story features the death of Nightwatch, Marvel's ill-fated Spawn rip-off. After this is some filler - team-up stories featuring Gambit and Howard The Duck. Yes, I'm serious. The Gambit story is actually pretty good, the Howard the Duck story is as terrible as you would expect.

However, after that is "Relevations," the four-part story that finally ended the Clone Saga. Right from the start, you know that things are dead serious. Seward Trainer, the genecticist who determined that Ben Reilly was the real deal and that the man we knew as Peter Parker was the clone, is on the run. We had found out that Trainer was in league with the mysterious Gaunt and the even more mysterious figure who they both answer to. After a lengthy chase, Trainer is killed by Gaunt, who is revealed to be Dr. Mendel Stromm, the "Robot Master" and an old foe of Spider-Man. It's up to Ben and Peter to defeat Stromm once and for all, but in the meantime the pregnant Mary Jane is in trouble. A con-artist named Allison Mongraine slips a drug into one of her meals that induces labor. Baby May was already almost full-term, so that in itself might not be a huge deal, but there's more trouble ahead.

Peter leaves to try and be with Mary Jane, while Ben is confronted by Stromm's boss. It's none other than Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, who had been presumed dead for 20 years worth of Spidey comics. Osborn kills Stromm and defeats Reilly without much trouble. In the meantime, newborn baby May is taken from the hospital by Allison Mongraine. It turns out Osborn engineered this whole situation and tells her to hide the baby in Europe. For whatever else he's capable of, Osborn isn't willing to kill a newborn. He's perfectly content just to let Peter and Mary Jane believe she was stillborn. It's brutal- any Spidey fan's heart will break for the two of them when reading these scenes.

"Relevations" concludes with "Night of the Goblin," which is a pretty great comic on its own. The art is superb and full of atmosphere, and however you might feel about Norman coming back, seeing his return is epic. He confronts Peter and explains everything - how he survived being impaled by his own glider years ago and has been plotting his revenge for years while hiding overseas. With Trainer's help, he made Peter believe he was a clone in a scheme designed to destroy his very identity. If that wasn't enough, he's also manipulated a group of Peter's friends and family into the Daily Bugle building, which he plans to destroy. Ben recovers from the beating Osborn gave him and the two Spider-Men are able to save the others and subdue him. However, the Goblin once again sends his razor-sharp glider at Peter while his back is turned. This time, it's Ben who intervenes and takes a fatal hit. He still believed he was the real Peter but was still willing to sacrifice himself for his "brother."

Peter hits the Goblin with a bag full of pumpkin bombs and he vanishes in a fiery explosion...but he just got back, so we know he'll be sticking around for a while now. Peter tends to the dying Ben, whose body suddenly undergoes the "degeneration" process, revealing beyond all doubt that he had always been the clone. One loss leads to another - the battered Peter finally arrives at the hospital only to hear that baby May is apparently dead. There's another issue after this where Peter and Mary Jane try to cope with the horrible loss of both Ben and the baby. The writers try to get some uplift in there, but it doesn't work. It's brutally sad. There's also a little subplot about the Chameleon, but that doesn't really matter because the Clone Saga is officially over!

Let's take a detailed look at the ending - what was done right and what didn't work?

The Good
-Obviously, the most important accomplishment of the finale was that it reinstated Peter Parker as the true Spider-Man. The Revelation that Nobody Wanted was finally undone.

-Bringing Norman Osborn back was actually pretty awesome. The Clone Saga had gotten so convoluted that there were precious few characters devious enough to pull off a scheme like that. In fact, Spider-Man himself had been lacking a real arch-enemy for a while. It's not like Venom has the intellect to manage something like this.

-The presumed death of Baby May would have been a truly epic story premise...

The Bad
...if Marvel hadn't completely botched it in the coming years. Despite the best efforts of the great Spidey-writer Tom DeFalco, the editorial staff squelched this subplot and then the absolutely terrible "One More Day" thing made it irrelevant. But more on that next time. Yeah, there's gonna be one more entry, we gotta talk about the legacy of this saga and how it has been perceived over the years.

-Actually killing Ben Reilly was a step too far. The fans didn't want him dead, we just didn't want him to replace Peter. We still liked the guy, he'd been in the comics for over two years at this point! One of the main problems with 90s Spider-Man was that the writers kept killing off longtime supporting characters to create "events" and sell more comics. The problem was that Spidey's world was a lot less interesting without all these folks. Ben could have helped turn that around, but now he was gone too. I suppose the rationale was that the writers wanted to assure the readers that under no circumstances would Ben be declared the original Parker again, but there were other ways to do that. Just another genetic test by someone of unimpeachable moral character - Reed Richards, maybe?

This collection has a few more goodies before it ends. The "Osborn Journal" attempts, with mostly success, to explain just how Norman Osborn planned the entire scheme. After that is "101 Ways to End the Clone Saga," an in-house parody of the difficulty Marvel writers had with the storyline. The final story is "Dead Man's Hand," a convoluted tale of the villain Carrion, whose continuity was in conflict with the events of the Clone Saga. This story was an effort to set things straight, but I think very few fans even thought about it with everything else going on during the saga.

It would be nice to say that the Spider-Man comics got back on track once the Clone Saga was finally over. Unfortunately, things eventually got much worse...but that's a story for another day. In the final entry of this series, I'll go into the saga's legacy and some of the important storylines that came in its aftermath.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Ten

I was just about certain this tenth volume of the Clone Saga would be the last, but I've finished it and the storyline remains unresolved. The pieces seem to be in place, but the storyline keeps spinning its wheels. Like many of the past volumnes, there's a lot of filler here but that's not the chief reason. I suspect that Marvel made the decision to end the Clone Saga in No Adjective Spider-Man #75, which is still a few months off from the comics in this installment.

The stories are less tightly connected than they have been, with only subplots tying the various comics together. In the early issues of this collection, Ben as Spider-Man fights a handful of old-timey villains like Dragon Man, the Will O'The Wisp and Dr. Jonas Harrow. He's also in the middle of an ongoing gang war between Hammerhead, the mysterious Fortunato, The Rose and the wacky Delilah, an assassin who speaks in large, multi-colored letters. It's weird. But what of Peter Parker, who collapsed at the end of the last volume and suffers from a mysterious ailment? He's rushed to the hospital and the doctors aren't sure what to do about his deteriorating physical state. Even Dr. Curt Connors flies in from Florida to lend a hand, but he's just as stumped.

One of these issues actually ends with Peter Parker flat-lining and apparently dead. This was brutal. Fans at the time thought, "it finally happened. Peter Parker is dead. Now Ben is Spider-Man and that's the end of it." A comic released one week later revealed that wasn't the case at all. Parker springs back to life almost immediately, and he has his Spidey powers back. So they weren't trying to get rid of Peter...they were undoing the revelation at the end of Spider-Man: The Final Adventure (mere months afterwards, by the way). Not long after that, The Lizard is sighted on a nearby rooftop. No surprise, right? After all, Dr. Connors was in town. But wait, Peter is talking with Dr. Connors at the same time Ben is battling with The Lizard outside! How is that possible?

