Would the Clone Saga have worked if Marvel treated it as a legacy?

[boots]

The 1990s Spider-Man Clone Saga is infamous among Spider-fans for many reasons. One of those reasons were to have an unmarried Spider-Man. Marvel attempted to create interest in Ben Reilly by claiming he was the original Peter Parker. And, as the story goes, that is what caused one of the biggest problems with the arc. But what if Marvel had treated The Clone Saga as a passing the torch story? And Ben was the inheritor of the Spider-Man legacy? (We have to recall that at the time, DC had successfully pushed Wally West as The Flash and Kyle Rayner was clearly making waves as Green Lantern.)

i think it's hard to know where to lay the blame, since all the bad elements were so intertwined; the sheer exhaustion from the multi-part storylines, the extra characters and subplots that went nowhere, throwing in the new warriors (wtf), creative team changes mid way, novice writers who couldn't handle a story of this magnitude, meddling from marketing, the constant stalling on establishing the new spider-man status quo (those scarlet spider fill in titles)...it was enough to drive jmd away, who was looking forward to being able to establish ben as the "true" spidey.

the revelation definitely had an impact but can we isolate how much of the ill will was directly due to the "truth" about ben? idk. long-term readers were split, new readers were possibly in favour. i feel like a lot of the push behind it was also the acquisition of future readers who wouldn't care.

i mean, we could also ask "would readers have been more receptive to the revelation that ben was the 'true' peter parker if it was handled competently"?

glenn greenberg's opinion was that it could have worked if executed correctly. his feeling was the opposite of what you suggest; that there should have been a bigger commitment to ben "taking back" the parker life, in that the character should have slotted in to peter's life seamlessly (no daily grind, no blonde hair etc) and it should have been done straight away.

[boots]

It could've worked as a way to launch a new title/ character, but not as a way to replace Peter Parker.

well, if we take defalco's words at face value, that was always his original secret plan.

apparently thunderstrike was selling more than thor and avengers combined at the time, but was cancelled in the belief that its share of the market would then naturally be absorbed by thor. which is just kinda weird (though we see that logic bandied about on this message board at times too). if that is true, then no matter how well a scarlet spider or lost years title was received by fans, marketing would have killed the title in the belief it was leeching sales from spider-man.

so ben's status as a legacy character or clone or original would have had little to do with his longevity.

[Mister Mets]

well, if we take defalco's words at face value, that was always his original secret plan.

apparently thunderstrike was selling more than thor and avengers combined at the time, but was cancelled in the belief that its share of the market would then naturally be absorbed by thor. which is just kinda weird (though we see that logic bandied about on this message board at times too). if that is true, then no matter how well a scarlet spider or lost years title was received by fans, marketing would have killed the title in the belief it was leeching sales from spider-man.

so ben's status as a legacy character or clone or original would have had little to do with his longevity.

Discussions of counterfactuals are usually under the idea that the marketing department would have also made the right decisions, though the reverse could be a useful reminder.

[boots]

Discussions of counterfactuals are usually under the idea that the marketing department would have also made the right decisions, though the reverse could be a useful reminder.

i'm not sure i get what you're aiming at, mets. i was imagining the hypothetical spin off title would be under the marvel regime as it was at that point: killing off 2099, war machine and thunder strike despite their sales and quality simply because they weren't on brand and were seen as leeching.

if your suggestion was; would a ben reilly spin off have worked if marvel had been a different company at the time? well yeah, i guess. or is the question that would it have worked on a fan level despite the state of the company?

let me know if i'm reading you wrong.

[RD!]

Would the Clone Saga have worked?
It did work. It’s got a cult following amongst comics fans, it’s popularity is only going up in the years since it’s release. It’s also reprinted in several different formats and threads from it have driven the Spider-Man comics a lot over the past decade. So, in that sense it couldn’t have worked any better.

If you mean, could they have ever convinced people to accept Ben over Peter? No, the originals always come back.

Could it have worked to get rid of the marriage? No. People who remember the marriage will always remember, and the more convulted the attempt to remove it the more it will be rejected.

