Revisiting the Clone Saga for its 25th Anniversary

[Huntsman Spider]

On a completely different note, am I the only one that wants to see someone do a new spin on Judas Traveller and (the) Scrier(s)? Maybe a "Geoff Johns on Green Lantern" style pulling all the pieces together to make something vaguely coherent and interesting. I don't have a specific idea of what that'd be, but I really enjoyed the mystery surrounding them before and around ASM 400 (that is my mark for where the whole thing started to go off the rails) and thought they brought a different element to Spidey (not so much his cosmic-level powers, but his interest in the nature of Peter and Ben). What they ultimately became was much, much less interesting.

I think the broad brush the Clone Saga is painted with sweeps away a shocking number of new characters (mostly villains) to bolster the already filled roster of Spidey villains and it's a bit of a shame so many of them were either swept away in the tumult that was wrapping up the story or ignored since. It'd be nice to move past just little appearances here and there (Lady Octopus in Spencer's run is appreciated, but she's not really the face of the Syndicate) - maybe the next satellite title can be "The Forgotten Foes of Spider-man" and highlight some of them and give them new missions for the current era.

I think Lady Octopus and Stunner would have the most potential for relevance in this day and age, given how technological advancements in real life have made virtual reality more viable and how the Internet and social media can enable people to misrepresent themselves and their lives in ways that they couldn't in face-to-face interactions.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

a lot of your non negotiables are more matters of taste to me

They aren't quite non-negotiables for me. In theory it's possible for stuff like "Every plot machination involving a corporation and cabal who have a bizarre fixation on my personal life", "The character you knew for 20 years is nullified" and even retcons where they bring characters back from the dead, and so on to work for me, provided it's done by storytellers A) Who know what they are doing, B) Who have some larger point to make. In theory it's even possible for "One More Day" to have worked for me. The bar is very high but in theory it could have worked.

When Lee and Kirby brought Captain America out of ice thereby negating every story with Cap between 1945-1964 featuring an impostor and so not the real Cap it was done with a lot of thought and care, and they were making a larger point. Cap can't be associated with the post-war right wing anti-communism of the '40s and '50s, and he should represent an ideal out of synch with the current direction of American society. There was an actual larger story and point being done there and while it was a continuity fix it was done by people who knew why it was needed.

I don't think either condition was met by the people behind the Second Saga. The guy with the main idea, Terry Kavanagh wasn't the lead writer, and it was all done by committee, with people with different motivations and interests which worked against the whole project. Likewise, Kavanagh didn't really understand the full ramifications of his own story, as evidenced by his interviews. This is also the case with Glenn Greenberg on his Life of Reilly blog (which people really need to read carefully and not take on face value). There's a real lack of self-awareness and self-criticism by most of the people behind the project.

But it's not like there's only one valid position to hold on the issue.

I agree with that. I certainly don't think my views are the only valid position. It is however a position that I don't think people have made very often, and one I think it's appropriate to bring in a thread discussing the story's 25th Anniversary. It's no different than bringing in the question of fridging in a discussion about The Night Gwen Stacy Died, which I have done multiple times. The difference is that Night Gwen Stacy Died is a great story with a problematic legacy whereas Clone Saga is just problematic, with very little good and great about it.

Yes, absolutely.

My personal preference is for a single Peter but having him married isn't anything that ruins or breaks the character.

It simply makes it harder to continue the illusion of change, which clearly was the biggest impetus to do away with it.

The funny thing about "illusion of change" is that when Stan Lee said about it, off-the-record at Marvel meeting, he meant something different from what writers and others understood by it.

"[Steve] Englehart, who first came to work for Marvel in 1971, described a change in Marvel's editorial priorities "around '74," which led, in 1976, to at least three talents leaving Marvel at that time: himself, Jim Starlin, and Paul Gulacy. When Kim Thompson inquires as to what editorial restrictions were being promulgated, Englehart said: "Well, just "don't be so bizarre. try not to progress so fast." There's that famous meeting that happened before the quitting time when Stan said, "I don't want progress; I want the illusion of progress now. We don't want people dying and coming out of the strips [a reference to the death of Gwen Stacy], we don't want new girlfriends, we want to try to keep it the same."

