Will the Real Peter Parker Please Stand Up // The Many Clone Sagas of Spider-Man, Part I
Clones. For some reason, Spider-Man has become associated with them since the 1970s. With the recent news that Miles Morales will be receiving his own Clone Saga by April 2021 for reasons only known to God and Akira Yoshida, we thought it would be a good time to look back on the various times Spider-Man encountered clones. Or at least, at the few times Marvel has called something “the Clone Saga.” This is going to get complicated remarkably fast, but we will do our best to explain why Spider-Man and Clones have gone together like deep frying and butter.
It sounds horrible, it is horrible, and yet you just can’t look away. And sometimes, it tastes great.
In 2018, Marvel put out a collection of comics that covered about 500 pages of Spider-Man’s life, calling it The Original Clone Saga. This would go from issue 139 of The Amazing Spider-Man to issue 150, as well as a smattering of issues from Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man from 1978… and Marvel would also toss in some issues of Spectacular Spider-Man from the 80s that brought the clone stuff back for a few issues once more. However, amusingly, this isn’t really where the “first” Clone Saga started.
Instead, it’s argueable that this 70s Clone Saga began back in June of 1973, with issue 121 of The Amazing Spider-Man. To make a convoluted story short, Peter Parker is in college now, and he’s madly in love with his classmate Gwen Stacy. Fans of the movies will remember her from the third Raimi-directed Spider-Man movie, as well as the two from Andrew Garfield’s time with the webs. Gwen was one of the last characters of the cast made by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in their run on Spider-Man with Amazing Spider-Man issue 3, and she was a fan-favorite at the time for Peter’s romantic drama.
Mary Jane Watson was, of course, around for those familiar with the movies. However, she was the typical “party girl” who seemed to actively avoid anything more than jokes and flirting. She also, at some point, dated one of Peter’s closest friends: Harry Osborn. Again, those familiar with the pre-MCU movies will know this name, and that Harry’s dad Norman was the Green Goblin. At this time in the comics, Norman had suffered partial amnesia and forgotten that he was the Green Goblin… which is good for Peter, as he had also figured out Peter’s secret identity.
It was actually kind of easy, shockingly enough.
With the start of Amazing 121, Harry has overdosed on LSD and is in a bad way. To make matters worse, Norman’s company Ozcorp was in massive trouble, with stocks crashing that would, in some way, cause his company to go under. But this was the 70s, when the stock market was vaguely operating the way it was supposed to. Either way, the stress on Norman’s mind caused it to snap back to crazy once more.
Now knowing not just that Peter was his mortal foe, but also his greatest weakness, Norman Osborn kidnapped Gwen Stacy and set up the biggest shock reveal in comics up through 1973. Taking her to the George Washington Bridge, Osborn tormented Peter with the knowledge that Gwen was in danger entirely because she was Spidey’s girl. However, Peter would pool all his strength and knock Osborn down, and try to rescue the unconscious Gwen.
It sadly would not work, as Norman would strike at Peter, knocking Gwen off the bridge. Pete would try to save her life, but would ultimately be the cause of her death.
That little sound effect has been a point of contention. Marvel themselves have gone back and forth on if it was the sudden deceleration that killed her, or if she was dead already. The 1987 edition of The Official Marvel Handbook, for example, would claim it was the fall itself that did her in. The letters page of Amazing Spider-Man issue 125 would have editor Roy Thomas clear the air, directly pointing at the webbing-caused whiplash was fatal. Either way, Gwen was dead, and the Green Goblin would soon follow.
This may seem insane for a Comics-Code Approved book, but the loophole here is that Norman caused his own death. Weird, huh?
While Peter would slowly begin to recover from the shock and mourn the loss of Gwen Stacy, however, wheels were slowly turning behind the scenes. Gerry Conway, the writer of Gwen’s fatal issues, wasn’t quite content with letting that now sleeping dog lie. Marvel was now receiving quite a few death threats over Gwen’s demise, according to an interview with artist John Romita Sr., so it’s good to see that comic fans have always been level-headed and calm bastions of moral courage. Any thoughts of bringing Gwen back immediately were shot down by the board of editors at Marvel. Even when Stan Lee himself protested, despite giving his blessing for them to kill her off, it was argued that bringing her back would cheapen the impact of the story.
Gwen’s death was actually a bit of a debate as well, as Marvel editorial had originally asked for Aunt May to die. Feeling like it would cut off the last pieces of Peter’s childhood, both Conway and Romita Sr. felt that the death should happen to either Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy. As MJ was a character who brought a lot of light and comedy to the book, Gwen became the one who fell to the axe.