It's a genuinely gripping cliffhanger, but it will be some time before it's resolved in this collection. There's a massive filler story where Spider-Man fights The Scorption with the help of Nick Cage and Iron Fist. Then there's a god-awful team-up with Spider-Man and the Avengers that involves a lot of time travel chicanery. It's very confusing and very dull. After that is a fun story pitting Spider-Man against The Looter, an egomaniac who has stolen equipment from various B-list villains like The Shocker, The Ringer and The Trapster, and made his own armor suit that uses all of them.

After that, the entire Clone Saga is derailed by the massive "Onslaught" event that was going on in all the Marvel comics at that time. Spidey was only on the periphery of this gimmick, but there are still a few issues featuring him battling Sentinels, the giant robots that usually menace the X-Men. It makes very little sense out of the context of the entire storyline, but seeing Ben in an underdog battle against such fearsome enemies is pretty damn epic.

At the end of Onslaught, The Avengers and The Fantasic Four were all presumed dead. There's an issue devoted mostly to Spider-Man coming to terms with their deaths, but given that they were all resurrected not long after this, the whole thing rings a little hollow. The event also woke up a mass of evil bees named Swarm that Ben has to deal with for a couple of issues. Yeah, I don't know. Don't ask. Honestly, the Peter Parker subplots are far more interesting at this point. The Daily Bugle has a round of layoffs, meaning that Peter is demoted from his full-time position back to freelance. Not good when a baby's on the way. What follows is a beautiful scene where Mary Jane reveals she wants to name the baby May, after Peter's aunt. She also has a nice zinger - "This is the 90s. Job security is as dead as disco." You haven't seen ANYTHING yet, Parkers. What if I were to tell them that these days the 90s are regarded as a time of prosperity? Yeah, our standards have come down a bit.

So, remember that plotline about The Lizard? Next, we finally get back to it. The story shifts to the point of view of Dr. Connors, and we learn that this new Lizard was created during a botched attempt to cure the good doctor of this tendency to become evil and scaly every so often. The creature follows him all the way back to his home in Florida. To save his family, Connors willingly allows his lizard personality to regain control. Spidey arrives just in time to see the original Lizard curb stomb the new one. After an intense battle, Connors regains control. This story is flat-out excellent and a highlight of this particular volume.

In the midst of these somewhat standalone tales, we've seen glimpses of some of the most important players of the Clone Saga, such as Scrier, Judas Traveler (oy vey) and the mysterious Gaunt. Should be wrapping up soon, but this volume ends with an odd distraction - a tale set in Spider-Man's past featuring a lot of characters who are now dead - George and Gwen Stacy, Norman and Harry Osborn, Aunt May and Kraven the Hunter. The high point is the art, which was done in part by John Romita, Sr, who may be the definitive Spider-Man artist. Still, in a collection full of odd detours, this is the most random. Perhaps we'll get our resolution next time?

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Nine

With the newest volume of the Clone Saga collections (Complete Ben Reilly Epic Book 4), we've now arrived at the point where Marvel has realized that the fans are unlikely to warm to the radical changes to the Spidey mythos regardless of the amount of manipulative tricks the writers pull. This particular collection has a lot of content I had never read before, suggesting that I've reached the point where I gave up on the comics back in the 90s. What I didn't realize then is that this is the point where the writers are starting to reverse course.

The massive, six-part "Blood Brothers" storyline is one of the most important stories in the Clone Saga. This is where the writers start to tear down everything they have tried to build for the last two years. If you recall from the "Web of Carnage" storyline, Ben Reilly's trusted friend Seward Trainer, who ran the test that concluded Reilly was the original Peter Parker, is acting very suspiciously. Peter suspects something is amiss, but Ben doesn't buy it and just assumes Peter is hoping to find new evidence that he's the real deal. Well, Peter is right. Trainer is working with a mysterious new villain named Gaunt and The Hobgoblin, who is now a cyborg or something. This is the Jason Macendale Hobgoblin, who was never as awesome as the Roderick Kingsley Hobgoblin who put Spidey through the wringer in the 80s, even though Marvel tried to make him cool with various silly gimmicks like this.

Gaunt is far more interesting because a lot of mystery is built around his identity. He taunts Spider-Man by saying "We've met before, but I'm not surprised you don't recognize me in this form." Who is this guy? Whoever he is, he's a serious threat because he's figured out that Ben has been the one wearing the Spidey suit and systematically starts to destroy his life. His apartment is ransacked, the Daily Grind coffeehouse where he works is torched, and even Peter and Mary Jane are targeted by a group of vicious mercenaries. Ben and Peter discover that all this madness is somehow linked to Osborn Industries, currently run by Liz Osborn's brother Mark Raxton (aka the former supervillain The Molten Man). Raxton is also out to figure out what's going on and this story ends with him, Ben and Peter (still without his powers) battling Gaunt and a horde of armed guards. Seward and Gaunt appear to die in an explosion, but the reader soon finds out they are still alive...and are being scolded by yet another mysterious villain.

Next is "Who did Spider-Man Murder?" which is the closest we're going to get to a resolution to the skeleton-in-the-smokestack subplot. Upon its initial discovery, both Spider-Men were concerned that this corpse undermined everything they thought they knew about their identities. A more immediate concern is that J. Jonah Jameson is so determined to solve this mystery that he's put a $100,000 reward out for anyone who can find out the whole story. This story is entertaining mostly because of the numerous C-list villains, like Beetle, Boomerang and the Shocker, who show up to try and grab that reward. Peter and Ben come up with a clever ruse to throw Jameson off the trail, but the actual truth about the skeleton is not revealed. I'm not sure if the writers even knew what was going on with that.

The next story, "It Begins with a Bang, not a Whimper," is a rare one-off tale where Ben hunts down The Hobgoblin and beats the ever-loving crap out of him for all the trouble he caused in "Blood Brothers." After that is some filler, a tale of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four going to an alternate universe of something. It's sometimes funny but utterly ridiculous. Next up is "Ultimate Responsibility," starring Jessica Carradine. As we found out last time, she is the daughter of the Burglar who shot Uncle Ben and has become a love interest for Ben. In "Blood Brothers," she found out Ben was Spider-Man, who she blames for her father's death. Armed with a photo of Ben in the suit with his mask off, she has the power to completely expose Reilly to the public. But after she sees Spidey perform an amazing rescue of people in a burning building, she decides to give him the photo and give up her revenge and walks out of the mythos. Too bad, she was a fairly interesting character.

After that is the four-part "Redemption" mini-series, a sequel to "The Lost Years" that brings together Ben, Kaine and the long-missing Janine. Writer J.M. Dematteis returns and is reunitied with his team from the legendary "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline - artist Mike Zeck and inker Bob McLeod. Zeck's depiction of Kaine is totally unique, other artists had tried to convey some handsomeness behind all the scars, but here he looks more like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera. As for the story, it's as intense as you would expect from DeMatteis and finally gives a peaceful resolution to Kaine's storyline. After trying to destroy Ben for years, the two come to an understanding and he surrenders peacefully to the police. There are also some revelations about Janine - her real name is Elizabeth Tyne and she's been on the run for years after murdering her abusive father. Her relationship with Ben inspires her to find some closure and she also surrenders to the police. It's a bittersweet ending, but it is still satisfying to have some of those loose ends from Reilly's backstory finally resolved.

