CLONE ALONE: Can AMAZON spin unpopular Spider-man saga?

There’s seems to be a lot of potential Spider-man news recently.

Aside from the recent film, Brand New Day‘s record-breaking box-office, there’s been talk of an ‘Encore’ like re-release and now comes news that Amazon is discussing a live-action tv series. While this might provisionally look like more good news, it also appears that the series could be spun around one of the most unpopular Spider-man stories to ever see print.

Back in the mid1990s a major upheaval took place in the  turbulent comic books. Peter Parker came across a person who looked just like him and the infamous ‘Clone Saga‘ revealed that the stranger – who went by the name Ben Reilly – was actually a clone (his name taken from Uncle Ben and the maiden name of Aunt May). The appearance was linked to another story in the mid-1970s in which a professor named Miles Warren sought vengeance on Spider-man after the death of Gwen Stacy. Warren (assuming the alter-ego of the Jackal) created clones of both Spider-man and Gwen Stacy and discovered that it was Peter Parker under the mask. The clone fought the ‘real’ Spider-man before joining up with him to bring down Miles Warren but the clone was apparently killed in the confrontation.

Decades later, between October 1994 and December 1996, Marvel ran an ongoing story in the Spider-man titles that revealed that the clone had actually survived and left to live his own life… assuming the Ben Reilly alias and intending to never cross paths with Peter again. But things change and it was revealed that Miles Warren had also cloned himself and returned for his revenge (with another unstable Spider-man clone named Kaine). For a long time, the threads of the story intertwined and finally unraveled to reveal that… (drum-roll)… it was our ‘Peter’ who was the clone and ‘Ben’ was actually the character we’d followed in the original comics before 1973. Marvel had seen the potential of undoing years of continuity and Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson, yet also keeping the marriage intact. It was just a case of switcheroo and the status-quo would return to a single Peter and a whole new day. So Peter and Mary-Jane retired to live a suburban life together with Ben taking over the mantle.

But.

Readers were not happy with the decision and slowly policy at Marvel changed and it was decided to make an already complex story even more contrived. It was then revealed that… (another drum-roll)… whoops, Peter WAS the original and it was Ben who was the clone. Ben would assume the role of the Scarlet Spider and over the years would seem to die, reappear, be a hero, be a villain or somewhere in between. Don’t even get me started on Kaine.

The Clone Saga has largely been seen as a bad idea or, at the very least, a wobbly idea that was incredibly badly executed through changing priorities and editorial edicts.

And amid the current Spider-frenzy, it appears that Amazon wants to make a tv version, complete with a Ben Reilly and a Kaine. It raises a LOT of questions. Why pick one of the most reviled storylines to consider? Would their origin be similar to the comics? How would it handle casting (it’s highly unlikely to involve Tom Holland). If this was a multiverse alt-timeline, how would that fit into Marvel’s plans beyond the next Avengers movies?

At this point, the person at the helm would be Kelvin Yu, creator of Disney+’s American Born Chinese and it comes after SONY was looking to find a way to get back into the MCU-adjacent Spider-man business after the failure of spin-offs like Madame Web and Kraven (and the end of the Venom saga). The name Ben Reilly was used for the main character in the recently cancelled  Spider-Noir from Amazon (the name decision being a way to sidestep some rights issues). The series won four Emmys and would seem, on the surface, to be a far less complex proposition for ‘newbies’ to understand than restarting or reinventing the whole clone business…