It seems like these talks would give Conway some ideas, though. As it turns out, Peter wasn’t the only one in love with Gwen Stacy.
As readers would find out much much later, Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy’s college biology professor Miles Warren was in love with Gwen in some form or another. Perhaps fatherly, perhaps that creepy romance the book is hinting at. He was devastated at her death, and would stop at nothing to bring Gwen back.
Amazing Spider-Man issue 129 is our next stop on this wild ride, featuring two major first appearances by Marvel characters: The Punisher and the Jackal. The Punisher is one of those weird created-by-committee characters that Gerry Conway is credited as starting. Inspired by the popular Executioner novels by Don Pendelton, this character would also be a man who had been to Vietnam and was striking back against the criminals who had killed his family. Conway had the idea of the skull iconography, but only as an emblem on his breast. John Romita Sr. would expand it to the full chest, while Ross Andru would be the first artist to draw the Punisher properly. Apparently, Stan Lee would provide the name, remembering the name of one of Galactus’ random goons as a name to recycle.
The Jackal, meanwhile, is a twisted green creature who is eternally hunched or squatting. He has a vendetta against Spidey for reasons no one really understands yet, but hires the Punisher to kill the Wall-Crawler. As it’s only been eight issues since Gwen’s death, Peter isn’t having the best time. J. Jonah Jameson had hired Luke Cage to take Spider-Man out, only for Cage to later turn the job down. The police are convinced Spidey had something to do with the death of Gwen as well, but can never quite catch him. Needless to say, his sanity might have started to wear thin.
The Punisher and Spidey would cross paths several times before Peter could put clues together, realizing that Frank Castle is a killer… but not of those who are innocent. They would part ways and the Jackal would vow revenge and sulk to the background of the comics for the next several months.
During this time, life would roll on in the comic. Aunt May would almost marry Doctor Octopus in the pages of Amazing issue 131, who may have only been marrying May for the nuclear power plant she had somehow inherited. Yes, you read that correctly. Later authors have made sure we all knew that Otto does care for May in his own way, even if he is a complete ass. Also, Harry Osborn would become the second Green Goblin, in an attempt to take revenge against Spider-Man for his dad’s death. After his brief stint in Amazing 136 and 137, he would be put into an asylum to hopefully get better one day. During these issues, Mary Jane Watson would also be getting closer to Peter, trying to ease his pain from Gwen’s loss.
Issue 139 actually opens up The Original Clone Saga collection, introducing the Marvel Universe at large to the villainous Grizzly! Much like Spider-Man, the Grizzly was a wrestler who was targeted by J Jonah Jameson as some kind of menace to society. This would result in him being barred from wrestling and losing his livelihood. However, he would toss on a bear themed exoskeleton and try to kill Jonah. At the end of his first appearance, however, the Jackal would show up once again!
...and then promptly flee once the Grizzly was taken out by Spider-Man. Peter would find himself going to France alongside Daily Bugle editor Robbie Robertson for various reasons, and a new wrinkle would be added to Peter’s romantic life.
After fighting terrorists in France, though, Conway and the creative crew at Marvel would be putting a most bizarre plan into motion. As mentioned before, Marvel had received a lot of hate mail and even death threats over Gwen’s death. So why not bring her back while making it the most demented thing possible?
I’ll be honest, this is an amazing panel. Credit to not just Gerry Conway’s fantastic dialogue, but also to Ross Andru’s wonderful pencils showing how utterly bonkers Peter’s mental state is. This is issue 145 of The Amazing Spider-Man, and it’s been literally two years (comics wise) since Gwen’s death. Peter Parker’s perilous mental state aside, how could this be?
Well, the police are convinced that this is the real Gwen Stacy, despite the fact that she’s been autopsied and buried for months. Peter has no idea what to do, Mary Jane is feeling awkward since she’s not got feelings for Peter, and Gwen is just bewildered because she doesn’t even remember dying! Conway, you are evil, and it’s hard not to love the drama and character interaction this makes.
The Jackal shows up again in Amazing 146, and makes the bizarre claim that the day Gwen died was the day the Jackal was born. This will make sense, but readers had no idea what was coming. In these pages, Peter was also starting to accept that Gwen was back somehow. He wasn’t going to question it, since this is the same Peter Parker who likely saw when Galactus came to town in Fantastic Four issue 50, and also dealt with growing six arms during the events of Amazing Spider-Man issue 101. Science in the Marvel Universe is insane, and Peter was used to it on some level. Until he got a lab report…
Yes! Some crazy person had cloned Gwen Stacy. Somehow, this all preserved her memories through hand-wavy superscience that skipped a few days before her death until she showed up on the streets of New York. Peter’s in shock, plainly enough, and wonders if there’s more. If someone could clone a Gwen, could there be an army out there? Is this the original Gwen? Is this the same Gwen he loved? Gerry Conway has some great takes on what could well be a philosophical debate, with Peter not having any genuine idea how to treat this new Gwen.