Next is a single issue story called "Toy Wars," where Spider-Man appears to have been shrunk to the size of a bug and must battle some malevolent toys. Veteran Spidey fans will be able to figure out pretty quickly which villain is behind this. The best part of this issue is the references to various popular 1990s toys and cartoons. Spidey fights Stretch Armstrong, Buzz Lightyear and Goliath from Gargoyles, among others. Then we have some filler where Spidey guest-stars in a Daredevil comic. The final story in this collection is "Above It All," which introduces the crime lord Fortunato. He doesn't seem connected to the Clone Saga at large, but it gives Ben and Peter something to deal with while the writers work out how they are going to resolve the saga once and for all. At the end of this one, Peter has a violent seizure and collapses. What's going on?

That's all for now, but I suspect the next Clone Saga collection (set for a July release) will be the last. That means this series, which has been going since 2010, will soon be wrapping up as well. Not only that, we have a new Spider-Man movie coming out within weeks! So expect lots of Spidey on this blog this summer.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Eight

It took a little while, but eventually the writers of the Spider-Man comics became comfortable with stories featuring Ben Reilly in the lead role. As a result, the stories in this volume of the Clone Saga collections (Complete Ben Reilly Epic, Book 3) are an improvement over some of the stuff we've seen recently. The problem was it didn't matter. Fans at the time were still livid about how Peter Parker had been pushed out and Ben pushed in...it wouldn't have mattered if the stories were on par with Watchmen because the readers were still having to put up with a massive change to the continuity that nobody had asked for. Most of us were still hanging in there, though at this point I remember buying fewer comics than usual each month.

With "Spider-Man: The Final Adventure," Marvel attempted to give Peter Parker a proper swan song. Written by Fabian Nicieza, this four-part limited series follows Peter and Mary Jane as they move to Portland, Oregon. Peter begins working at GARID, the same research facility that sponsored the radiation experiment that created Spider-Man. However, one of his experiments unintentionally creates a new supervillain, the monstrous Tendril. With Ben Reilly on the other side of the country, it's up to Peter to get back in the Spidey costume for one last hurrah. Needless to say, Mary Jane is extremely pissed off and flies back to New York in a huff. There she finds that Daily Bugle reporter Ken Ellis is trying to find proof of what he has suspected for some time - that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. The web-slinger's sudden appearance in Oregon at the same time that Peter happens to be there tips him off that he may have been on the right track.

Nicieza does an excellent job with this, but it was a thankless task. The story ends with Peter losing his powers after using radiation to defeat Tendril. (If you're wondering about the Ellis situation, it's Ben who manages to throw him off the trail). The narration is careful to hint that the loss of powers may not be forever, but the intent is to basically take Peter out of the running and compel readers to stop complaining and just accept Ben already. "See, now he can't be Spider-Man even if he wanted to!" It didn't achieve that goal.

Nicieza must have enjoyed writing in the Spider-Man universe, because he's back in the author's seat for a Ben Reilly story called "The Skull Jackets." A murder in Manhattan appears to implicate the Black Cat and the two of them team up to find the real culprit. As it turns out, working with his clone's ex-girlfriend proves to be an awkward experience for Ben. The next story is a team up between Spider-Man and the Silver Surfer, which sounds like more of the filler that's bogged down some of these Clone Saga collections. However, working in this story's favor was that Roger Stern was doing writing duty. Stern is my favorite Spider-Man writer of all time, he enthralled me as a child with the mystery surrounding the identity of The Hobgoblin (other writers eventually screwed it up). He makes this story enjoyable enough, but it won't blow your mind or anything.

We get back to the proper Clone Saga with "The Return of Kaine." If you recall, Kaine was the Jackal's failed first attempt at cloning Peter Parker, which resulted in the duplicate having bizarre versions of all of Spider-Man's powers. Kaine was presumed dead after getting impaled during "Maximum Clonage," but he's been successfully revived and is now an unwilling participant in the "great game," a high-stakes battle of mercenaries that Ben has dealt with in the past. Another strange plot twist gets introduced in this story - a charred skeleton wearing a Spider-Man costume is found in a smokestack, the same smokestack where the original 1970s Clone Saga concluded. This revelation threatens to undermine everything both Spider-Men believe about themselves. Kaine ends this story on better terms with Reilly but escapes justice. Meanwhile, Peter and Mary Jane have returned to New York.

Our old pal J. Jonah Jameson witnessed Reilly stealing the Spider-Man skeleton from the morgue and has called Peter back in to use his mad photography skills to find proof that can go on the front page. I don't think Jonah would appreciate the irony of all this if he knew the truth. It's interesting to see Peter back in the comics so soon after "the final advanture." He's still without his powers, but it seems that the writers were hoping that maybe fans would calm down a bit if they reintroduced him as a supporting character. In a fun single-issue story called "A Show of Force," Peter and Mary Jane reunite with Ben while the whole "Seward Trainer in an internet-induced coma" subplot is resolved. Seward's daughter, Lady Octopus, returns for another scuffle but Ben's had enough of her. He totally blows his stack and hands her a defeat she won't soon forget. It's pretty awesome.

After this is the "Web of Carnage" crossover, and there's a LOT going on here. First, genetic testing done by The Avengers reveals that the skeleton belongs to a clone of Spider-Man, possibly the original clone. Peter Parker begins to suspect that the original test conducted by Seward Trainer, the one that concluded that Peter was the clone and Ben the original, may have been compromised for some unknown reason. Ben trusts Seward implicity and rejects this notion. Meanwhile, his new girlfriend Jessica Carradine has a secret of her own. Her father was a burgular...as in The Burglar, the one that shot Uncle Ben. Years later, that burgular confronted Spider-Man again and was so frightened by his foe's righteous anger that he suffered a heart attack and died. So Jessica is no fan of Spider-Man, which could have some nasty ramifications for her relationship with Ben.

Oh yeah, Carnage's name is in the title so what's he up to? The Carnage alien symbiote (an offspring of Venom's symbiote) has separated from its host, Cletus Kasady, and now roams the streets bonding with people at random. During a battle, it actually bonds with Ben himself. That's right, Spider-Carnage! Once this happens, the story gets dark quickly. The symbiote is just as psychotic as Kasady himself and is constantly feeding thoughts of violence and murder to Ben, who manages to resist. Thanks to John Jameson (Jonah's son), the Carnage symbiote is separated from Ben but still manages to reestablish its bond with Kasady. Like they were going to get rid of Carnage after the money they made off him a few years earlier!

So things are starting to get very mysterious once again. All the revelations Marvel was using to try and establish a new status quo are suddenly in question. There was definitely something else big on the horizon.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Seven

At this point, it seemed like the more turbulent parts of the Clone Saga were over. Ben Reilly, with his new Spider-Man costume, was now in the starring role in all the Spidey comics. Despite that, most of these stories were still crossovers that required readers to get multiple comics each month if you wanted the whole thing. Before all this clone business, crossovers were for major events..now, they had become the status quo. I imagine this eventually got frustrating for the writers, who could no longer tell their own self-contained stories and always had to coordinate with the others. It was especially egregious in the case of Dan Jurgens, who was in charge of the brand new Sensational Spider-Man comic but had to adapt to these crossovers from the first issue on. Why bring on a big shot writer like Jurgens if you're not even going to let him be in charge of his own stories?