http://zak-site.com/Great-American-N..._universe.html

The key phrase is "we don't want new girlfriends". What Lee implies is that he wants Spider-Man to more or less stick to the status-quo established in the aftermath of Gwen's death, i.e. with MJ as the female lead heroine, which explains the newspaper strip. For Lee, the idea seems to be, to keep the background fixed and just worked within that but nothing about hard rules against the characters. "Try not to progress so fast" doesn't imply "no progress ever". In fact, I think there was a Marvel editorial where during the pages the then editor said, on the question of Spidey aging, they said, "they age but very slowly". In a certain sense, Peter marrying Mary Jane was within the "illusion of change" as Stan Lee understood it. Marrying MJ doesn't solve all of Peter's problems. She's still a civilian woman who can't really help him be a superhero, or serve as an assistant, or create gadgets and so on. MJ is likewise the leading lady of the stories, a role that was conceived and set up by Ditko back in ASM#25 onwards, and in fact right from her first mention (ASM#15, where May says Peter would one day marry MJ). It brought new emotional stakes to Spider-Man that aren't fully played out the way an unmarried Spider-Man or Post-OMD Spider-Man has.

On a broader sense...the illusion of change was conceived for a Pre-Internet era, and for an audience of young kids and teenagers who were expected to outgrow the medium at a certain point. Except, thanks a great deal to Stan Lee himself (who always wanted Marvel Comics to target a sophisticated readership and college kids in particular and that inspired stuff like the progressive continuity), the comics audience isn't that young anymore. It was also conceived in a time when Marvel Comics were in a low-period of sales after Kirby left where it was basically ASM and Star Wars licensed comics keeping it afloat. It doesn't make sense today with the Internet where literally nothing is ever forgotten or forgiven, when the comics readers aren't young and to the extent they exist 616 isn't what's bringing them in.

Before Marvel was semi-independent and was shuffled from one corporate owner to another, always on the verge of being utterly shuttered and so paranoid about the fact that their owners would see no value in them making comics. So that inspired and justified a certain conservatism. That's not the case anymore. Marvel Comics now has a permanent lasting home with Disney, who see the comics as an IP farm and R&D for stories and so on, so there's no longer that uncertainty and jockeying for relevance that once drove it. Or at least not near the same extent.

[boots]

They aren't quite non-negotiables for me. In theory it's possible for stuff like "Every plot machination involving a corporation and cabal who have a bizarre fixation on my personal life", "The character you knew for 20 years is nullified" and even retcons where they bring characters back from the dead, and so on to work for me, provided it's done by storytellers A) Who know what they are doing, B) Who have some larger point to make. In theory it's even possible for "One More Day" to have worked for me. The bar is very high but in theory it could have worked.

When Lee and Kirby brought Captain America out of ice thereby negating every story with Cap between 1945-1964 featuring an impostor and so not the real Cap it was done with a lot of thought and care, and they were making a larger point. Cap can't be associated with the post-war right wing anti-communism of the '40s and '50s, and he should represent an ideal out of synch with the current direction of American society. There was an actual larger story and point being done there and while it was a continuity fix it was done by people who knew why it was needed.

I don't think either condition was met by the people behind the Second Saga. The guy with the main idea, Terry Kavanagh wasn't the lead writer, and it was all done by committee, with people with different motivations and interests which worked against the whole project. Likewise, Kavanagh didn't really understand the full ramifications of his own story, as evidenced by his interviews. This is also the case with Glenn Greenberg on his Life of Reilly blog (which people really need to read carefully and not take on face value). There's a real lack of self-awareness and self-criticism by most of the people behind the project.



I agree with that. I certainly don't think my views are the only valid position. It is however a position that I don't think people have made very often, and one I think it's appropriate to bring in a thread discussing the story's 25th Anniversary. It's no different than bringing in the question of fridging in a discussion about The Night Gwen Stacy Died, which I have done multiple times. The difference is that Night Gwen Stacy Died is a great story with a problematic legacy whereas Clone Saga is just problematic, with very little good and great about it.



The funny thing about "illusion of change" is that when Stan Lee said about it, off-the-record at Marvel meeting, he meant something different from what writers and others understood by it.

