Ben Reilly: Spider-Man/Scarlet Spider Appreciation 2022

[Refrax5]

Nothing of value would be lost. There's more bad with post-Conspiracy Ben than good, that's arguable.

And given how boring Janine proved to be as Ben's girlfriend in Beyond, I think she could do with some shake up on this level.

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it should be taken from everybody else, especially when it only further confuses a character already known for confusion with an unoriginal twist. You would have to ignore and outright contradict a ton of stuff for it to even make sense when you could just fix the character. And again, I don't want to have spent time and money with this character for 6 years only to have a story that essentially means I got ripped off.

As for Janine, I don't think her being sexually assaulted AGAIN is a solution to you finding her boring. What a gross thing to say.

[TinkerSpider]

Was she boring? She accepted her role in the beginning, escaped by taking Marcus hostage with the only evidence to take down Beyond, we had a red head team up. Somehow made it from NJ to NY in record time and stood by Ben after he came back from being goop

If they wanted to retcon Spidercide into being "Ben," easy enough to keep Janine and not do harm to her character. For example, Kafka could have agreed to work witih Beyond and "Ben" to help Spidercide regain his sense of purpose and sanity after Clone Conspiracy, etc. Kafka came up with bringing in Janine to help since she knew the original Ben so well, and Janine knew ahead of time the condition for getting her out of jail was to help mend "Ben's" psyche. And when Janine saw that Beyond was trying to break down "Ben" instead of build him up as was the plan - and Kafka was turned into a goblin - Janine decided to take down Beyond. She's staying with Chasm because she knows she is the one slender link he still has to sanity and she still hasn't completed her mission of destroying Beyond and Maxine Danger...


Not saying that's what will happen/did happen, but a retcon that doesn't do harm to Janine is possible...

[Refrax5]

If they wanted to retcon Spidercide into being "Ben," easy enough to keep Janine and not do harm to her character. For example, Kafka could have agreed to work witih Beyond and "Ben" to help Spidercide regain his sense of purpose and sanity after Clone Conspiracy, etc. Kafka came up with bringing in Janine to help since she knew the original Ben so well, and Janine knew ahead of time the condition for getting her out of jail was to help mend "Ben's" psyche. And when Janine saw that Beyond was trying to break down "Ben" instead of build him up as was the plan - and Kafka was turned into a goblin - Janine decided to take down Beyond. She's staying with Chasm because she knows she is the one slender link he still has to sanity and she still hasn't completed her mission of destroying Beyond and Maxine Danger...


Not saying that's what will happen/did happen, but a retcon that doesn't do harm to Janine is possible...

But again, it just makes everything way more convoluted and messy. You also have to make it so a cosmic being didn't recognize that Ben wasn't Ben, that now we have an entire series with his name on it that wasn't actually about him, we have his second era as Spider-Man erased. Even if Beyond wasn't great, we still got a heroic Ben getting to be Spider-Man again, which validates the character and is a big deal.

I don't love the way they've treated Ben all of these years, but these suggestions are getting Hawkman levels of contrived and stupid. Ben just needs his mind restored to be back to his old self, not to turn over half the character's history into an even more confusing mess.

I also enjoyed some of these stories and spent plenty of money and emotional investment on them and I would feel pretty depressed and sick of Marvel if they went back and completely invalidated them.

I don't understand this obsession with coming up with the messiest, most absurd series of retcons to do what you could do much easier by just fixing the character's mind and moving on. There's a lot you can do with Ben being restored to his old self and having to come to terms with everything that's happened.

As for the Janine thing, I think that even if she was in on it, she was clearly sleeping with him in Beyond, which seems pretty messed up if she was sleeping with a delusional serial killer in an attempt to manipulate him. And I definitely think the idea that Janine could use the "shake up" of having been sexually assaulted by a maniac with Ben's face pretty appalling, too. It's all just way too confusing and problematic.

