Is there a loophole to save or bring back Ben Reilly?

[Sr. Bungle]

You can definitely walk back on it and Beyond had a built in out by having his memories tampered with.

The real question is will Marvel allow it any time soon? Because they seem hellbent on having Ben as an antagonist.

That's the point, and when I read things like "Chasm secures his place in Spidey's rogues' gallery" is more and more evidence that they're trying to shove this change down out throats

[NC_Yankee]

That's the point, and when I read things like "Chasm secures his place in Spidey's rogues' gallery" is more and more evidence that they're trying to shove this change down out throats

Does anyone really think Ben will remain a villain and Norman a hero? If they do keep in mind Otto and Sandman. Marvel turned them into heroes and then back into villains. Expect the same thing all over again. One thing I do not like is the way Marvel dumps over Ben ( even more then they do with Peter).

[Huntsman Spider]

Does anyone really think Ben will remain a villain and Norman a hero? If they do keep in mind Otto and Sandman. Marvel turned them into heroes and then back into villains. Expect the same thing all over again. One thing I do not like is the way Marvel dumps over Ben ( even more then they do with Peter).

There's only so much they can do to Peter and so many ways they can f*** him over without compromising his viability as Marvel's top superhero character, and even they know that. That, sadly, is kind of why Ben exists, since being technically a "mere" clone of Peter, they feel he's a version of Peter they can experiment with and push to the breaking point in ways that they'll never be able to do with Peter without completely turning off the fanbase.

[HypnoHustler]

Does anyone really think Ben will remain a villain and Norman a hero? If they do keep in mind Otto and Sandman. Marvel turned them into heroes and then back into villains. Expect the same thing all over again. One thing I do not like is the way Marvel dumps over Ben ( even more then they do with Peter).

Norman will go back to being a villain. That’s as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

Ben is harder to say. They’ve screwed him up so much at this point, that the character is beyond repair without some major reboot.

[D.Z]

Nothing retcons can't fix.

Or he just gets his memories back two years or so later on in Earth real time.

[NC_Yankee]

Norman will go back to being a villain. That’s as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

Ben is harder to say. They’ve screwed him up so much at this point, that the character is beyond repair without some major reboot.

Ben will never be a major villain of Peter’s. Why? Leaving aside The Burglar and JJJ, and universal villians like Mephisto and Dr. Doom You can rate his enemies on Tiers. Tier 1: Norman and Otto. Tier 2: Kraven ( original), Mysterio, Kingpin, Electro, Vulture, Morbius ( because Peter despises him so much), Kingsley and Harry. Tier 3: Rhino, Sandman, Mr. Negative etc. Tier 4: Francine, Scorpion Kangaroo etc. Unless Marvel had Ben do something real bad like kill MJ or Aunt May I cannot see him as anything but a tier 4 villian

[boots]

There's only so much they can do to Peter and so many ways they can f*** him over without compromising his viability as Marvel's top superhero character, and even they know that. That, sadly, is kind of why Ben exists, since being technically a "mere" clone of Peter, they feel he's a version of Peter they can experiment with and push to the breaking point in ways that they'll never be able to do with Peter without completely turning off the fanbase.

which...i think might be more accepted if ben's heel turns were handled with the care and complexity a writer would approach a peter heel turn with. even peter's "the spider" stuff in the 90s had more set up and context than the lazy and trite bad boy ben we've had since his return

[Huntsman Spider]

which...i think might be more accepted if ben's heel turns were handled with the care and complexity a writer would approach a peter heel turn with. even peter's "the spider" stuff in the 90s had more set up and context than the lazy and trite bad boy ben we've had since his return

Fair enough, though there's no Peter heel turn in the comics that has been surpassed yet by 90s TAS Spider-Carnage (A/U Peter Parker who went insane due to a combination of losing his Aunt May on top of his Uncle Ben, losing his sense of identity due to being cloned and having it be revealed that he might have been the clone all along, and finally bonding with the Carnage symbiote and proceeded to utterly devastate his reality's New York City, presumably killing or driving out a massive percentage of the city's population, and nearly do the same to reality itself with a bomb enhanced with the Spot's portal technology so its detonation would be amplified and expanded across the Multiverse).

[JustLuke]

Fair enough, though there's no Peter heel turn in the comics that has been surpassed yet by 90s TAS Spider-Carnage (A/U Peter Parker who went insane due to a combination of losing his Aunt May on top of his Uncle Ben, losing his sense of identity due to being cloned and having it be revealed that he might have been the clone all along, and finally bonding with the Carnage symbiote and proceeded to utterly devastate his reality's New York City, presumably killing or driving out a massive percentage of the city's population, and nearly do the same to reality itself with a bomb enhanced with the Spot's portal technology so its detonation would be amplified and expanded across the Multiverse).

Spider-Carnage is great. I hope he appears in the Spider-Verse movies. Maybe Beyond the Spider-Verse.

