What's your takeaway to the Clone Saga?

[theboychild]

Hi everyone! I'm planning to score the omnibus quite soon and heard some mixed reviews. I love the 90s art so I know I'd appreciate the book. What are your thoughts about it? Cheers!

[marhawkman]

#ClonesArePeopleToo

Which is the epitome of the Ben Reilly part of the saga. I can't say I liked every part of it, but it was pretty good.

[HypnoHustler]

I loved the clone saga (crazy thing to admit) because I love nature vs nurture arguments and analysis on the duality of man. Of course the saga still had some really bad and convoluted writing. But it also had some real gems too, like ASM#400, Lost Years, Web of Death, Blood Brothers, Final Adventure, Revelations and more. Even the not-great stories from this time had a feeling of suspense, as you never knew what would happen next, even though that reached a point of fatigue for many. But writers like DeMatteis, Dezago, DeFalco, Jurgens all wrote Ben well and made him distinct. Here are the differences between them. And while they were subtle, they felt organic and plausible: Ben's years on the road made him more impulsive and hot tempered than Peter. But on the other hand, he was also more optimistic about the future and counted his blessings because he knew what it was like to have nothing. His years on the road also made him more open to new experiences. Peter is a bit more reserved, and I felt he was a bit more conceited than Ben, sometimes treating him condescendingly especially in the beginning when he thought Ben was a clone. Peter was also more wary of trusting others, and didn't like or trust Ben's best friend Seward Trainer. Ben's fighting skills as Spidey were also more raw, but he lacked Peter's experience. Although Peter was more likely to hurt bad guys in battle since he was at a point where he was kind of sick of shit. Ben brought him back to Earth a bit. I think Ben being single and being more in touch with youth culture also helped separate him from Peter. There is also the fact that Ben was a bit grungier and hipper with his blonde hair and flannel shirts; a lot of people resented that, but in retrospect he was such a perfect encapsulation of the 90s, a decade in which I came of age and started reading Spidey and he seemed like he would be the perfect “cool uncle” for Peter’s baby daughter. But the best aspect was the brotherly dynamics between Peter and Ben... them going from suspicious rivals to brothers was some of the most natural and organic characterization I've seen in the Spidey books. The clone saga also saw Peter lose his parental figure, gain a brother and expect a baby. It was the last time the character saw real forward momentum (not fake momentum like him becoming a CEO). I think it’s so lazy just to dismiss this entire period of the books. I think most people who dump on the Clone Saga have never actually read it... or at least not all the way through.

[HypnoHustler]

Edit: double post

[Spiderfang]

For me it was my introduction to Spidey comics and was the introduction to Kaine & Ben Parker and made up a good chunk of Spider-Man comics from mid-early to late 90's. I think most people will agree that while not all of it was excellent (like Superior Spider-Man), but there were a lot of good bits and real defining moments from the 90's.

[Miles To Go]

Pretty much a very underlooked story, but not, I would say, an undervalued period, as we still get sequels and spin-offs made about it to this day, and it led to probably the best possible endgame for the franchise in the equally underrated Mayday-led Spider-Girl series.

[Adset]

the first comic book i ever bought was amazing #404 (smack dab in the middle of "maximum clonage") so i'm in the same boat as the poster above -- i started reading comics right around the mid-point of the clone saga, so for me it was this sprawling, never-ending saga that i just thought was... normal. it took some getting used to after peter parker: spider-man #75 finally closed the door on the whole thing. i know for most people the spider-books reverted back to normal after that, but for me it was strange.

so i freely admit i look back on the clone saga with fondness b/c i'm able to do so with a healthy dose of nostalgia. i recently went back and re-read the whole thing, start to finish. not everything was a winner and i can certainly see why people reading the spider-books in real time got extremely frustrated with it, but being able to sit down and read the whole thing from ben reilly's introduce to the very end of "power and responsibility" in the span of about a month helped the flow/narrative, imo.