Oh, and because we’ve not mentioned it yet, the Jackal has been recruiting some of Spider-Man’s more mercenary foes to kill him. Perhaps the most cinematic reveal in Conway’s run comes while fighting international assassin Tarantula on their city bus… when a hypnotized Gwen joins them.
The Jackal is a literal troll before the internet age, and it is sometimes glorious to see.
This mini-gauntlet of foes and the stress of Gwen returning from the grave has driven Peter somewhat loopy, and seeing the Jackal hold some weird sway over her has a weird effect on Peter. The man is out of it, even when MJ proclaims she’s going to fight for someone she feels is “her man.”
Peter does snap out of it just in time for MJ to already be gone, but it’s a nice moment from what had been a somewhat shallow character until then. Fans of the comics know that this was laying some solid groundwork for what would become one of the deeper characters in Marvel Comics who isn’t actually a hero. Peter would finally have a massive showdown with the Tarantula, only for him to be taken by surprise by the Jackal once more. This time, however, the Jackal is done toying around. He’s going to take Spider-Man apart, and he’s starting off by revealing his identity!
At the time, this was a massive shocker. Warren had still shown up in the series several times after Gwen’s death, and he didn’t seem off his rocker at the time. But Gwen’s death had driven him insane. After one of his colleagues revealed he had cloned a frog, Warren tricked him into cloning two people, one of them being Gwen Stacy. When the colleague tried to stop the experiment, Miles Warren snapped entirely.
Honestly, I have nothing but respect for Warren doing all of this on a local college teacher’s salary. Either pay scales were just better in 1975, or Warren was incredibly good at finding deals.
Knocking Peter out after yet another brawl, Miles Warren taunts that Peter will have to now face his darkest self. Well, what does he mean by this?
Welcome to the single pair of panels that will become a nightmare of comics continuity snarls during the 1990s. Both of these men are genetically Peter Parker, but one presumably has a similar gap in his memory to Clone Gwen versus her original self. Both are convinced that the other is the clone, and that only the real Spider-Man can save a hostage tied to a bomb. To make things especially dramatic, the victim is Ned Leeds, the husband of their old friend Betty Brant. And so, the two Spider-Men fight, not knowing which is the real one, or if either one is really real.
Both Spider-Men come to realize it doesn’t matter who’s real or not, and that both have the option to survive. However, that doesn’t save Ned. Gwen breaks free of her hypnosis and rips the Jackal’s mask in half, which somehow snaps Warren out of his madness. He cuts the ropes keeping Ned at the bomb, and gives his life to save the man.
The explosion also kills one of the two Spider-Men, but the clone of Gwen is still alive. She asks the hardest question of all: How does Peter know if his surviving self is the real and original Peter Parker?
Peter has no answers.
An epilogue for issue 149 has the clone of Gwen leaving New York City to find herself. After all, it’s been some time since she died, and even Peter has moved on. The second epilogue has Mary Jane waiting for Peter at his apartment, and Peter is overjoyed to see her. Of course, this is after Peter disposes of the extra Spider-Man’s body by dumping it into an industrial smokestack that no one ever bothered to check.
Gerry Conway’s run on Amazing Spider-Man would actually end with issue 150, which also wraps up what has now become known as The Original Clone Saga. It seems like all of Spidey’s most dangerous foes have chosen to gang up on Peter, to finally kill off Spider-Man once and for all. As he struggles against the newest incarnation of the Spider Slayer, a robot foe controlled by Professor Alistair Smythe, Peter’s thoughts turn to Mary Jane. Something clicks in his head, finally.
I do question Peter assuming that the Clone would not feel love or have memories of love, but he does realize that Mary Jane is the one his heart thinks of in his darkest hour. Those feelings stem from a time after Gwen and the Spider-Clone were made, and that makes him the original!
...or at least the Spider-Man we had followed since that point...Despite the fact that Peter Parker had gone to professor Curt Conners for a DNA test to see if he had been cloned, Peter now feels confident enough that he doesn’t need the results. He rips them up and scatters them to the skies of New York City. Surely, this will never bite Peter Parker in the rear end and cause him to question his sanity or identity ever again!