"[Steve] Englehart, who first came to work for Marvel in 1971, described a change in Marvel's editorial priorities "around '74," which led, in 1976, to at least three talents leaving Marvel at that time: himself, Jim Starlin, and Paul Gulacy. When Kim Thompson inquires as to what editorial restrictions were being promulgated, Englehart said: "Well, just "don't be so bizarre. try not to progress so fast." There's that famous meeting that happened before the quitting time when Stan said, "I don't want progress; I want the illusion of progress now. We don't want people dying and coming out of the strips [a reference to the death of Gwen Stacy], we don't want new girlfriends, we want to try to keep it the same."

http://zak-site.com/Great-American-N..._universe.html

The key phrase is "we don't want new girlfriends". What Lee implies is that he wants Spider-Man to more or less stick to the status-quo established in the aftermath of Gwen's death, i.e. with MJ as the female lead heroine, which explains the newspaper strip. For Lee, the idea seems to be, to keep the background fixed and just worked within that but nothing about hard rules against the characters. "Try not to progress so fast" doesn't imply "no progress ever". In fact, I think there was a Marvel editorial where during the pages the then editor said, on the question of Spidey aging, they said, "they age but very slowly". In a certain sense, Peter marrying Mary Jane was within the "illusion of change" as Stan Lee understood it. Marrying MJ doesn't solve all of Peter's problems. She's still a civilian woman who can't really help him be a superhero, or serve as an assistant, or create gadgets and so on. MJ is likewise the leading lady of the stories, a role that was conceived and set up by Ditko back in ASM#25 onwards, and in fact right from her first mention (ASM#15, where May says Peter would one day marry MJ). It brought new emotional stakes to Spider-Man that aren't fully played out the way an unmarried Spider-Man or Post-OMD Spider-Man has.

On a broader sense...the illusion of change was conceived for a Pre-Internet era, and for an audience of young kids and teenagers who were expected to outgrow the medium at a certain point. Except, thanks a great deal to Stan Lee himself (who always wanted Marvel Comics to target a sophisticated readership and college kids in particular and that inspired stuff like the progressive continuity), the comics audience isn't that young anymore. It was also conceived in a time when Marvel Comics were in a low-period of sales after Kirby left where it was basically ASM and Star Wars licensed comics keeping it afloat. It doesn't make sense today with the Internet where literally nothing is ever forgotten or forgiven, when the comics readers aren't young and to the extent they exist 616 isn't what's bringing them in.

Before Marvel was semi-independent and was shuffled from one corporate owner to another, always on the verge of being utterly shuttered and so paranoid about the fact that their owners would see no value in them making comics. So that inspired and justified a certain conservatism. That's not the case anymore. Marvel Comics now has a permanent lasting home with Disney, who see the comics as an IP farm and R&D for stories and so on, so there's no longer that uncertainty and jockeying for relevance that once drove it. Or at least not near the same extent.

completely agree that the execution was lacking. but i personally have a soft spot for ambitious stories that still fall short despite their efforts. i don't have any strong attachment to ideas of "continuity" , so that aspect has never bothered me

in addition i've never read the entire saga in full, so maybe i got away with just experiencing most of the "decent" stuff

i also wouldn't say your position on the saga is unique or unpopular.

[boots]

I think Lady Octopus and Stunner would have the most potential for relevance in this day and age, given how technological advancements in real life have made virtual reality more viable and how the Internet and social media can enable people to misrepresent themselves and their lives in ways that they couldn't in face-to-face interactions.

there could be something weird and fun to be done with traveller and scrier though i imagine itd be a one off and not as regular villains

you could keep with the deluded manipulated madman retcon and have him trying to reclaim some form of status and importance or you could bring back the mystical stuff which would fit more easily in the current spider-verse

[Spiderfang]

On a completely different note, am I the only one that wants to see someone do a new spin on Judas Traveller and (the) Scrier(s)? Maybe a "Geoff Johns on Green Lantern" style pulling all the pieces together to make something vaguely coherent and interesting. I don't have a specific idea of what that'd be, but I really enjoyed the mystery surrounding them before and around ASM 400 (that is my mark for where the whole thing started to go off the rails) and thought they brought a different element to Spidey (not so much his cosmic-level powers, but his interest in the nature of Peter and Ben). What they ultimately became was much, much less interesting.

I think the broad brush the Clone Saga is painted with sweeps away a shocking number of new characters (mostly villains) to bolster the already filled roster of Spidey villains and it's a bit of a shame so many of them were either swept away in the tumult that was wrapping up the story or ignored since. It'd be nice to move past just little appearances here and there (Lady Octopus in Spencer's run is appreciated, but she's not really the face of the Syndicate) - maybe the next satellite title can be "The Forgotten Foes of Spider-man" and highlight some of them and give them new missions for the current era.