Despite all that complaining just now, there are a couple standalone stories in this volume (Complete Ben Reilly Epic Book 2, if you've been keeping track), but not many. "Blasts from the Past" is an interesting look at how awkward it is for Reilly when he meets other superheroes that were friends with Peter Parker, such as Silver Sable and the Human Torch. None of them know all the drama that's been going on, they just see the costume and wonder if it's the same man they know. The Torch catches on to the difference immediately and vows to expose the "phony" at some point in the future. "The Game of Life" is another standalone tale in which Reilly once again confronts vicious mercenaries competing in a high-stakes "game" of violence.

The New Warriors, who were showing up a lot during the Clone Saga, are also quite confused about all the switcheroos in the Spidey world. The Scarlet Spider was a tentative member of the group but then he vanished. In the three-part "Nightmare in Scarlet," they are forced to confront an evil version of their former ally, thanks to some wacky genetic technology left behind by Lady Octopus in the "Cyberwar" storyline. Ben, now back in the Spider-Man costume, joins them to stop the impostor but only Firestar seems to recognize his personality in the new outfit. After this is one more standalone, "Brother's Keeper." This is actually a pretty strong story if you're on board with its strident environmental commentary - Todd Dezago's dialogue for Ben is excellent and he comes off very well.

Once again, Marvel has been VERY thorough with these Clone Saga collections and this volume includes a two-issue miniseries called "Family Plot," where Spider-Man teamed up with the Punisher. Well, maybe "team up" is not the right word, since both Parker and Reilly can't stand this bloodthirsty excuse for a "hero." Nevertheless, they find themselves on the same side against Tombstone. For whatever reason, the Punisher (aka Frank Castle) is working for a mafia family. I have no idea what this is about, but it seems that all the superheroes were just going through some weird crap in the 90s.

Next up is another miniseries, a four-part Venom story called "Along Came A Spider." The nicest thing I can say about this one is that it's better than "Planet of the Symbiotes." Other than that, it's a mess. Venom is trying to reconcile with his ex-wife, Anne Weying, but is in trouble with the police and Spider-Man gets involved. The art is awful (for some reason, Venom is perpetually surrounded by a thick green fog of drool), the character of Anne, who actually had a lot of dignity when David Michelinie introduced her in the Spider-Man comics, is butchered. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but the story also drives home once again just how much of an unstable lunatic Eddie Brock/Venom is. Besides an inconsistent preoccupation with "innocents," he has almost no heroic qualities and can rationalize any despicable action to further his own goals. Like a lot of kids my age, I thought he was awesome in grade school because he wore black and had teeth and claws. A guy like this doesn't have to go to bed unless he feels like it! As an adult, however, I'm really quite embarassed that this psycho was the kind of comic book hero that was popular in the 1990s.

Enough about Venom, let's get back to Reilly. His next adventure is the three part "Media Blizzard" crossover which pits him against longtime foe Mysterio. This story is very good - in fact, it's the kind of classic Spider-Man tale a lot of us fans were missing in the midst of this clone craziness. It's just a shame that our man Parker was out of the picture. Still, it's a good read with some good character development - Reilly gets to know a woman named Jessica who seems to have an obsession with photos of Spider-Man. Hmm...

The final issue in this volume is a Christmas special which resolves the problem between Reilly and the Torch. It turns out Johnny Storm had a tradition with the Parker Spider-Man of exchanging gifts at the Statue of Liberty, which we see in a flashback (Torch's gift to Parker is hilarious). Reilly stumbles onto the tradition by accident and the Torch gets an understanding of what's happened in the last year of comic time.

Marvel kept up their efforts to establish Ben as a new permanent Spider-Man and some of the Ben stories weren't bad at all. Still, fans were waiting for Peter to return...somehow.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Six

Thought this was over, eh? I did too.

Well, it turns out these Clone Saga collections are still being put out, but after the fifth one, the name was changed to "The Complete Ben Reilly Epic." I see what you did there, Marvel. I suppose it makes sense, given that Peter Parker retired from Spider-duty after finding that he was the clone and Ben was the original. The only time we see him in this volume is at the start, during the "Spider-Man: The Parker Years" one-shot. This is mostly just a recap of the last 15 years or so worth of Spidey-history up until that point, though readers following the Clone Saga will surely appreciate Mary Jane's zinger that "self-pity can be endearing in small doses, but after a while it can really suck." MJ, why didn't you speak up during "Maximum Clonage?!"

After that is an issue of the New Warriors, who the Scarlet Spider was somewhat affiliated with. He appears in about five panels. After that, we get a massive story called "You Say You Want An Evolution" which is definitely the lower point of this collection. It seems to exist solely to provide a lengthy answer to a question asked by The Jackal right before his death in Maximum Clonage - "Don't you want to know about Joyce Delaney and the High Evolutionary?" The correct answer was "No, just go away." This story goes on forever and is quite a chore. In general, a grandiose villain like The High Evolutionary is better off in the pages of something like The Avengers or X-Men.

Next is the four-part "Virtual Mortality" story, another crossover between all the Spider-Man titles. This time, it's a twist because all the comics have been renamed. For instance, "The Amazing Spider-Man" became "The Amazing Scarlet Spider." Still, if we're basically establishing a new status quo with Ben Reilly as our main man, I'm not sure why we still need the "event" crossovers. If you were a kid in the 90s with a limited allowance, this constant pressure to get four comics a month rather than one could get rough.

Anyhow, the funny thing about this story is that the travails of Ben's personal life are far more interesting that the ludicrous stuff going on while he's in the costume. He's got no money and winds up working at a sleazy club. He meets a potential love interest who has a different hairstyle every time she appears (you figure the artists would coordinate crap like that) and of course, keeps having to worry about getting mistaken for Peter. The main story is a high-tech gang war between the new female Doctor Octopus (aka Carolyn Trainer) and a mobster named Jason Tso, who is in the employ of longtime Spidey nemesis Alistair Smythe. Keep in mind, we're in the mid 1990s here and the "internet and virtual reality will kill us all" paranoia is in full swing.

This plotline continues in another crossover called "Cyberwar." Starts out promising, but when characters start talking about "reality merging with virtual reality," you know we've gone off the rails. At least we find out an interesting twist about Stunner, who you may remember as the girlfriend of the late Dr. Octopus (the original). She herself is a virtual reality projection. Yeah, we need a Keanu Reeves-esque "whoa" right about now. In this collection, the Cyberwar storyline is interrupted by an issue of the short-lived but underrated Green Goblin comic (the heroic Phil Urich incarnation) and another New Warriors issue. The Goblin comic dovetails nicely with the main plot. The New Warriors story is almost totally irrelevant.

The Lady Octopus character is not very interesting, but she's smart. Using her virtual reality technology, she frames the Scarlet Spider for a lot of destruction and utterly tarnishes his fledgling reputation. What to do now...why, it's time to go back to the original. Yep, Reilly is going to take on the mantle of Spider-Man. This transformation is showcased very well in "Ultimate Commtiment," a debut story from Dan "Death of Superman" Jurgens. A new title, The Sensational Spider-Man, was crafted just for him.