While this was the end of Gerry Conway’s run on Amazing Spider-Man, the whole run is an amazing thing that fans really should pick up someday. His run encompasses Amazing 111 through 150, and is a lovely mix of one-shot issues and multi-part stories that all feel alive and organic. Even the one-shot issues have threads of subplot and devious plans that carry between each issue that genuinely keep up an air of mystery over the Jackal’s identity. While Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (or Romita Sr) are iconic runs, this ranks as one of the best runs for Spider-Man ever.
Marvel would wash their hands of clones for some time after 1975, though there was a rare exception. A new villain would show up in the pages of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man issues 25 through 31, a living corpse known as Carrion. As it turns out, this would be a desiccated clone of Miles Warren, using chemical dust to melt nearly anything like a living plague. However, it would die at the end of the story, though others would take up the mantle of Carrion later.
The closest many fans got to any more acknowledgement of the original Spider-Clone would show up in the pages of What-If issue 30 from 1981: What-If Spider-Man’s Clone had Lived?
Written by Bill Flanagan, with the trio of Rich Buckler, Jim Mooney, and Pablo Marcos on art, this book did not stem from the brain of the original creative crew. This issue actually even references not just Amazing Spider-Man 148/149, but also Marvel Tales issues 125 and 126, the reprint comic for Spider-Man from that era. Likely, they had received letters from younger fans who wanted to know why the Clone had to die. Well, what could happen?
A weird little romp where the Clone is the one who woke up first, and both Spider-Men survived. Placing his duplicate in a cryogenic tube, the Clone is shocked to see all of these major changes that happened over the time after his memories stop. While it’s mostly lighthearted, Flanagan and his art crew still came up with some great dramatic moments.
Both Peter Parkers would team up to take out a plot of the Kingpin, and the comic just seems to even admit how stupid the idea of having two Peters Parker actually is, with this final page:
After that, Marvel editorial really shied away from clones and the stories that had spawned from them. The clone of Gwen faded into the background, and life moved on. Peter Parker was now in a relationship with Mary Jane, and she revealed she always knew he was Spider-Man in a wonderful retcon that actually fleshes out Mary Jane ridiculously well. However, she would be unable to deal with his heroics, and left him.
Peter would then fall into a relationship with the Black Cat, travel to a distant world at the behest of the Beyonder to fight like action figures smacking into one another, get an alien costume, teach the same Beyonder how to poop, lose the alien costume, break up with Black Cat after it turned out she couldn’t deal with him being Peter Parker, and then Mary Jane would come back into Spider-Man’s life as a romantic interest! Oh, and the black alien costume Peter ditched came back as Venom in 1987, possessing rival Eddie Brock at the time and becoming the most popular Spider-Man villain almost instantly.
In retrospect, it’s really hard to disagree with them.
But Gwen’s clone would suddenly show up again in 1988. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marvel decided to make company-spanning events out of the annual issues that were published for most books. Many of these stories were either largue forgettable, or highly experimental and memorable. There really doesn’t seem to have been an inbetween at all with these. In this case, 1988 brought us The Evolutionary War, where this guy named the High Evolutionary would try to wipe out all types of human-based life that was not “pure human.” This involves mutants, mutates, morlocks, and any hero with radiation-based powers.
So, almost the entire roster of Marvel heroes and villains. Good to know.
The Spectacular Spider-Man annual for 1988 would have a weird diversion during this, however, where it turns out that clones were also on the High Evolutionary’s execution list. He kidnaps Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy’s clone to be sure, but it turns out that Gwen’s clone actually is not a clone at all.
Instead, Miles Warren somehow made a virus that overlaid Gwen’s genetic structure and memories over a woman named Joyce Delaney. Further, there was no Spider-Clone, because Warren’s former colleague Anthony Serba was overwritten with Peter’s DNA to make the original Spider-Clone. Oh, and Warren was also one of the High Evolutionary’s assistants at some point, which is how he knew how to do this.
Amusingly, this story was also written by Gerry Conway. I’ve not found any interviews asking why this massive retcon was performed, so it’s even money on if Conway did it on a whim, or if editorial told him to find some way to remove clones entirely from the Marvel Universe… aside from the clones used in X-Men. And the robot clones Avengers. And the clones that would show up in The Fantastic Four a few months down the road. Just… no more Spider-Clones, I suppose.
This would become deeply, almost tragically ironic in 1994. And we will find out why, when we finally touch upon the opening acts of The Clone Saga.
