"Spider-Man: The Clone Saga"

 

            The following is a review of the Marvel Comics Event “Spider-Man: The Clone Saga” as presented on Marvel Unlimited. This was a long, intricate and highly extensive collection of comics with many storylines, and as such, I will only discuss the major points and specific highlights that I enjoyed and find pertinent as this is my review.

            We’ll obviously have to start with a little background that took place behind the story to clarify a few of the details needed to fully understand this review. We’ll establish for the record that Peter Parker is the superhero Spider-Man. He was bitten by a radioactive spider and now has adhesive fingertips and toes, enhanced strength and agility, and a spider sense that warns him of personal danger. He also created web shooters. His parents died when Peter was a child and lived with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. In his early days, he was only out for himself. He allowed a burglar to get by, and that same burglar broke into Peter’s house and killed his Uncle Ben. He then became a superhero because he learned the invaluable lesson that with great power there must also come great responsibility. He found out he had a clone, whom he battled and thought dead when the clone fell into a smokestack. But the clone didn’t die. Feeling like less of a man, he left New York (where Peter Parker lives) to establish his own life as Ben Reilly (named after his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, whose maiden name was Reilly) for five years. Ben had been hounded by a mysterious murderer named Kaine over these years, Kaine hating be for (well, that’d be a spoiler, some I’m going to stop there). What brought Ben back to New York was the news that Aunt May had a massive stroke and might not wake up or survive. That’s when Peter and Ben come face to face. Ben, establishing himself as not Peter and not Spider-Man did not want to be involved in the whole superhero shtick, but Ben also followed “with great power there must also come great responsibility” mantra and came to a rescue in a rather tacky costume. The Daily Bugle (the newspaper that Peter sold Spider-Man action pictures to) dubbed Ben “Scarlet Spider.” Ben hated that name, but you know how newspapers force names upon you, so he really at that point had to roll with it.

            Okay, that’s a good point to separate from now. “The Clone Saga” then divided stories up. At the time there were five major Spider-Man titles, so two of the titles originally followed Peter Parker, two originally followed Ben Reilly, and one originally featured Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider.

This, not surprisingly, led me to quite some discord. Having all the different writers involved in the whole event telling all the different storylines went quite wonky, and some of the artists did not appeal to my eyes. There were also several times where other superhero titles were added to coincide with Peter and Ben’s storylines, such as the New Warriors (a team I actually know little about, surprisingly), as well as one-shots and limited series. As they say, there’s no pleasing everyone (is there that saying or something like that, and if it isn’t, it totally should be and I will take the credit?). There was also a three-part limited series called “Funeral for an Octopus” (spoiler alert, Doctor Octopus is killed by Kaine) and five one-shots containing the story “Planet of the Symbiotes.”

I think now would also be a good time to tell you a little about the stories involving Peter Parker’s wife, Mary Jane Parker. The first is that she’s pregnant. Now, Peter having irradiated blood immediately brings concern as to what this could potentially do to Peter and Mary Jane’s baby. Fortunately, Ben knows a geneticist name Seward Trainer, the two do have history of working together, so Seward knows Ben’s need for discretion. We’ll get back to that because this yields something very important. Kaine has followed Ben to New York having had visions of Mary Jane’s death, which is possibly precognitive.

            Okay, now back to that point I left hanging. There is now a discovery that Peter Parker may not be the real “Peter Parker” but a clone of the man who has gone by the name “Ben Reilly” for the past five years. In other words, Peter might be a clone of Ben. Or there’s now the possibility that neither of them is the real “Peter Parker” and both Peter and Ben are clones.

Now, I stated there were several storylines, so let’s talk about my favorites and least favorites. I can’t honestly remember every story’s title, so I’ll just discuss events. First off, I loved the first story, where a mysterious man called Judas Traveller lures Peter and Ben to Ravencroft Institution (essentially a prison for crazy supervillains who can’t be held in a regular prison or mental hospital because of their powers) and threatens to either blow the place up or release all the patients (make your choice). I also liked the story of the trial of Peter Parker. Kaine has now framed Peter Parker for murder, to which Ben decides to stay in lockup while Peter as Spider-Man tries to clear Peter’s good name. I also enjoyed the planet of the symbiotes. I always love a good symbiote story, and Carnage is my all-time favorite supervillain, so a clone story with him was a total treat.

Okay, early on, I hated how Peter behaved. Now some people are familiar to “Spider-Man no more.” Now we were essentially presented with “Peter Parker no more,” which just did not appeal to me. I also disliked the story where the Vulture poisoned Peter Parker and Peter had to team up with Doctor Octopus to save Peter’s life, and then for his trouble Doc Ock is killed by Kaine. As a side note, Doc Ock had a girlfriend called Stunner, and this relationship made no sense to me, and maybe not even to you if you read this too. I also thought the outcome of Ben’s first encounter with Venom was wrong as Peter always had difficulty beating Venom and here Ben kicks Venom’s butt way too easily.

Okay, I know you now want my rating. If you’ve read me before, you know I discuss my opinions of the story (which I literally just did), then accessibility (if you don’t know what I mean, just keep reading) and a numerical score (one to ten, one being so awful I regret I ever read this, ten being I will totally read again). I always hate to give a low accessibility ranking, but this definitely has it. Intimate knowledge of Spider-Man is required to understand this. If you are a casual Spidey fan and thinks this sounds great and want to read it, your best bet is to get Disney + and watch the Spider-Man animated series from the 90s. That was totally the series that got me into Spider-Man in the first place and is totally amazing, spectacular, whatever other Spidey adjective you want to tack to it. I’m thirty-three and still watch cartoons (make fun if you must), but honestly anyone any age could find something to like about it. If you watch it, you’d totally understand this story, but it’s sixty-five episodes and some people just don’t have the time. Honestly if all you know of Spider-Man is from the movies, this is not for you (and I hate deterring people from reading anything I review based on that, but I have to do it). Alright, the moment you’ve been waiting for for the past however long it is you’ve been reading this: my number score! I’m going to stick this down the middle and give it a five because there were parts I liked and parts I disliked, and lumping the whole reading list together as an event, while an amazing attempt was a little scattered, and the ending leaves much more to be desired because you will read this and still feel this is only half of the story (I’m not going to spoil the reason why, but you will).

Well, I guess this’ll be all for now, but I’ve got plenty more reviews, editorials and B’ings planned (and if you don’t know what a B’ing is, totally read more of my blog as I put a lot of work into this), so I’m just going to say: Tim Cubbin… out!