The only way the clone saga could have been done better would be if, like BND, Amazing became a weekly book so that you didn’t need to read so many titles

[comicscollector]

It would had still failed to make Ben Reilly the next Spider-Man,because Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
Any other character that tries to replace Peter Parker as Spider-Man will fail in the long run,because the stories of Spider-Man have been a ongoing narrative about Peter Parker since he was a teenager.

[WeirdSpider]

No it wouldn't work cause it's not new reader friendly.

A new reader would be confused as to why the real Peter is going by the name "Ben Reilly", while the clone is going by the "Peter Parker" name.

I agree with what Glenn Greenberg said in the "Life Of Reilly" column that the only way Ben taken over as the main character would work is if he was able to reclaim the Peter Parker name, but that would open up a whole can of worms that would need to be explain away in universe.

[Alan2099]

killing off 2099, war machine and thunder strike despite their sales and quality simply because they weren't on brand and were seen as leeching.

They never intended to kill the 2099 brand. From what I've heard, Marvel fired the editor the the line and most of the good talent in the line didn't like that, so they quit.

Marvel tried to fill their shoes and revamp it, but it never caught back on.

As for Thunderstrike, I'm not sure if they intended to kill that one or not. It seemed to me like it had reached good stopping point for it's story.

[boots]

They never intended to kill the 2099 brand. From what I've heard, Marvel fired the editor the the line and most of the good talent in the line didn't like that, so they quit.

Marvel tried to fill their shoes and revamp it, but it never caught back on.

As for Thunderstrike, I'm not sure if they intended to kill that one or not. It seemed to me like it had reached good stopping point for it's story.

yeah, as i was saying, i paraphrased defalco from the life of reilly series:


"As for his belief that a SCARLET SPIDER book would have eventually failed, he is entitled to his opinion. I certainly believe that the powers-that-were at Marvel would have eventually cancelled the book even if it was selling...just like they cancelled THUNDERSTRIKE and WAR MACHINE even though both books were profitable. Since I had access to the actual sales during that period, I can attest to the fact that at the time it was canceled THUNDERSTRIKE was actually selling more copies than both THOR and AVENGERS combined. Why were profitable titles like THUNDERSTRIKE, WAR MACHINE and all the 2099 books cancelled? The answer I was given was that the guy in charge of marketing had decided that these additional titles were hurting the core company franchises. He believed that the sales on THOR would go up as soon as THUNDERSTRIKE was cancelled, and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN would increase with SPIDER-MAN 2099 gone. Nice theory...but I still think it was nonsense."

glenn later responded to this, and did not disagree with the specifics that defalco put forward. whether we want to take tom at his word... i dunno any reason to suspect him, other than all memory being subjective and egocentric. bitterness?

[Mister Mets]

i'm not sure i get what you're aiming at, mets. i was imagining the hypothetical spin off title would be under the marvel regime as it was at that point: killing off 2099, war machine and thunder strike despite their sales and quality simply because they weren't on brand and were seen as leeching.

if your suggestion was; would a ben reilly spin off have worked if marvel had been a different company at the time? well yeah, i guess. or is the question that would it have worked on a fan level despite the state of the company?

let me know if i'm reading you wrong.

I think you got me right. In discussions of counterfactuals, it's a rare thing to consider the deeper problems in an industry that might've hurt a project. There is generally the expectation that something would have been done competently (IE- that a best-selling title wouldn't be cancelled under the belief it is cannibalizing sales from something more famous with less sales.)

It is useful to remember that the problems that applied post-Clone Saga could just as easily have applied in this situation, and that had those things not happened, the Clone Saga might have been significantly more successful in the first place.

[boots]

I think you got me right. In discussions of counterfactuals, it's a rare thing to consider the deeper problems in an industry that might've hurt a project. There is generally the expectation that something would have been done competently (IE- that a best-selling title wouldn't be cancelled under the belief it is cannibalizing sales from something more famous with less sales.)

It is useful to remember that the problems that applied post-Clone Saga could just as easily have applied in this situation, but it does take some of the fun out of these discussions.

if there’s a party to be killed, just point me at it