Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider Series from Peter David and Mark Bagley

[Aioros22]

If we assume that either the I or the clone are essentially the same person, why does he have to change his name? As long as he's not trying to replace me, why does he have to make himself a different person? Why can't he just continue to be "me" (so to speak), but do it on his own without taking over my life?

That`s where the whole identity crisis theory comes in. Someone having the same first and last name is one thing, that can happen aplenty. Being the same person with the same memories, a duplicate, is another. That one person, being also you, would likely naturally feel equally entitled to live that same life. Maybe it`s just drama for dramas sake but this being a medium that explores the same..

So, they are the same up until a certain point when you both go different ways, living different lifes and having diverging experiences (as in, not a duplicate of one another), despite looking the same but since the world is big, that doesn`t bat an eye to more than 90% of the population. In that moment I believe you would essentially become two different people (with still its similarities, of course). I believe that because in my view experiences shapes a person further from what is born like. In that sense this Ben is different than the 90`s Ben, because he experienced things the didn`t before thus shaping him the way he seems to be now, rejecting both his former life and the Jackal identity he born for a while.

Basically, if you like it it`s Ben if you don`t it`s just another version. I have no problem viewing them as the same because the end equation is still a clone and still the same memeries and there`s nothing indicating that had 90`s Ben been trapped, tortured and abused further by Warren for years that the same wouldn`t have happen. In my book it`s not a plot point that was made ever impossible before, they just decided to go this route. Another office might have not, who knows.

[Pav]

Thanks, WebLurker!

Keeping discussions friendly and fruitful is what it's all about!

You make a fair point that Ben had the experience of waking up in Jackal's lab to immediately differentiate him from Peter. The in-story explanation to potentially wipe that away is Jackal's use of hypnosis on his creations. But your point has validity, I think.

As far as a clone not needing a new identity, I think The Trial of Peter Parker showed readers a little about why having another You out there is problematic: it's bad enough having someone with the same fingerprints, let alone someone using your name.

I love discussing this stuff. Such interesting philosophical questions!

-Pav, who wonders what he'd be like if he'd never read about Ben Reilly as a kid...

[WebLurker]

Thanks, WebLurker!

Keeping discussions friendly and fruitful is what it's all about!

Right.

You make a fair point that Ben had the experience of waking up in Jackal's lab to immediately differentiate him from Peter. The in-story explanation to potentially wipe that away is Jackal's use of hypnosis on his creations. But your point has validity, I think.

Thanks.

Under the hypnosis theory, how much memory would have to be erased for it to work, do you think?

As far as a clone not needing a new identity, I think The Trial of Peter Parker showed readers a little about why having another You out there is problematic: it's bad enough having someone with the same fingerprints, let alone someone using your name.

Didn't read the story, but I could imagine that there are a host of problems. Although, wouldn't most of those problems still be there regardless of what name or identity the clone took?[/QUOTE]

[rckstr1253]

I hope Ben gets even with ock and decides to wear the superior Spider-Man costume Spock was sporting towards the end of the serious.

[Huntsman Spider]

I hope Ben gets even with ock and decides to wear the superior Spider-Man costume Spock was sporting towards the end of the serious.

I actually had that idea for Ben Reilly's resurrection, that he would wear the second Superior Spider-Man costume (which does somewhat resemble Ben's Spider-Man costume) as a way of taunting Peter for not being "good enough" as Spider-Man to truly uphold the values and ideals Uncle Ben taught them about power and responsibility. He would be waging a Jason Todd-as-Red Hood-style campaign to "control crime" so that no one who doesn't "deserve" to be hurt gets hurt by it, ruthlessly eliminating anyone who either won't cooperate or whom he finds too morally repugnant to be allowed to live. His ultimate target(s) would be the worst monsters in Peter's rogues gallery that Peter didn't have the "courage" to kill in the first place before they took more innocent lives, chief among them Norman Osborn, which would bring the Spider-Men into a confrontation. Ben would force Peter into a proverbial sadistic choice to prove which of them really deserved to go on calling himself Spider-Man --- either kill Osborn himself, let Ben do it instead, or kill Ben to save Osborn --- and if Peter tried to fake his way out of killing either of them, the hidden traps Ben had planted would ensure someone's death, whether it be Peter's, Osborn's, or even Ben's.