I really didn't like how Scrier was written off as just another elaborate facade concocted by Norman Osborn, I'm not sure how I feel about Traveller and always felt like he didn't belong in Spider-Man.

[bob.schoonover]

there could be something weird and fun to be done with traveller and scrier though i imagine itd be a one off and not as regular villains

you could keep with the deluded manipulated madman retcon and have him trying to reclaim some form of status and importance or you could bring back the mystical stuff which would fit more easily in the current spider-verse

I really didn't like how Scrier was written off as just another elaborate facade concocted by Norman Osborn, I'm not sure how I feel about Traveller and always felt like he didn't belong in Spider-Man.

My pitch for Traveller would be a sort of Watcher-type figure for the less cosmically inclined Marvel characters - as a student of human behavior and emotion, he appears at times of great upheaval (and occasionally intervenes) to test and assess our heroes (for some unknown reason). It works either w/the original conception of him as a mystical immortal or as a psychologically broken mutant, although I'd prefer the former. As a huge aside, having a supremely powerful mystical character with suspect motives who is *NOT* the personification of the devil might have been handy about 12 or 13 years ago.

I don't really have a good idea for the Scriers, but the Norman Osborn connection really needs to be retconned away - it was dumb in the moment and remains dumb now.

I'm mildly disappointed no one is caping for Leather and Lace.

With a bit of work (and a new name, perhaps), I feel like Spidercide could fill a hole in the current villain roster - Otto is back in his old body, Venom and Kaine are heroes, Ben Reilly is reformed from being the Jackal (I think), Carnage is basically a Venom villain now, and depending on how Kindred turns out, there aren't really any dark mirror versions of Spidey running around at the moment.

[WebLurker]

I think comics fans don't like the idea of something being "ruined forever". They don't like to think it's possible. And I guess it affects them if the Spider-Man continuity they are reading is "fallen" and somehow lesser. I understand that but I think people are in denial if they don't acknowledge or consider the possibility of it being so. Take Hank Pym. I happen to like the "Hank slaps Janet" saga of Avengers #211-230 and I appreciate where Jim Shooter was going, in terms of the fact that Hank Pym was a hot mess before the story and what Shooter did was define for all times that Hank Pym is the cautionary tale to the Marvel Universe..."you guys can be flawed and have foibles all you want, but you never go full Hank Pym". He has to be the lowest of the low in the hero community so that all the rest can go "At least I'm not him". But it can't be denied that the story did finish Hank Pym forever as a major superhero...to the extent that the Ant-Man movie had his legacy character as the main hero.

Carol Danvers was likewise finished as a superheroine for some thirty years thanks to Avengers #200. She was intended by Lee and Conway to be Marvel's Wonder Woman, and that story, led her to become the "elephant in the room" so that she wasn't Ms. Marvel and became Warbird or Binary, and then an alcoholic and hot mess, until Kelly Sue DeConnick and McKelvie arrived.

Real storytelling values in Spider-Man have been lost thanks to stories like The Clone Saga and OMD. I mean consider the fact that the most influential stories of Spider-Man in the 21st Century are exclusively AU -- USM, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Ham and others like that. A lot of that is inspired by the Clone Saga. Bendis said that part of the reason why USM was greenlit was because Bill Jemas then Marvel president was disappointed by the sales and the state of Marvel Continuity in the late 90s, where Peter was a widower, and he was becoming really poor and the stories were depressing. All of that can be traced to the Clone Saga.

Thank you for proving my point that there's nothing, Clone Saga or otherwise, that can ruin something forever.

(Besides, USM deserves all the reputation and influence it has and I've read some of the Clone Saga and, truth be told, it's not as bad as I was lead to believe it was. Not my most favorite thing and I can get that two years of it being the only thing would get old really quick, but there was some stuff in there worth the while.)

[Pav]

So, as far as Scrier goes:

We all seem to recall that Scrier was retconned to be a group of assassins, rather than a single magical being.

After the retcon, they rarely showed their faces again. Off the top of my head, Kaine fought a few during Identity Crisis, and they popped up in the Spider-Girl comics eventually.

But! I also recall an issue of... Unlimited? Team-Up? in which Spidey and Man-Thing take on the REAL Scrier, who had revealed himself to the mere humans who had dressed like him.

Scrier, the magical being, exists. J.M. DeMatteis demanded it.

-Pav, who wouldn't mind seeing him again...

