|
|
 |
I’ve mentioned before how the two big comic book excesses of the mid-1990’s basically killed my interest in comic books and it was a hobby I completely ignored for about 7 years. Those two big excesses were the Onslaught Saga and the Clone Saga. Well, Marvel has already released the complete Onslaught Saga and now they’ve bitten the bullet and released one of the most controversial sagas they’ve ever released – The Clone Saga. There were so many things wrong with the Clone Saga and even when I read these books back in 1995 I knew that something was horribly wrong. It’ll be interesting to take a look back and see where things went wrong.
This is a big book and the first of what will be about four or five volumes. There’re so many different creators included here that I will do my best to keep things organized. The titles collected here are: Amazing Spider-Man #394, Spectacular Spider-Man #217, Spider-Man #’s 51-53, Spider-Man Unlimited #7, Web of Spider-Man #’s 117-119 and Spider-Man The Lost Years #’s 1-3. These titles were released in late 1994 and early 1995. I’m not going to go crazy and detail every issue and who worked on it but I’ll give a rundown of the writers and artists here. On the writing side you have Tom DeFalco, JM DeMatteis, Todd DeZago, Terry Kavanagh, Mike Lackey, Tom Lyle & Howard Mackie. For pencils you have Mark Bagley, Sal Buscema, Steven Butler, Phil Gosier, Ron Lim, Tom Lyle, John Romita Jr., Alex Saviuk and Liam Sharp.
The book wisely puts the comics in order not by when they were released but chronologically by story. So some of the prologue issues that were released after the saga started are presented here in the beginning of the collection. I’ve organized this by story-arc to make it a bit easier.
-Birth of a Spider-Man- This one was a back-up to a story that ran through Web #117, Amazing #394, Spider-Man #51 and Spectacular #217. This was a basic retelling of how Warren Miles cloned Peter Parker and how this led to the fateful encounter of Spider-Man and his clone (as seen in ASM #149) with the added epilogue of the clone waking up, heading home and finding Peter with Mary-Jane. He realizes he’s the clone and decides he needs to leave.
-The Parker Legacy- This ran as a back-up in ASM #400, SM #57, and SSM #223. This immediately follows the events of the previous story. A dejected clone walks alone the street hoping to get hit by truck (and getting angry when the man driving stops). The clone steals money from Parker’s apartment and sees May one last time before he goes off on his own. He hitches a ride on a bus and tells off some guy who was talking his ear off. He realizes he was harsh on the guy and goes to apologize and finds the man just in time – he was about to kill himself! The clone goes off on his own and takes the name Ben Reilly to honor who he believed was his aunt and uncle.
-Spider-Man: The Lost Years- This was a three-issue mini-series that starts about three years after the previous story. Ben Reilly has been hopping from city to city and he’s been followed by someone named Kaine. Ben ends up in Salt Lake City and we have an interesting narrative – all three main characters (Ben Reilly, Kaine and officer Jacob Raven). This story features the three of them getting involved in their own way in a mob family that has set up in Utah. Kaine and Reilly find love while Jacob loses his wife in an explosion. Reilly was able to save Jacob’s son. Things come to ahead when it is Jacob’s partner (who was also seeing Kaine) that turns out to be a mole and helping the mobsters the whole time. Reilly and Kaine fight, Reilly gets the worst of the deal and is about to be killed by the mob when Kaine shows up to save Reilly. Jacob’s son is kidnapped and Reilly saves him. Jacob wants to bring Kaine and Reilly in but they both escape – Kaine having lost his mind and killed the woman he thought he had feelings for and Reilly with the red-head he was romancing. Jacob doesn’t go after them too hard, instead spending time with his son now. This was actually a great look at Reilly and Kaine, although the question I had coming out of here was how did Reilly know who Kaine was when he saw him? There was a span of three-years that we don’t know about where they could’ve met. Another question is what happened to the red-head? She was gone by the time Reilly showed up in the Spider books and she was never mentioned. That could be because the Lost Years was written AFTER Reilly showed up in the Spider-books.
-Interlude- I didn’t know what else to call this section. It’s a collection of single pages from various Spider-Man comics showing a mysterious man calling May. May ends up suffering a heart attack and when the mysterious caller finds out he comes back to New York. He visits May and we learn that this is Spidey’s clone – Ben Reilly. Meanwhile, Peter is getting more and more isolated from everyone and withdrawing into the world of the spider and threatening his marriage with Mary-Jane. This concludes with Spider-Man and Ben Reilly meeting on a rooftop.
-Power and Responsibility- This was really where we saw the first of Ben Reilly and it was a unique way to introduce the character. This ran in the same issues (as the main story) that Birth of A Spider-Man ran in. Reilly starts off fighting Spidey (obviously) but then the story takes a turn and instead of focusing on just the two Spider-Men it morphs into a story about the Traveler taking over Ravencroft Institute and drawing Spider-Man in. Spidey goes in and is captured as Ben tends to May and debates whether or not he leaves Peter in the institute so he can regain what he thought was his life. Reilly does decide to suit up, he takes on some average villains, and he teams up with Peter to stop Carnage and the Traveler just bails since he has enough information on his little experiment. This was an odd intro for Ben Reilly as this story showed him to be a secondary character behind the main arc. I can see why people didn’t take him seriously at first and why he was so shunned when they revealed he was the real Parker and the guy we thought was Parker was the clone. It was a weak introduction for him.
-The Exile Returns- This is a four-part series that ran in Web #118-119 and Spider-Man #52-53. Reilly starts off deciding if he wants to stay in NYC. He remembers parts of his “past”, saves a girl from jumping from a bridge and finds out that Venom is in the city. He decides to stay and he wants to take on Venom and defeat him once and for all. He dons a new costume (red with a blue sweater) before heading off. There’s an interlude here from Spider-Man Unlimited #7 and he just takes on some common thugs to save a guy from being roughed by them. The story resumes with Reilly finding Venom, fighting him, losing the first round, a female symbiote shows up, a reporter is following the exploits of Venom and the newly dubbed Scarlet Spider, and in the end Reilly definitively defeats Venom and the symbiote. The reporter angle was superfluous and wasn’t needed since the Reilly/Venom battle was enough. This just showed that a new Spider was on the town and he was every bit as formidable as his counterpart.
-The Bottom Line- There are some extras here. We get the usual assortment of cover galleries (from trades and all that) as well as an introduction from the Clone Years from 1996. What I liked was there were pages of background information that were very helpful to reading this story. I really appreciate that Marvel collected this saga in this format. Doing it chronologically gives us a better insight than what we saw back in 1995 and 1996. First, it was tough to read all the 5 Spider-books at a time to get the full story and at times it seemed disjointed. On those measures alone I would say this first volume is recommended. Since this is the beginning you don’t start seeing all the pitfalls that happened as the series progressed. It is like Onslaught in that way. The opening stories weren’t bad and it was building into something that could’ve been good. But this was 1996 Marvel and too many people had their hands in the cookie jar and what started out well would end disastrously. That’s a story for another day, though. This was enjoyable, and the Lost Years (with JR JR art) was the star of the book. It’s only $35 and it’d cost that much just to collect all these different titles. I’d recommend checking this out for a look at one of the most controversial Marvel stories ever.
|
|
|
|
|
Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
|
|
|
|