Originally Posted by
Spiderfang
The biggest problem is that the Marvel staff have to think of something that works for Ben to differentiate him from the 500,000,701 Spider-Persons that are out and about today. I hate the nostalgia criticisms because while it does hold merit for a lot of things (e.g. "remember how great life during the late eighties was?"), in the context of things like comicbooks or comicbook icons I get a bit touchy because, again it feels like what's being said is "naw you can't really like that game, it's just your memories of playing it that make you like it," which can feel like an invalidation of one's legitimate feelings and memories. It hurts because I can see your point of Ben being a nostalgic-driven selling point as true (the term sounds belittling to me and I don't like it used in this context), because Marvel really had no end game for Reilly and just brought him back to appease his fanbase, and when that time was up we already have a dozen or so Spider-Persons who are already underutilized, so we're back to square-one, only now Ben's in limbo instead of "definitely dead".
I get that people preferred the hoodie costume because it was familiar and screams "classic Ben", so that may be nostalgia talking but I don't see anything wrong with idealizing characters with their memorable traits. If we're going down the whole "Ben's whole purpose is nostalgia" anyway route, then I'd like to point out that while I genuinely enjoyed much of the new Scarlet Spider series, I thought that it may as well have been set in New York or Salt Lake City, anywhere that was Clone Saga-related, because at least then it would appeal to the nostalgia base and gives Ben a package that he is more than capable of delivering, otherwise it may as well have been set in the Ultimate Universe with Ultimate Peter.
I'm not saying that I don't like character developments (I thought and still think that Superior Spider-Man is the best modern Spider-comic I've read in years), just that they went in the wrong direction with Ben; made him a crook on the lamb and saddled him with tons of unresolved (and apparently unimportant) baggage (i.e. "Janine Godbe, Kaine, Peter Parker, Baby May, MJ, Aunt May, etc.") and saddled him with lots of "fake nostalgia" [I say fake because it's in a setting 'like New York' but is not New York] (big city setting like the original, suspiciously similar grandmother-like character, irrelevant surprise guests of the week bearing no significance to the overall main plot, whose only purpose was to evoke feelings of "hey I remember that!") so really it should have just been back in NYC or NJ and had more to do with Ben's life leading up to his death, and him trying to do damage control while setting up a side-life as a civilian Ben Reilly (job, friends, therapy).