"Miles Morales: The Clone Saga"

 

            The following is a review of the Marvel Comics event “Miles Morales: The Clone Saga” as presented on Marvel Unlimited.

            Welcome to From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin. I’m your reviewer Tim Cubbin. If you’ve never read any reviews on this blog before, I’ll tell you how this works. If you’ve read one of my reviews before, you know the rundown, but still read the next few sentences anyway as it might be a little different from my prior reviews. First off, I am a total diehard Marvel Comics fan. I read from Marvel Unlimited pretty much every day and now any events I read I review, so here we are. Anyway, at the start of every one of my reviews, I give my opening shtick (like the one you are reading now). Then I give a brief explanation of the major characters you need to know about as you read this review. Following that, I give a synopsis of the main stories in the event. After that, I give my thoughts, what I liked, what I disliked and why. Following that, I’ll tell you the level of background knowledge I feel you should know before making the commitment to read this event. Then comes the numeric score I give the event. After that, I’ll tell you if I recommend it and to whom I think would like to read this event. Finally, I’ll give my log off message and stop wasting your time.

Well, if you’re still with me at this point and have not been scared off, let’s get right to it. The main character of the event is Miles Morales/Spider-Man. Miles was bitten by a genetically altered spider and gained several powers: adhesive fingertips and toes; the proportional speed, strength, and agility of a spider; the ability to camouflage himself to the point of invisibility; the ability to discharge an electric charge; and a precognitive awareness of personal imminent danger. He also has web shooters. He took on the name of Spider-Man (even though there already IS a Spider-Man, who agreed to share the name with Miles).

Peter Parker/Spider-Man: The original Spidey.

Rio Morales: A nurse; Miles’ mother (knows her son is Spider-Man).

Jefferson Morales (formerly Davis): Former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent; Miles’ father (knows his son is Spider-Man).

Billie Morales: Miles’ newborn baby sister.

Ganke Lee: Miles’ best friend.

Tianna Toomes/Starling: the granddaughter of original Spidey baddie the Vulture. Has a flight suit.

Kamala Khan/Miss Marvel: Size-changing polymorph. Miles’ teammate in the young super team the Champions.

Knull: the King in Black. Malicious god of the symbiotes.

Selim, Mindspinner, and Shift: Clones of Miles (we’ll get to them in a minute, stay with me here).

Okay, these are the main players in this little drama, what say we get right to the synopsis of the event. In the first story, Miles has a team-up with Starling. After a successful rescue, Starling kisses Miles, leaving him the question: does he have feelings for her?

Next is a “King in Black” tie-in. Knull leads a horde of hundreds of thousands of symbiote dragons to Earth. Miles is forced to battle Miss Marvel, but is able to rescue her from Knull’s control. During the chaos, Ganke cowers in fear with Miles’ ex, Barbara, and after Knull’s assault on Earth, the two start dating.

Following that is the main story: “The Clone Saga.” Several months before, a villain called the Assessor kidnapped Miles, assessed him, and created unstable clones of Miles: Selim, the leader, an improvement on Miles; Mindspinner, with a spider form and mental powers, kind of like a psychic screech; and Shift, a gooey creature. Selim committed crimes as Miles, stealing items and kidnapping a scientist in an effort to create a cure for the clones’ instability. Miles, not knowing this, finds the clones’ lair and destroys it, and the clone stability cure. In a rage, Selim trashes Miles’ relationship with Miles’ friends, then Selim, Mindspinner and Shift attack Miles’ parents and kidnap Miles’ baby sister Billie.

I’m stopping here so I don’t spoil the ending. Now we go on to my personal thoughts. The Starling story wasn’t too bad, but I felt like the sparks between Miles and Tianna should have had some more development. “The King in Black” tie-in was my favorite story in the event. “The King in Black” was a whole other event, and I actually enjoyed that event and felt like Miles’ storyline in the whole drama was interesting and exciting, especially the drama of Ganke connecting with Miles’ ex (which actually happened to me, oddly enough) that created friction between Miles and Ganke. As far as “The Clone Saga,” I felt it was mediocre. I didn’t hate it, but if the writer had made the story an issue or two longer to develop the story a little more (such as featuring the full assault on Miles’ parents, more of the clones ruining Miles’ reputation and friendships, and extending the drama of Selim kidnapping Billie), there could have been potential for a slightly better story. As it stood, it wasn’t too bad.

Okay, let’s talk accessibility. For those of you who don’t quite know what I mean, it’s my way to tell you if this is a good jump-on point for new readers or not. I found this story to be relatively self-contained. For those with no Miles experience, I feel you can still pick up this book and be able to understand it.

Okay, now for the score. I go on a one to ten scale. One means this was awful and I only read it for continuity’s sake. Ten means this was awesome and reading it as a whole made sense and I enjoyed it more reading it a second time. Just so you know, I’m a really hard to please guy when it comes to comic scoring, as prior readers will know. Oddly enough, my score will fluctuate. Before I post, I feel like I’ll give it one score, but while a write this, my score might change, and maybe even after this post my score might change. At the moment, I give it a six. For my reasoning behind this, go back two paragraphs and read again because I literally just told you.

Now, I’ll tell you my recommendation. Do I recommend it? If you read comics regularly yet did not read this story in your perusal, I would recommend it to you. Again, the story wasn’t bad, but it could have been better. If you have never read a Miles Morales comic book before but saw the movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and liked it and wanted to find a good place to start reading a Miles Morales comic, this might be for you. If you know absolutely nothing about Miles or have never picked up a comic book before and just want a good storyline to start reading at, it’s a fairly good place to start. Now, I’ll say this: I CANNOT tell you if you’ll like this or not. I might have liked it, but I can’t guarantee you will like it because I am me and you are you. That said, this does get MY recommendation. If you read this review and are now interested in reading it, I say go for it! If you read it, feel free to let me know what you thought about it, this blog site does have a comment option, or you could just Tweet at me if you found this link on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you!

Well, now I guess I’ve gone on long enough. Your brain’s probably on overload. I just have to say, if you read this ENTIRE review, you are THE BEST! I appreciate your effort. I now ask for YOUR support. Please retweet this post, share it, follow me, contact me, whatever you can do, I’d love your input. As far as this blog goes, I’ve done plenty of work. I’ve written over a dozen reviews and will do plenty more. I also do mental health essays, an editorial series called B’ings, short stories and poetry. I’m actually a certified journalist with no job, so to pass my time I read and blog out of the goodness of my heart, getting no money for this, but I love doing this, it gives me purpose, so I just do it. There is plenty of content here and plenty more on the way, I’ll be doing this blog until I can’t do it anymore, so please feel free to check back often. I’m also working on a comparison piece involving this post and a previous post, it’ll be here in a few hours, so please hang on and come back. If you do, you are THE BEST! So I bid you farewell for now, and till next time, Tim Cubbin… out!

"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!