spoilers:end of spoilers
Well, Ben's infamous run as the Jackal had to come up sooner or later so I'm not surprised that this happened. It was natural progression from the themes of suspicion and hidden evils of the run. In a way, Reilly's being given a taste of his own medicine after playing corporate supervillain.
That being said, like others, I hope this doesn't turn Ben evil again.
Never liked Marcus so I got a kick of Janine putting a knife to that doormat's neck.
While I don't like that spoilers:end of spoilers
Kafka is stupid enough to trust Beyond (But then again, she workds in a Ravencroft run by Norman...), and that this is another issue that reads like a half issue, finally something cool is happening, may the next issues keep up
The plot has indeed thickened . . . or sickened, as it were. Poor Ben, though given the callbacks to Clone Conspiracy . . . it may well be a case of bad karma catching up with him. Poor Ashley Kafka('s clone), though as others have said here, what did she seriously expect from "Maxine Danger"? Good on Janine not taking any more s***, though I'm really hoping this doesn't result in her getting killed and further psychologically unmooring Ben. Speaking of psychological unmooring . . . that ending there does not look good at all.
The spider is always on the hunt.
All the memory wiping stuff sounds really similar to how Marvel attempted to get out from underneath Iron Man's Civil War baggage with a factory reset and to me it's kinda lazy if it sticks. I was no fan of the CC and PAD SS stuff but it's part of his history now so they might as well use it and have Ben own it and acknowledge it from time to time.
The problem is it's hard to own and acknowledge attempting a genocide. I understand it's common for characters in comics to become fascists or attempt to kill everyone, but how do you just own that? "Hey weren't you trying to kill everyone and replace them with clones? And then after that didn't you fail at redeeming yourself and stab your closest equivalent to a brother with a prosthetic arm after you tried to murder a woman?"
"yeah but I got cloned one more time fighting spider-vampires and I am better"
There are consequences to haphazardly telling bad stories to the characters that result in them trying to kill literally everyone with paper thin motivations. We are experiencing some of them.
Both previous stories about Ben that sucked were told poorly. And used stupid and crappy excuses to attempt to justify the bad characterization of the Ben. I'm okay with another bad story just wiping it away because frankly it sucked and does not much to gain from referencing those stories because they were bad and because the characterization was so poor. If the end result is we don't need to reference those stories anymore and the character can move forward.
Last edited by MisterC; 01-20-2022 at 09:06 AM.
I mean, comics usually just ignore those things, but they may remind the characters forever of what they've done, but that isn't as common lol.
Spidey himself joined Jackal into trying to kill everything on the planet back in Maximum Clonage, and unlike CC Ben, he has no excuses, 'cause CC Ben wasn't in his right mind with the deaths and resurrections, Spidey was just feeling sad because he thought he was a clone.
He ultimately didn't do anything, but it's still disgusting he even considered to join Jackal, much less actually do so, and that bullshit is ignored by everyone, even people who don't like Spidey funnily enough, which's surprising, this and that time he kinda impersonated Pym on MJ are some serious ammo to talk shit about him lol.
Full agree, that's why I don't mind then handwaving it. I'd rather be forgotten than have to remember every now and again that you know that story happened.
Comics are just so dumb that I only want to read ones that I'm just going to be able to pick up smile at and move on from.