[boots]

Fair enough, though there's no Peter heel turn in the comics that has been surpassed yet by 90s TAS Spider-Carnage (A/U Peter Parker who went insane due to a combination of losing his Aunt May on top of his Uncle Ben, losing his sense of identity due to being cloned and having it be revealed that he might have been the clone all along, and finally bonding with the Carnage symbiote and proceeded to utterly devastate his reality's New York City, presumably killing or driving out a massive percentage of the city's population, and nearly do the same to reality itself with a bomb enhanced with the Spot's portal technology so its detonation would be amplified and expanded across the Multiverse).

oh yeah, there's much better ones like that example

i was using a low bar to show how much lower we currently are

but i agree

[Refrax5]

Norman will go back to being a villain. That’s as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

Ben is harder to say. They’ve screwed him up so much at this point, that the character is beyond repair without some major reboot.

I don't think there's anything they've done to Ben that can't be easily fixed. Heroes turning into villains in ridiculous stories is nothing new and way more broken characters have bounced back. Ben had his mind damaged by external forces. If he can have his mind restored, he's back to normal. It's not that complex. And I think that, as the Spider-Verse sequel nears, they'll probably turn him back to Scarlet Spider, especially since this has been so poorly received.

[ZeroBG82]

Norman will go back to being a villain. That’s as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

Ben is harder to say. They’ve screwed him up so much at this point, that the character is beyond repair without some major reboot.

I don't think he's nearly that difficult to repair, at least at this point. Hal Jordan had gone much further down the villainy rabbit hole at the Distinguished Competition and they managed to fix him in the space of about 20 pages.

Right now, you make the Chasm goop into a symbiote like entity to take the blame for anything villainous done as Chasm. Then you restore his Parker memories. Boom, Ben is back in the game. You probably need an issue or two to work out all the baggage with the major players (Pete, MJ, Kaine) but then he should be good to go.

Will Marvel do that? No. I expect Ben will remain a villain so long as the current editorial regime is in place. And they may deliberately try to make the character irredeemable in some way to try and make sure it sticks afterwards. But, like Dan Slott before them who refused to understand Ben and what he brings to the mythos, eventually they too will go away. And maybe, just maybe, we'll get somebody in the big chairs who has a tiny bit of respect for Ben Reilly fans.

[boots]

I don't think he's nearly that difficult to repair, at least at this point. Hal Jordan had gone much further down the villainy rabbit hole at the Distinguished Competition and they managed to fix him in the space of about 20 pages.

yeah, as much as i personally thought it was a cop out, the redemption/fix seems to have worked for hal.

i would say there's some nuance and context in each situation. jordan as a character has a longer history and legacy; a well of good feeling that possibly runs deeper then ben's, who in comparison, had a shorter shelf life and less time to establish.

ben was also a controversial even if popular character. the worst i ever saw levelled at hal was that he was boring.

to me, all that means that ben's reintroduction was possibly a more fragile thing and should've been handled with extra care.

ben has existed as a mess for more years now than the two years he existed as hero. so we have this weird thing where, for me at least, the recent mess has superseded a lot of my nostalgia and good-will towards the character. he no longer makes sense to me as a character. his arc is incomprehensible.

maybe that's as much a consequence of long-form story telling and the superhero medium, that some have embraced and compartmentalise and enjoy...but this stuff would be a deal breaker for me in any other medium. i'd just stream another show the second one of the characters went off the rails like this.

they can fix and course correct, but there's a question of whether that's too little or late for old and new ben readers.

or maybe i'm too backward looking and chasm was the right move?

[HypnoHustler]

Ben will never be a major villain of Peter’s. Why? Leaving aside The Burglar and JJJ, and universal villians like Mephisto and Dr. Doom You can rate his enemies on Tiers. Tier 1: Norman and Otto. Tier 2: Kraven ( original), Mysterio, Kingpin, Electro, Vulture, Morbius ( because Peter despises him so much), Kingsley and Harry. Tier 3: Rhino, Sandman, Mr. Negative etc. Tier 4: Francine, Scorpion Kangaroo etc. Unless Marvel had Ben do something real bad like kill MJ or Aunt May I cannot see him as anything but a tier 4 villian

Disagree about Scorpion being in the same tier as Kangaroo. Scorpion messed Peter up bad in the Marvel Knights series. To me, he’s more like a tier 2. Harry should probably be tier 1 after Child Within and SPEC 200, and I’d put Morbius at about tier 3.

As for the main point about Ben, we’ll see. The problem is, from Marvel’s perspective (one I definitely don’t agree with), there’s no room for a second white Spidey in 2022 when you have Miles Morales as an alternate. Lowe basically said as much in the letters page of the last Beyond chapter. But if fandom keeps demanding he be restored maybe they’ll cave. And it’s a known fact there’s a whole bunch of people who liked the clone saga as kids now working as full-time writers and artists at Marvel (Steve Orlando just randomly brought back Judas freakin’ Traveller into the X-books).

[Somecrazyaussie]

There's only so much they can do to Peter and so many ways they can f*** him over without compromising his viability as Marvel's top superhero character, and even they know that. That, sadly, is kind of why Ben exists, since being technically a "mere" clone of Peter, they feel he's a version of Peter they can experiment with and push to the breaking point in ways that they'll never be able to do with Peter without completely turning off the fanbase.

Exactly this. In many ways, Ben is expendable, sadly.

Plus Marvel have had Ben fill a villainous role since Clone Conspiracy.