[boots]

I don't know, hence the "I guess". Good catch with the title. Now I'm hopeful

the current mini was going to be my last comic purchase after #5 but i'll happily give last hunt a go, especially if it's by JMD. i'm unsure of the lead times in terms of sales and commissioning but hopefully this also means numbers were strong enough on the ben reilly:spider-man to warrant a follow up.

as for current ben reilly, i don't have much interest in this iteration of the character. no shade on anyone who does

[Vworp Vworp]

It's just so much easier to fix Ben than have to do another confusing revision where one clone replaced another, especially since Ben was missing memories that whole time. There's no point to it when there's an easier solution.

Nah. This Ben's been an unrecognisable mess since CC. He's never felt like the real Ben, there's been zero good storytelling and on the extremely rare occasions that he was written with perhaps a passing resemblance to the real Ben, they only happened so the respective story could trash him yet again. I mean, come on. Fix him? They already "fixed" this Ben once and that lasted for all of about five minutes before we got the unutterable shash that is Chasm.

The bottom like is that for as long as CC Ben is around, he's always going to be vulnerable to this "Oh, but his mind is so fragile because reasons" lazy writing. So even if he does get better, it'll only be a matter of time before we get yet another villainous relapse. So no. Retcon him. Retcon the whole sorry mess. At best, that means we might get the real Ben back some day. At worst, at least Ben's legacy remains untouched by people that should have never been allowed near the character in the first place.

[Matt Rat]

But again, it just makes everything way more convoluted and messy. You also have to make it so a cosmic being didn't recognize that Ben wasn't Ben

And? Cosmic beings aren't known to always be the brightest bulbs either, plus it'd make them look flawed and capable of making errors.

I don't understand this obsession with coming up with the messiest, most absurd series of retcons.

And yet you defend "cloned 27 times with a corrupted soul, totally the same Ben"

I don't get your fixation with wanting to keep the Ben we have when he's damaged goods and fits Spidercide's character and situations so much better.

[Vworp Vworp]

I don't get your fixation with wanting to keep the Ben we have when he's damaged goods and fits Spidercide's character and situations so much better.

Exactly. There's a whole lot of ludicrous reasoning required to explain why Ben's been an on-and-off homicidal maniac since CC, all of which has veered from implausible to the outright laughable.

And certainly none of said explanations were as colossally plausible as simply saying "Hey, so it turns out this character who has had absolutely nothing in common with Ben Reilly for the last six years... isn't actually Ben Reilly"

[The Black Death]

And? Cosmic beings aren't known to always be the brightest bulbs either, plus it'd make them look flawed and capable of making errors.



And yet you defend "cloned 27 times with a corrupted soul, totally the same Ben"

I don't get your fixation with wanting to keep the Ben we have when he's damaged goods and fits Spidercide's character and situations so much better.

I knew that most here had been affected by Clone Conspiracy and Beyond, but I didn't know that a large portion of here had been affected enough to consider it a collective trauma to grasp at false hope so as not to face the hard truth, which is a bit ironic thinking about it that way. To a certain extent I can come to understand all that denial for the current Ben Reilly because I also went through that facet with time I got over it, but you Mattie are taking that facet of denial to another level by accepting any nonsense and baseless theory to not accept that the Ben Reilly of Clone Conspiracy and Beyond is the same as the Ben of the 90's, a broken and erratic Ben because of all the events the character suffered but it is the same Ben at the end of the day. This also goes for TinkerSpider, Vworp and anyone who thinks that Spidercide is Ben is just one more nonsense theory of the bunch that has no solid foundation, because like it or not accept it the current Ben is the same as the Ben Reilly of the 90's, also if you both want a solution to Ben's current condition as ''The Chasm'' simply Marvel has to give Ben his memories back or redeem the character by making Ben relearn the famous Uncle Ben line without giving him back his memories, those are infinitely simpler and more credible solutions than the theories that Spidercide is Ben, Beyond's Ben is a robot or his evil twin possessed Ben when he revived. Or if only you are interested in knowing what happened to the character of Spidercide in the current continuity probably Spidercide is still in a coma or dead in oblivion as the character of Kaine because Marvel does not seem to care about those characters, anyway the only truth is that the current Ben is the same as the one in the Lost Years and the same one who became Scarlet Spider for the first time, in the end the truth always hurts either way.