Jurgens is no slouch - within this one issue, he deftly introduces a bunch of new characters and builds a solid foundation for continued Reilly adventures. Ben also dyes his hair blond to try and further distance himself from Peter Parker. A new version of the Spider-Man costume is sewed (after a lot of mishaps, poor Ben just doesn't have many resources) and we're good to go. I have to say, these stories are a lot more pleasant with the knowledge that Ben's tenure as lead character was only temporary. At the time, however, we really had no clue what was going to happen with all this and even though Ben was a likeable guy, he wasn't the guy we had gotten attached to for so long.

This isn't the end of the Clone Saga by a long shot. Still plenty more, and now that I know to look for installments of the "Ben Reilly Epic," more analysis will follow.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Five

Well, here we are again. The last collection of the Clone Saga felt like something of a climax, but there was still a lot left before it actually ended. Back when these issues first came out, it started to feel like we would never be going back to the status quo – Spider-Man adventures that were somewhat standalone without massive crossovers and BIG CHANGES every month. Big-time “events” are fun every so often, but you get sick of them eventually. After all, if there’s always SHOCKING TWISTS, they stop being shocking after a while. Twists are only effective because of how they differ from the status quo. It obviously doesn’t help if the twists are lame, either.

The previous installment of the saga ended with the revelation nobody wanted – the man we had known as Peter Parker so long was actually a clone. The newcomer, Ben Reilly, was in fact the genuine article. Thankfully, Parker’s angst about this was more or less resolved by the end of “Maximum Clonage,” so now the duplicates wrestle with the question of whether New York needs two Spider-Men, and if it doesn’t, which one of them will keep it up? That’s what we deal with in the fifth book of this “Complete Clone Saga Epic,” but I have to say I’m pretty disappointed with just how much filler bogs down this volume. As with the horrid “Planet of the Symbiotes” story that ate up space in Volume 3, Marvel seems determined to give us EVERY story that ran during this period, even if it was just random supplemental stuff that didn’t contribute anything to the Clone Saga at large. Thoroughness is appreciated, but it gets out of hand this time.

Volume 5 starts with an issue of the New Warriors, a superhero team that the Scarlet Spider joined. There are a few NW comics mixed with this collection, which is okay because it resolves a loose end from “Maximum Clonage” – Helix, the genetic aberration that resulted from the Jackal’s experiments. His bizarre powers and violent behavior prove to be quite a handful and the team struggles to figure out what to do with him. After that, we get a totally unrelated five-part story which pits the Scarlet Spider against the Lizard and some team of mercenaries. It’s aggressively uninteresting, goes on for what feels like an eternity, and has nothing to do with the Clone Saga.

If you make it through that, we get to “Exiled.” This is basically three separate stories, and I think only linked together because Marvel had gotten so used to these multi-part crossovers. The first installment involves The Black Cat, and the fourth involves the Vulture. Sandwiched between the two is a short story arc that depicts how Ben Reilly came to meet his friend, the geneticist Seward Trainer.

Things get much crazier with the two-part “Time Bomb” story. Think Spider-Man meets The Manchurian Candidate. Specifically, a post-hypnotic suggestion planted by the Jackal (and set off by his cryptic last words before his death in “Maximum Clonage”) sends Peter Parker into an uncontrollable rage and Mary Jane has to run for her life. The New Warriors show up once again to halt Spider-Man’s unwilling pursuit, and he basically makes them all look like amateurs. But eventually he manages to resist the programming through pure will. The story was just kind of depressing. It seemed to be yet another indicator that Peter Parker was really, truly a clone…which nobody particularly wanted to be true.

Finally, we have the three-part “The Greatest Responsibility.” In this collection, parts two and three are separated by a completely random team-up between Spider-Man and the X-Men that’s really long and totally irrelevant. Enough with the filler already, sheesh! The story introduced a new Doctor Octopus, a young woman named Carolyn Trainer (Seward’s daughter). She didn’t have the charm of the original, but oh well…the mystical ninjas will be along to resurrect him eventually. Both Spider-Men get involved and the bond between them carries this story along. Meanwhile, Mary Jane is farther along in her pregnancy and the couple’s upcoming parenthood becomes impossible to ignore. By the end, Parker has given up his superhero duties, handing it over to Ben.

A brand new Spider-Man? Did anyone really want this? I know I’ve said that a few times, but I really feel like this whole nonsense was just pushed on the fans because Marvel had this stupid notion that Parker was too old, too married, too boring to appeal to readers. The narration in the third part of “The Greatest Responsibility” is insufferable, transparently forcing the agenda of the writers on to the readers. But that’s the way it was at the time, and some more silly stunts were on the way.

As of this writing, I can’t find a release date for the sixth volume of this Clone Saga collection, meaning that this series is on hold indefinitely. But fear not, I have a new fifteen-part one that’s coming up and should keep this blog at lest semi-busy all through the summer, if not until Oscar season.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Four

This is it, folks. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

So far, I've looked back at the Clone Saga and found a story that was definitely problematic but not beyond help. Take away a few of the lamer characters (Traveller, go die in a fire kthxbai) and refrain from dragging it out for so long and you've got a story that could work. There were compelling parts of this saga, which is probably why it feels so frustrating when it totally unravels. But hey, it's still probably better than the Spider-Man musical!

In all seriousness, this fourth volume of Marvel's new "Complete Clone Saga" collections offers the answer to why this storyline is so maligned. It's got a handful of the most infamous storylines of the era; the ones that made loyal fans like me want to throw our comics out the window. Despite my huge disappointment in the obnoxious plot twists, I stuck around for another year or so hoping things would get better. They didn't. Ironically, the Clone Saga finally ended shortly after that. However, given what came after (the "One More Day" story seems destined to be even MORE reviled than the Clone Saga), it was probably good I got out when I did.

The end of Volume Three left us with Ben Reilly offering to take Peter Parker's place in prison so that he could be with his wife while also hunting down the murderer who had framed both of them. For some reason, Peter also starts wearing the Scarlet Spider costume. I guess variety is the spice of life or whatever. The first story is "Lives Unlived," in which Peter encounters the clone of Gwen Stacy from the original 70s Clone Saga that laid the foundation for all this craziness. She's living with a clone of Professor Miles Warren (aka The Jackal). It may be worth noting that the name "Stacy" is misspelled towards the end of the story, a bit of a surprise considering how important Gwen is to the mythology. It may be an indicator of the level of care that went into some of these stories. Anyhow, she thinks her name is "Gwen Miles" and doesn't even know she's a clone. Well, she finds out and is pretty sad. Moving on.

Then we have the two part "Crossfire" storyline...and wow. I'm in awe at just how terrible this story is. It should come as no surprise at this point that Judas Traveller has a prominent role. In his ongoing cliche quest to understand the nature of good and evil, he creates a series of illusions to mess with Peter Parker, even claiming that he could restore Aunt May's soul. Then he supposedly takes Parker one day into the future, where NYC has been leveled...supposedly by Peter Parker himself. Right. Anyhow, everything goes wrong because Traveller shouldn't have been playing with alternate realities or whatever...as one character notes, "the space-time continuum is a delicate thing." Whatever. Traveller is stopped, Peter goes back to the present, nobody gives a shit. The single redeeming scene in this mess is a bit where Mary Jane reveals that a doctor has detected an "anomaly" in her unborn baby. The doctor's not sure why, but the couple knows that it's probably because of Peter Parker's radioactive blood. It's heavy, and manages to touch on real fears of aspiring parents despite the fantastical setting. Would have made a good story on its own, but we all clearly needed to be reminded of the delicacy of the space-time continuum. Sheesh, save it for friggin' Star Trek.