[iPodwithnomusic]

I actually just finished reading the Clone Saga for the first time! Overall I would say I enjoyed it, however there were a LOT of story arcs that were boring or downright terrible. For that reason I don't plan to buy any Omnibus of the run, because if I drop $100 on a book I want it to be one where I enjoy all of the issues. I really liked Ben Reilly's character so I will definitely go back and re-read some of the issues, but there are many I have no desire to ever read again.

[Kaled]

I liked the Clone Saga myself. The only thing I did not like was the idea about Peter being the clone and Ben being the real thing. That played out too long. They still could have achieved what they wanted without it. I had the opportunity to read the "Clone Saga" diaries about 3 years ago and learned about some of the things gong on behind the scenes. One of the things I suspected was the true identity of Gaunt (I think that was his name) and wished they had stayed with the original idea (SPOILER- it was originally Harry). If they had been allowed to carry out the original idea I think it would have been accepted better in the 90's than what it was. If the diary is still on line find it and read it.

[bob.schoonover]

Kaled - do you mean this:
http://lifeofreillyarchives.blogspot...nd-update.html
?

The Clone Saga is pretty hit or miss for me. I actually liked the first year of it a lot (more or less through The Mark of Kaine), then it really just went sideways (I dropped all Spider-man books except ASM somewhere towards the end of year two and just kept ASM since I had a subscription for a bit longer). Reading the above blog, this makes a lot of sense because that's around when the original plan started getting futzed with. I know how the whole story ends, though, and I find it utterly infuriating.

[Lindsey]

In my opinion, it's better than it's remembered as being.

The biggest problem is it went on way to long. If editorial hadn't drawn it out for so long, it would much more fondly remembered.

[Adset]

i enjoyed the ben reily-as-spider-man part (sensational #0 through the end of "power and responsibility") quite a bit. we got a lot of classic spider-man tropes back: ben was dirt poor and couldn't always afford webbing, girl problems, etc etc, and i always thought ben carried additional emotional weight because he had the same baggage as peter concerning uncle ben, but he was also plagued because he wasn't able to be w/ may at the end of her life. the issue where he asks for an advance on his pay at that coffee shop so he could buy flowers for ben and may's grave always resonated with me. hell, i even liked their stab at reinventing mysterio, and i *love* the classic fish bowl look.

[David Walton]

In my opinion, it's better than it's remembered as being.

The biggest problem is it went on way to long. If editorial hadn't drawn it out for so long, it would much more fondly remembered.

Yep. The original plan was to reveal Ben Reilly as the original in ASM #400. Marketing pressured Marvel to drag the storyline out until even the writers were exhausted. It also didn't help that they used a pass-the-baton approach, writing chapters instead of getting their own arcs to explore what meant the most to them.

[David Walton]

i enjoyed the ben reily-as-spider-man part (sensational #0 through the end of "power and responsibility") quite a bit. we got a lot of classic spider-man tropes back: ben was dirt poor and couldn't always afford webbing, girl problems, etc etc, and i always thought ben carried additional emotional weight because he had the same baggage as peter concerning uncle ben, but he was also plagued because he wasn't able to be w/ may at the end of her life. the issue where he asks for an advance on his pay at that coffee shop so he could buy flowers for ben and may's grave always resonated with me. hell, i even liked their stab at reinventing mysterio, and i *love* the classic fish bowl look.

The story where he dated the Burglar's daughter was pretty cool, too, a concept which was loosely adapted for The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon (using Black Cat as the daughter).

[boots]

i'll echo what most have said here...it's a mixed bag of really high highs and low lows

one thing i liked about it was it felt like anything could happen- nothing was sacred.

i'm also a sucker for duplicates/clones/memory themes in stories, stuff that goes into questions of identity. it got pretty deep at times, but also pretty silly. it probably helped that as a kid, i could only afford certain issues so i missed most of the poorer parts.

i will 100% buy both omnibus when i can