[boots]

So, as far as Scrier goes:

We all seem to recall that Scrier was retconned to be a group of assassins, rather than a single magical being.

After the retcon, they rarely showed their faces again. Off the top of my head, Kaine fought a few during Identity Crisis, and they popped up in the Spider-Girl comics eventually.

But! I also recall an issue of... Unlimited? Team-Up? in which Spidey and Man-Thing take on the REAL Scrier, who had revealed himself to the mere humans who had dressed like him.

Scrier, the magical being, exists. J.M. DeMatteis demanded it.

-Pav, who wouldn't mind seeing him again...

this bloke?

Scrier_(Cosmic_Being)_(Earth-616)

[boots]

My pitch for Traveller would be a sort of Watcher-type figure for the less cosmically inclined Marvel characters - as a student of human behavior and emotion, he appears at times of great upheaval (and occasionally intervenes) to test and assess our heroes (for some unknown reason).

i think it has potential but the "unknown reason" would probably have to come to light at some point (and would it be too much to hope in a clever as hickman kinda way?) otherwise it'd get tired very quickly

[Pav]

this bloke?

Scrier_(Cosmic_Being)_(Earth-616)

I think so. I recall that the issue with Man-Thing had really trippy art, and Scrier got a new look in it I believe.

-Pav, who wishes he could remember what issue it was...

[boots]

I think so. I recall that the issue with Man-Thing had really trippy art, and Scrier got a new look in it I believe.

-Pav, who wishes he could remember what issue it was...

that scrier page lists 9 appearances including a pp spider-,man annual with man thing on the cover. could be that?

[Pav]

that scrier page lists 9 appearances including a pp spider-,man annual with man thing on the cover. could be that?

Yup, I checked the link, and it totally is!

I don't have the issue anymore due to the February fire of last year that took my family's house, but I remember as a kid reading the issue and finding it so weird and hard to follow... but then the more I read it, the more I appreciated how odd it was.

-Pav, who never saw any Scrier appearances in Silver Surfer...

[Lee]

The funny thing about "illusion of change" is that when Stan Lee said about it, off-the-record at Marvel meeting, he meant something different from what writers and others understood by it.

"[Steve] Englehart, who first came to work for Marvel in 1971, described a change in Marvel's editorial priorities "around '74," which led, in 1976, to at least three talents leaving Marvel at that time: himself, Jim Starlin, and Paul Gulacy. When Kim Thompson inquires as to what editorial restrictions were being promulgated, Englehart said: "Well, just "don't be so bizarre. try not to progress so fast." There's that famous meeting that happened before the quitting time when Stan said, "I don't want progress; I want the illusion of progress now. We don't want people dying and coming out of the strips [a reference to the death of Gwen Stacy], we don't want new girlfriends, we want to try to keep it the same."

http://zak-site.com/Great-American-N..._universe.html

The key phrase is "we don't want new girlfriends". What Lee implies is that he wants Spider-Man to more or less stick to the status-quo established in the aftermath of Gwen's death, i.e. with MJ as the female lead heroine, which explains the newspaper strip.

That doesn't track. If this was 1974, then negative feedback to Gwen's death (which Stan Lee took to heart) would still be fresh, which led to Stan telling Conway to bring Gwen back, which resulted in the clone storyline in 1975.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That doesn't track. If this was 1974, then negative feedback to Gwen's death (which Stan Lee took to heart) would still be fresh, which led to Stan telling Conway to bring Gwen back, which resulted in the clone storyline in 1975.

Englehart is quoted "around '74" so it might be later on and so on.

Stan Lee would of course know ahead of time Conway's plans for the storyline since this stuff is written in advance (and it takes far less time to write a comic than to draw one). Conway already had planted Jackal in ASM#129 which came out in February 1974.

If you want more detail check out Sean Howe's Marvel Untold Story where the development of the First Clone Saga is discussed in rather unexpected detail (mostly because the book looks at the corporate history and behind the scenes issues dealing with credit and pay, rather than creative development).

Essentially, Conway managed to turn his run into a referendum on Gwen. He continued to develop his story arcs around Peter and MJ's relationship and other story. The largely positive response to that ultimately shaped the outcome of the First Clone Saga where Peter rejects a clone of Gwen for MJ. Had Conway's changes not stuck and not worked, then it's likely that at the end of the comic, MJ drops out of the books, and it would turn out that the Gwen who fell off the bridge was the clone, while the real Gwen is returned to the story.