Next up we have "Return of the Green Goblin." The twist this time is that the new goblin isn't a villian, but a Daily Bugle intern named Phil Urich who stumbled upon one of Norman Osborn's secret labs. As you might expect, adapting the look of a notorious supervillain gets him a fair share of negative attention and he gets blamed for a string of murders involving homeless people. Spidey investigates and finds out the real culprit is a guy named Firefist, who has been killing poor people out of some warped belief that they contaminate society as a whole. He was never seen again after this story. Maybe he found a better way to pursue his goals of screwing over the poor, like being elected to Congress. As for the new Green Goblin, he starred in a very short-lived series spearheaded by veteran Spider-Man writer Tom DeFalco that wasn't half bad.

Now we move on to "The Trial of Peter Parker," a four-part saga ending with the revelation that nobody wanted. Ben Reilly, posing as Parker, faces the jury while Spider-Man hunts the real murderer - Kaine. Part One is mostly just a slugfest between the two of them while opening statements are given in the courtroom. But Judas Traveller shows up in Part Two, so we know we've hopped the train to Suckville. The second part regurgitates a plot we've all seen on Saturday morning television countless times - the hero is put on "trial" by his adversaries. Carnage is the prosecutor and Kaine must now defend Spider-Man. So after a few pages of talking, everyone fights and Traveller undoes everything and returns us to our regularly scheduled fight between Spider-Man and Kaine. Total waste of time.

During Part Three, Kaine reveals his true identity. He was the Jackal's first attempt to clone Peter Parker, but the process went awry and he developed extreme versions of the original's powers. Jackal tossed him away as a failed experiment, but he lived on and understandably got very moody and depressed. So now we understand the ease with which he could frame Peter Parker. Spidey's had enough of slugging it out with Kaine and threatens to unmask himself in front of the jury as a last ditch effort to save Ben from the electric chair. Kaine really admires Parker and doesn't want to see him screw up his life, so he reluctantly confesses to the murders and is arrested. Part Four starts with what looks like a happy ending - Peter is exonerated and he and Ben have become true friends. Ben gets to start a new life for himself. Would be great if it ended here, right? Sadly, no.

Seward Trainer, a friend of Ben Reilly's who is a geneticist, wants to do some tests on Mary Jane's unborn child. During this process, the bombshell is dropped. The man everyone knows as Peter Parker is the clone...and Ben Reilly is the original. In other words, the protagonist readers have known since the 1970s (following the first Clone Saga) was a clone. That's mind-blowing, amirite?!?! I guess, but the reaction of the fans was not "OH COOL!" and I don't really get how Marvel could have expected that. No, the reaction was more like "What, really? (pause) That sucks!" So how does Parker take this news? Well, he goes berserk and accuses Reilly of trying to steal his life. They have a stupid fight and when Mary Jane tries to intervene, she takes one of Peter's blows and goes flying into a wall. Already brutal, and given that she was also pregnant...well, it was pretty upsetting. Peter feels instantly remorseful and runs off.

So believe it or not, the next story is even worse. Get ready for "Maximum Clonage," and yes, that was the real title. This six-part saga is preceded in the collection by an issue of New Warriors where the titular team of superheroes fight a clone of Spider-Man, but it's not Ben Reilly. So as "Maximum Clonage" starts, the New Warriors mistake the Scarlet Spider for this creature and they fight. The true culprit was "Spider-Cide," the shape-shifting clone from "The Mark of Kaine" storyline. He's helping The Jackal execute his nefarious plan - to kill the entire human race with a deadly virus and replace them all with clones that The Jackal will rule over. Yes, I'm serious.

So Peter Parker is acting like a total idiot during this story. Because he's a clone, he's somehow convinced that he has to go live in a hole alone somewhere or something, so he just abandons Mary Jane and winds up hanging out with The Jackal. Ben Reilly, who is also coping with the revelation that he has spent the last five years of his life thinking he was a clone, tries to talk some sense into Peter but Jackal won't have it. Reilly and Kaine wind up fighting an army of mindless Spider-Man clones.

Meanwhile, Spider-Cide betrays The Jackal and almost kills him. However, it is Kaine who intervenes on the Jackal's behalf and dies heroically. Diminishing this whole incident is the fact that Kaine hated the Jackal and his change of heart isn't really explained very well - "You gave me life" is all we get.

By the time we get to the last chapter of this saga, everything has gone nuts. The writers have apparently just given up trying to keep these issues consistent with one another and there's literally a different artist at work every five pages or so. Jackal attemps to deploy his deadly virus, but is now attacked by the Gwen Stacy clone. During the scuffle, Gwen nearly falls to her death. That reminds everyone of the original Gwen's death, which was what caused Professor Warren to snap and become The Jackal in the first place. He attemps to save her, but falls to his death after shouting a cryptic warning. His plan is foiled, Peter returns to Mary Jane and now he and Ben must decide who will wear the Spider-Man webs.

This whole story was just a total fail. In addition to Parker's bizarre behavior and the overall goofiness of the plotline, there's a lot of little things that are lame. As one example, in part four of this story Kaine promises Reilly he has renounced his murderous ways and will not kill the attacking clones. In part five, he asks Reilly "why should you care if they die? They're only clones!" as he beats the hell out of them. And though it has been well-established that Spider-Cide has power similar to that of T-1000 and is thus virtually indestructable, he dies from falling off a buliding. "Maximum Clonage" is FULL of stuff like that and provokes a lot of very justified nerd rage.

Jeez, so what the hell happened? Well, I think it's clear that this whole "replace the hero" gimmick of the 1990s started with the Death of Superman saga, which is far more well-received than this. Marvel was jealous of its success and decided to do something similar, but why did The Death of Superman succeed where the Clone Saga failed?

Death of Superman has a very clear three-act structure.

1. Superman dies.
2. Four "Supermen" compete to take his place, with some claiming to be the real one.
3. The real Superman returns and all is well.

The "Knightfall" Batman story has almost an identical structure.

1. Bane breaks Batman's back.
2. Azrael takes over as the new Batman.
3. Bruce Wayne returns and defeats Azrael, who has gone off the deep end. All is well.

I guess the Clone Saga could have worked within this framework.

1. Peter Parker's clone returns.
2. The clone is revealed to be the real thing. He takes over as Spider-Man.
3. It turns out Peter Parker was the real one all along. All is well.

But since this saga concluded, some of the creators have spoken publicly about how the editorial board at Marvel actually wanted Ben Reilly to permanently become the new Spider-Man. Some of the editors were worried that having Peter Parker as a married father made him too "old" for the readers and that the parade of tragedies in his life had made him too dark and gloomy. With that in mind, we start to understand why Peter was behaving like such a jackass in these clone stories. The writers were trying to manipulate the readers into going along with their scheme to install Ben as the new Spidey...for good.

Didn't quite work out like yet. But in the next part of this series, we'll see them give it their best shot.