[boots]

I knew that most here had been affected by Clone Conspiracy and Beyond, but I didn't know that a large portion of here had been affected enough to consider it a collective trauma to grasp at false hope so as not to face the hard truth, which is a bit ironic thinking about it that way. To a certain extent I can come to understand all that denial for the current Ben Reilly because I also went through that facet with time I got over it, but you Mattie are taking that facet of denial to another level by accepting any nonsense and baseless theory to not accept that the Ben Reilly of Clone Conspiracy and Beyond is the same as the Ben of the 90's, a broken and erratic Ben because of all the events the character suffered but it is the same Ben at the end of the day. This also goes for TinkerSpider, Vworp and anyone who thinks that Spidercide is Ben is just one more nonsense theory of the bunch that has no solid foundation, because like it or not accept it the current Ben is the same as the Ben Reilly of the 90's, also if you both want a solution to Ben's current condition as ''The Chasm'' simply Marvel has to give Ben his memories back or redeem the character by making Ben relearn the famous Uncle Ben line without giving him back his memories, those are infinitely simpler and more credible solutions than the theories that Spidercide is Ben, Beyond's Ben is a robot or his evil twin possessed Ben when he revived. Or if only you are interested in knowing what happened to the character of Spidercide in the current continuity probably Spidercide is still in a coma or dead in oblivion as the character of Kaine because Marvel does not seem to care about those characters, anyway the only truth is that the current Ben is the same as the one in the Lost Years and the same one who became Scarlet Spider for the first time, in the end the truth always hurts either way.

i don't really have a dog in the race

but i would say that the character of chasm already breaks the internal character logic. one of ben's cornerstones was that no matter how terrible things got, including having his "life" taken away from him, he never broke: that enduring parker spirit.

but since CC we've had ben repeatedly break. he's not even a kintsugi piece; he's held together by chewing gum. and every time he breaks, he breaks bad.

beyond might have been an interesting exploration of who ben is or could be if he lost his parker memories...but the answer was a daft and reductive chasm. literally and figuratively.

redeeming the character from these "developments" won't be a story of triumph, it'll be as contrived as the writing that got us into it. so if people are suggesting other contrived (but established) superhero "outs"...it's much of a muchness in my eyes.

[The Black Death]

i don't really have a dog in the race

but i would say that the character of chasm already breaks the internal character logic. one of ben's cornerstones was that no matter how terrible things got, including having his "life" taken away from him, he never broke: that enduring parker spirit.

but since CC we've had ben repeatedly break. he's not even a kintsugi piece; he's held together by chewing gum. and every time he breaks, he breaks bad.

beyond might have been an interesting exploration of who ben is or could be if he lost his parker memories...but the answer was a daft and reductive chasm. literally and figuratively.

redeeming the character from these "developments" won't be a story of triumph, it'll be as contrived as the writing that got us into it. so if people are suggesting other contrived (but established) superhero "outs"...it's much of a muchness in my eyes.

As I said before, it's understandable all this denial and negativity about all the **** Marvel has done to Ben, especially turning the character into "The Chasm", I don't like what Marvel did in Beyond either but it's all more Marvel's incopetence of not knowing how to handle their own characters. Ben's character is not the only one whose internal logic was broken, there are so many other characters that suffer the same or worse than Ben, characters like Peter Parker himself, the overexploited Gwen Stacy, Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius and May Parker are characters that lost their internal logic a long time ago, it's the same for other characters, so that's not a big problem either. Already with respect to these supposed other "fixes" that people suggest basically have no logic whichever way you look at it, there is no solid foundation to consider these theories as good alternatives to fix Ben's character, that's without considering how tedious and disastrous it would be to execute some of these theories, also it still makes more sense the option of giving back Ben's memories than the theory that says that Spidercide is Chasm, besides it's not like this hasn't happened before, so it's very obvious to me how all this is going to end.

[Refrax5]

And? Cosmic beings aren't known to always be the brightest bulbs either, plus it'd make them look flawed and capable of making errors.



