"He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock
"I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker
"My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy
"He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock
"I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker
"My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy
I like to think, more a feeble hope really, that is on purpose, that he kind do not know how to be a villain and try to make up a persona based on the few tidbits of memories he still has.
<on side note coll avatar pic Mercwmouth12, guyver fans are so rare these times....>
You're forgetting that even in that series, Ben still didn't really have much of a conscience despite seeking redemption. His soul was healing very slowly and he was still acting pretty sociopathic most of the time. He had that scarring on his face because he still was somewhat corrupt. Death literally tells him he's evil when his scars come back. He made a deal with Mephisto to betray the Midnight Sons. He backed out on it at the last second, but the entire series keeps telling you that his soul is still corrupted because Death said it would take a long time to heal.
He didn't go back to normal until the end of Spider-Geddon and we've barely seen him after that until he showed up in Beyond. You're ignoring what the actual comics said just to be mad and argue these pedantic details.
No, my version would be more anti-villain than anti-hero - Anti-Villian " a character with heroic goals, personality traits, and/or virtues who is ultimately the villain. Their desired ends are mostly good, but their means of getting there range from evil to undesirable. Alternatively, their goals may be selfish or have long-term consequences they don't care about, but they're good people who might even team up with the hero if their goals don't conflict." It would be made clear in the story Ben is actually a villain who doesn't know or care he is a villain and should not be admired despite his "noble" goals thus he would not be an anti-hero.
Last edited by Celgress; 12-28-2022 at 11:35 AM.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
And in spite of that, wanna know what the difference was between that and this? He was at least trying to be a hero because, in spite of that. Yes, he made a number of mistakes due to his moral compass being messed up by the corruption of his soul which caused him to lash out in an anti-heroic way but none of them were in ways that were actively malicious to who was innocent. Even with Mephisto, he was tricked into thinking that he could instantly fix his problem and was at a desperate point in which he couldn’t even trust himself. And he’s far from the only member of the Spider family who has made a deal with him at that.
And while he didn’t show up much after Spider-Geddon, he did show up acting in a way that matched with his status at the end of Spider-Geddon. It’s only Wells who then decided to backtrack on that status and offer zero explanation during a story that was about him simply for the endgame of forcing Chasm. Look, you’re free to just eat up and accept this kind of bullshit like this is the ‘everything is fine’ meme, but people have the right to be upset about them forcing this shit when the story had brought him past it. Doesn’t mean that anyone is ignoring shit. You need to get off your high horse.
As I often remind my students, please keep in mind that your perceptions of reality are only that: to paraphrase Hamlet, any particular comic book isn't good or bad until someone thinks it is. And because taste is subjective, and because there are innumerable aspects that make a comic stronger or weaker in the eyes of readers, and because we may value those various aspects to different degrees than other readers, IT WOULD BEHOOVE ALL OF US to be respectful in our discussions and willing to accept that our own perceptions are not objective reality.
I've always thought that, when done right, Ben Reilly could work well as an anti-villain -- that his experiences and his identity as a clone might skew the "standard Peter Parker values" slightly into something more... I dunno... dangerous? Nietzsche said, "Terribleness is part of greatness." There's something to that worth exploring within the frames of "power and responsibility," I think.
-Pav, who knows not everyone goes for deep philosophic stuff in their comics though...
Last edited by Pav; 12-28-2022 at 02:48 PM.
You were Spider-Man then. You and Peter had agreed on it. But he came back right when you started feeling comfortable.
You know what it means when he comes back.
"You're not the better one, Peter. You're just older."
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Well if you put it that way it makes some sense all that, at least it makes more sense with what Wells is doing with Ben's motivations, although if it's any consolation your idea doesn't sound so far fetched that it will come true at some point in time, just with some differences, because it seems not many noticed that there is a pattern when Ben first became a villain, after Ben will stop being the New Jackal for a while Ben was an antihero, so the moment Ben stops being a villain for the second time could become an antihero again and combining it with your story it would be interesting to see that, I already see coming also a certain person who has a trauma with Ben being an antihero .
Ben as the most philosophically or existentially inclined of the Spider-Men makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.
So . . . kind of like when he was the Jackal and thinking "reanimating" everyone who ever died on Peter's watch would enable him to make a world free of death and suffering, and then deciding to kill Peter and take his place when Peter wasn't on board and used the memory of Uncle Ben to call him out on what he was doing?
Kind of like how according to Sam Raimi, symbiote-possessed Peter in Spider-Man 3 was still an utter dork who had no idea how to "act cool"?
Cosigned on Guyver, though. I could see a crossover with Spider-Man and/or Venom, given the Guyver Unit being basically a symbiotic alien armor and all.
Also, a great fix-fic for the end/aftermath of Spider-Man Beyond, by someone as fed up with The Chasm Formerly Known as Ben Reilly as we are here.
The spider is always on the hunt.