P.S. Also, I have another series that will start within the new couple of months or so. It will be more...complimentary...than this has been. More later.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Three

With the third volume in this new "Complete Clone Saga Epic" series, I've started to realize that Marvel is not kidding around when they say "complete." Every Spidey comic published during that era seems ripe for inclusion in these volumes regardless of whether or not it dealt with the core plotline. I certainly appreciate the throughness of this approach, but it works against them this time.

But where were we at the end of Volume 2? The original 1970s Clone Saga mastermind, The Jackal, had just returned and planted seeds of doubt about just who is the real Spider-Man - Peter Parker or Ben Reilly? We start this time with "Players and Pawns," a two-part tale featuring more of Jackal's shenanigans. There's also a third Peter Parker who emerges suddenly. Is he the real one? Spoiler alert - no. Jackal's smugness and puns get old quick, but at least this story is short. The most notable thing that happens is that Aunt May finally comes out of her coma.

But anyone who reads this volume is in for a serious endurance test before we get to see the emotional ramifcations of Aunt May's return. Specifically, it's time to wade through the five-part "Planet of the Symbiotes" storyline. This story was published outside the four main Spidey-titles in a series of "super special" one-shots. Special...this story is special the same way that Forrest Gump was special. Venom and Carnage were quite overexposed during the 1990s. I still think the over-the-top "Maximum Carnage" storyline is a guilty pleasure, but this story is one of the most absolutely godawful Spider-Man tales I've ever read. And keep in mind we're in the middle of the Clone Saga when we say this, so that carries some weight.

I'm not even going to try and summarize the sheer stupidity that passes for a plot in this comic abortion, but I will point out a fairly amusing mistake. At one point in this story, Eddie Brock and the two Spideys are chilling with Mary Jane as they hide out from the invading symbiotes (seriously, don't ask) and good old MJ is very cordial with her husband's duplicate. Nothing wrong with that on its own, except Mary Jane's first meeting with Reilly happens later on in this same volume and she's not exactly in the best mood at the time. So not only is the story terrible, it's not even placed in the right spot. Like I said, I do appreciate that Marvel wants to include all the stories where the clone appears, but honestly nobody would have cried foul if this one was missing.

So if you made it through that, you get rewarded with "The Gift," the story originally printed in Amazing Spider-Man #400. The "gift" of the title is the week that Aunt May gets to spend with Peter Parker before her death. Yep, this was the story when she bowed out of the Spidey universe (at least for a few years...let's not go there). It made sense. She had been in poor health since the early 1960s and it was probably time to send the old girl out with dignity.

That's exactly what J.M. DeMatteis did in this exemplary story. There's no action whatsoever and it relies totally on characters and dialogue to make its impact. As a pre-teen when this came out, it was easily the most emotional thing I had ever read...and it still holds it own when you read it as an adult. Once May has peacefully passed, this story ends with a big shock. There were a lot of "shocks" in the Clone Saga that felt as revelatory as Tuesday coming after Monday, but this was a big one. Just as May's funeral is over, the police show up and arrest Peter Parker. The charge? Murder.

The two-part "Aftershocks" story comes after this, and this stuff is decent enough. The only drawback is seeing that lame-o Judas Traveller show up again and do nothing but blow a few things up and then go on his merry way. The final storyline included in Volume 3 is "The Mark of Kaine." Remember him? Well, he was impossible to forget during this Clone business. We were told that this story would answer our questions about the mysterious figure, but it ultimately didn't answer much. The first half focused on Kaine's prophetic visions of Mary Jane's death, which he hopes to prevent by kidnapping her and hiding her underground. Naturally, neither of the Spider-Men are too happy with this. Parker breaks out of jail (assisted by Traveller...just go away already!) and even the moody third Parker joins in. In the second half, the story goes off the rails as the third Parker is revealed to be some genetic abomination who can shapeshift in the style of T-1000. Yeah, it's really weird...and some of the art is just ghastly. In the final part, Kaine picks fights with a bunch of Spidey's enemies...*yawn* The best part of this story is the scene where Reilly unselfishly decides to switch places with Peter and remain in jail so that he can be with Mary Jane while hunting the real murderer. It's pretty epic.

That does it for now. Next time, we get into the really bad Clone Saga stuff. At least we're done with Venom for a while.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Two

Well...I sure let this one fall by the wayside. Sorry about that. Here is the six-month old first part of this series if you are interested. Basically, as the new "Complete Clone Saga Epic" collections come out, I'm going to give the story another look and explore what it was about this plotline that ultimately pushed me away from Spidey comics. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there has been much improvement since. From what I know of this "Brand New Day" business, I didn't know how good I had it back in the 90s. I do wonder why Marvel has chosen to reintroduce this much-maligned story to the public now...is Ben Reilly set for some sort of return to the mythos? Time will tell.

This second collection starts out with "Back to the Edge," focusing on a still moody Peter Parker/Spider-Man as he struggles to deal with Aunt May's deteriorating health and the sudden return of his clone. Meanwhile, Mary Jane heads back to Pennsylvania to see her estranged family members. Her plotline is actually a lot stronger; Spider-Man's encounters with Puma and Nocturne feel aimless. It picks up a little towards the end as Spidey meets up with his old pal Daredevil (another character who was going through some weird crap in the 90s). They team up to fight two avian-themed villains, the Owl and the Vulture. B-B-B bird bird bird, bird was the word. Sorry.

Anyway, you might remember the Vulture as the senior citizen with a feathered suit that allowed him to fly and who could give Spider-Man a good fight despite his advanced years. At this point, however, he had just undergone a process to make him young again (way to undo the most interesting part of the character, Marvel). Anyway, Vulture infects Spider-Man with a deadly virus that has no antidote. Uh-oh.

Now it's time to go back to Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider for the "Web of Life" storyline. I mentioned last time that I was fond of "The Exile Returns," the first solo clone story, but this one is somewhat weaker. The most interesting part was the connection between the Scarlet Spider and Betty Brant, who was looking for an interview with the new Spider-person in town. Unfortunately, this element is jettisoned almost immediately...perhaps to give more attention to the story's major antagonist - Kaine.

If you've been following the Clone Saga through these new collections, then you already got a full explanation for the beef between Reilly and Kaine in "The Lost Years." Back when these issues were first coming out, however, this was all very mysterious indeed. You could tell Marvel wanted Kaine to be the next Venom-esque antihero, but the fandom wasn't really sold. In fact, a lot of people hated the guy. I thought he was okay in small doses. At the end of this story, Kaine fights and kills The Grim Hunter (Kraven's son who had only just been introduced recently) and Reilly basically watches the whole thing. The story also introduced his geneticist pal Seward Trainer, who would be important later on.

What of Spider-Man? He begins to succumb to his illness in "Web of Death," and receives help from a most unlikely source - Doctor Octopus. Except for the very end, this story is damn good, even awesome. J.M. Dematteis and Tom DeFalco turn in excellent writing here. As Doc Ock observes that the Vulture may have succeeded where he always failed, he realizes just how much he respects Spider-Man as an opponent. "I've always looked upon you as the last decent man," he thinks, and is clearly faced with a "Who am I without my enemy?" complex. It's pretty brilliant.