And yet you defend "cloned 27 times with a corrupted soul, totally the same Ben"

I don't get your fixation with wanting to keep the Ben we have when he's damaged goods and fits Spidercide's character and situations so much better.

Except it's possibly the dumbest kind of retcon and the kind of cheap storytelling that makes everyone hate the Clone Saga anyway. You can get the same result just as easily without retconning over half the characters history, undoing his second era as Spider-Man and turning Janine into a rape victim for a second time. You're just married to this terrible idea.

[Refrax5]

Exactly. There's a whole lot of ludicrous reasoning required to explain why Ben's been an on-and-off homicidal maniac since CC, all of which has veered from implausible to the outright laughable.

And certainly none of said explanations were as colossally plausible as simply saying "Hey, so it turns out this character who has had absolutely nothing in common with Ben Reilly for the last six years... isn't actually Ben Reilly"

And this would just make it worse. It's adding bad writing on top of bad writing when you could easily just fix his mind and get the exact same result without all the problematic aspects of a retcon of a retcon. Again, you guys would basically have Janine being tricked into sleeping with a homicidal maniac wearing Ben's face, which is really horrific considering her history.

I know Vworp has been on the warpath about this for years and has never exactly been open minded about any of it, but this is just more bad writing and confusing retcons and it adds a lot of needlessly problematic elements to the story. It's a stupi, offensive idea and even if they did it, they would probably write the "real Ben" in a way you hated anyway.

[Huntsman Spider]

Except it's possibly the dumbest kind of retcon and the kind of cheap storytelling that makes everyone hate the Clone Saga anyway. You can get the same result just as easily without retconning over half the characters history, undoing his second era as Spider-Man and turning Janine into a rape victim for a second time. You're just married to this terrible idea.

Funny enough, wasn't the 90s Clone Saga trying to establish Ben as "the real Peter Parker" and the Peter we'd been reading for the last twenty years since the original Clone Saga as the clone all along what made people, even on the professional creative side of things, turn against that whole event in the first place?

[boots]

As I said before, it's understandable all this denial and negativity about all the **** Marvel has done to Ben, especially turning the character into "The Chasm", I don't like what Marvel did in Beyond either but it's all more Marvel's incopetence of not knowing how to handle their own characters. Ben's character is not the only one whose internal logic was broken, there are so many other characters that suffer the same or worse than Ben, characters like Peter Parker himself, the overexploited Gwen Stacy, Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius and May Parker are characters that lost their internal logic a long time ago, it's the same for other characters, so that's not a big problem either. Already with respect to these supposed other "fixes" that people suggest basically have no logic whichever way you look at it, there is no solid foundation to consider these theories as good alternatives to fix Ben's character, that's without considering how tedious and disastrous it would be to execute some of these theories, also it still makes more sense the option of giving back Ben's memories than the theory that says that Spidercide is Chasm, besides it's not like this hasn't happened before, so it's very obvious to me how all this is going to end.

i take your point on other characters having internal logic broken (i don't know the specifics, but happy to take your word), and i assume marvel has just employed the usual superhero shenanigans to get out of them or around them.

the fixes other people have suggested from what i can see are no more ridiculous or illogical than the run-of-the-mill stuff that marvel and dc have done for decades (you could argue those are the things that gave us ben in the first place). to be clear; they are ridiculous just not moreso than any other solution. there's no "integrity" to preserve here; that horse bolted years ago.

if they write ben to somehow come back from chasm? fine. if they reveal chasm was never ben? fine. it's all a dumpster fire.

[Sr. Bungle]

i
the fixes other people have suggested from what i can see are no more ridiculous or illogical than the run-of-the-mill stuff that marvel and dc have done for decades (you could argue those are the things that gave us ben in the first place). to be clear; they are ridiculous just not moreso than any other solution. there's no "integrity" to preserve here; that horse bolted years ago.

if they write ben to somehow come back from chasm? fine. if they reveal chasm was never ben? fine. it's all a dumpster fire.

Co-signing all the bolded parts. There's no perfect fix at this point. But as comic readers we're used to them. Parallax was a parasite? Yeah ok, take the bandage off and move on