Dr. Octopus decides that he doesn't really want to see Spidey gone for good, and puts his considerable scientific knowledge to use to develop a cure. He is successful, though not before Parker flatlines for a few minutes and has a ghostly vision of his own ascent to the afterlife (a very subtle hint about the Clone Saga's future is dropped here, it's quite sneaky). Still, Spidey recovers and gets more good news - Mary Jane is pregnant. Knowing that he is going to live and will soon be a father, he finally shakes off his depression and joyously bounces across rooftops. For fans who had waded through months of oppressive doom and gloom, this was a godsend.

What of Doc Ock? He turned himself into the police, saying that he wanted Spider-Man to be rested and refreshed for their next battle. Spidey's bafflement as Ock marches off with the cops is priceless. Sadly, this story would have a miserable ending. Kaine shows up again, defeats Dr. Octopus easily and then snaps his neck. That's right - one of Spider-Man's all time greatest foes, a guy with a thirty-plus year record at that point, is killed off by this newcomer. It sucked hard. Marvel ultimately realized their mistake and years later, Ock was resurrected by mystical ninjas (I am NOT making that up).

The collection also features the "Funeral for an Octopus" mini-series, which I could never convince my parents to get me since I was spending so much money on other comics during this Clone business. Ock's death brings a bunch of his supervillain buddies together and they cause trouble. That's about it. It's pretty lighthearted and fun, actually. After that is a standalone story where both Spideys deal with terrorists who have taken over the World Trade Center. Yeah, that's right. This was kind of dull in the 90s. Now...it's unnerving.

The final story in this second collection is "Smoke and Mirrors," which features the return of The Jackal, the mastermind of the original 1970s Clone Saga and Ben's creator. Given that clones were in again, it made sense for him to come back. The change in his characterization is notable. In his original incarnation, the Jackal was just a mean, nasty adversary. Now he is king of puns and cringe-inducing pop culture references. You could tell for a long time that Spidey's creators wanted a villain who was similar to The Joker. They tried with Carnage...who certainly had the requisite insanity, but he was something of a simpleton without Joker's mad genius. The Jackal has the genius, but is a bit too over the top in his ambitions to get the same appeal. Joker didn't really want to take over the world, he just wanted to do crazy stuff. He was brilliant at that, though. Can't blame Marvel for trying, but you can't top The Joker. Won't happen.

"Smoke and Mirrors" isn't really a good note for this collection to go out on. It's very contrived and a little tedious, and it first introduces the suggestion that maybe Ben is the real one and Peter is the clone. You can understand the writers wanting to add some mystery...but I remember reading that as a kid and being like "Really? They're going to do this?" It's one of those plotlines that feels natural but at the same time...I don't know if anyone really wanted it. That's it for now - there will be plenty more unwanted revelations ahead, that's for sure.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part One

So I may have found some use for the blog in the non-Oscar months.

The Clone Saga ended my tenure as a Spidey fan for several years, and even when I came back I could no longer stomach the main continuity and instead went for the "Spider-Girl" alternate universe. I think I made the right choice, this "Brand New Day" bullshit makes the Clone Saga look like Shakespeare.

I look back on the storyline with a mixture of frustration and nostalgia. These were my prime comic reading days...and some parts of the story were good. So when I heard that a series of volumes would finally collect this massive plotline within several books, I was pretty excited. After all, I never did read the entire thing...how could I? Almost every story was a crossover, meaning that you had to buy at least four comics a month to get everything. My allowance couldn't quite support that.

So right away, I was grateful for the idea to finally fill gaps in my knowledge of this saga which had lingered for years! As these trades come out (probably will take 6 or 7 books to encompass this whole thing...it was LONG, son), I'll look back on this maligned storyline and see what we can salvage from it. Spoilers will abound, so if you don't want 15-year-old story twists ruined for you, turn back now.

So let's kick this off with some context: Peter Parker was really depressed following the revelations of the "robot parents" storyline, and was swinging around all dark and moody and calling himself "The Spider." Aunt May was in the hospital for a stroke, which didn't help things. Most of this is recapped quickly in the collection (official title is "The Complete Clone Saga Epic") using random pages from various issues to help get us up to speed.

We start with "Birth of a Spider-Man," which was a supplemental story published in other issues that serves as a retelling of the very first 1970s Clone Saga from the clone's point of view. At the end of that first confrontation, Peter believed his clone was dead. Not so. This short story is really dark and kind of ugly, but it does help capture the most essential points from the 70s tale - the entirety of which is in a trade called "Clone Genesis," not sure if that's still in print.

Next is "The Parker Legacy," another short story about the clone's existential woes upon learning he is not the real Peter Parker. I always liked this story. Despite the fantastical subject matter, there was something very human and poignant about what the character was dealing with. It also introduces the clone's chosen name for himself - Ben Reilly.

The same creative team from that story (J.M. Dematteis and John Romita Jr) did the "Spider-Man: The Lost Years" mini-series, which touches on Reilly's adventures while living the nomadic lifestyle in Salt Lake City. I had never actually read this until now, and it was impressive. This is barely a superhero story, it's more like a straight up crime drama involving a few superpowered characters. The character of Kaine, an early attempt at cloning Peter Parker that went awry, was ubiquitous during the Clone Saga and he was never cooler than he is in this story. This three-issue story is some of the best stuff that came out of this whole saga.

Following that, the "Power and Responsibility" storyline that officially kicked off the new Clone Saga is a disappointment. Peter meets his clone, who returned to NYC to visit the ailing Aunt May, and the two of them get wrapped up in the sinister machinations of one Judas Traveller. Right from the first chapter of this, the writing was just weak. Of course, that may be the fault of Terry Kavanagh, who wrote "Web of Spider-Man" for quite a while around this time. Even as a kid, I knew this guy's writing was bad. Almost every bit of dialogue is a run-on sentence that stretches on through at least two panels. Hard to explain without showing you an issue, but trust me when I say it gets very repetitive. During "Maximum Carnage," which ran a couple years before this, Kavanagh was the genius who had the poor, unedcuated Cletus Kasady spitting off ham-fisted lines like "Your pathetic arrogance, fools, will be your very downfall!" *groan*

Still, the story has plenty of other problems. Traveller is just kind of a lame villain, his motivations about understanding the nature of evil or whatever are really boring and trite, and the scene where Spider-Man has a full-on whimpering meltdown in front of him was just embarrassing. I winced when I read that in the 90s and it made me wince now. By the time the four-part story ends, it doesn't seem anything all that important happened, except for Reilly's return.

The final story in this first collection is "The Exile Returns," a Ben Reilly solo adventure. This story has a lot going for it. I really like what the clone has to deal with - the cheap, homemade costume, the sense that he has to lay low or else risk messing things up for Peter. It was fairly compelling - plus the clone (who would be named The Scarlet Spider) got to beat Venom! Venom was ludicruously overexposed during the 90s, he deserved the beat down he got in this story. With that, the first installment of the collected Clone Saga ends on a triumphant note.

So what have I gotten out of this first re-examination? By itself, bringing the Spider-Man clone back was a good idea. Having two Spider-Men running around was kind of cool, and Ben was a good character. It's a shame the promise seen here would be ultimately undone by horrible writing decisions down the road, and indeed symbols of that decline are visible in this first book.

I already have the second collection, so a follow-up should come soon!