Full disclosure, a lot of the behind the scenes information for this massive story arc comes from the excellent blog The Life of Reilly where Andrew Goletz and Glenn Greenberg both summarize the infamous storyline from the mid-90s and input their memories of the inner workings at the time. I highly recommend reading it, because there’s going to be a lot of cool takes and utterly bizarre side-notes that won’t be included here.

While I was working on this article, the original webpage went down. While it can still be found on the Wayback Machine, the link I have included is the backup.

It is now, finally, 1996. The cold month of January is here, and Ben Reilly has finally taken his editorially-mandated role as the one, true Spider-Man. Months upon months of weird endless cycling, plate-spinning, and virtual reality hijinks have finally come to a close. Marvel’s even launched The Sensational Spider-Man to announce the new costume Ben’s designed, and writers are hyped to have a swinging single Spider-Man out on the town!

Since the Spider-Man books were back in print after two months of being gone, marketing had a field day. Every one of the three returning Spider-Man books released this month had a proud and loud “THE RETURN OF” slapped at the top, and Ben’s costume was proudly on display as well.

Or, you could go for the alternate covers, which had Ben’s new costume and made up his Spider-Logo when lined up properly.

Starting with Amazing Spider-Man 407, we have the Daily Bugle staff showing up! They’ve fallen into the background something harshly, and seeing even grumpy J Jonah Jameson again after several months is a relief. Everyone knows that there’s a new Spider-Man in town, but no one knows his relationship to the original. It’s actually really nice to see the “average joe” react to this new costume, with some believing that it’s actually the fourth spider-person somehow (including the black costume of the 80s) and others thinking that it’s an impostor.

To top it off, even the superhero community isn’t sure what’s up with this new Spidey. This is perfectly shown with the Human Torch demanding that Spidey meet at their usual place: the top of the Statue of Liberty.

Unfortunately, Ben comes across the Sandman and Silver Sable on his way. While he doesn’t recognize Sable, he does remember Sandman and instantly figures that Flint Marko is up to no good. Tragically for Ben, he doesn’t know that Sandman is actually a reserve Avenger at this time, and has turned over a new leaf. In fact, he’s applying for a job with Silver Sable to be a good guy who gets paid!

The fight is great, with a lot of action and Sandman being remarkably clever with his abilities. It’s honestly refreshing after nothing but clones for almost a year. It ends when Silver Sable calls an end to the fight, saying that he may be a different person, but he’s got the chops to be the real thing. Unfortunately, the Human Torch overhears this, and now vows to make sure that this “new” Spidey will answer for his crime of stealing the real Spidey’s identity. Meanwhile, Sandy just wants to go grab some brews with his new pal.

As someone who utterly adores villains turning to heroes, especially blue collar villains who actually never did anything actually evil in the first place, this is fantastic and delightful. It’s also a perfect issue to show how out of it Ben is for missing Marvel continuity from 1975 to 1994 (somehow compressed to 5 years in-comic).

Spider-Man 84 continues the return of Spider-Man with a story called The Game of Life, and opens with Ben desperately trying to save the life of a young child with CPR. He barely succeeds, and Spidey encounters a woman claiming to be the boy’s mother. Apparently, she met Peter a few years back, and the two of them are in grave danger. Meanwhile, a reporter flirts shameless with Spidey. While amusing, it still totally could have happened with Peter. Lord knows he’s no stranger to unwanted advances.

In his civilian life, Ben signs for a new apartment that has a window open to a secluded alley. Perfect for Spider-Manning. However, Poison is determined to find her now-missing son Carlos. As it turns out, another criminal kidnapped him and is demanding Poison work for her until he feels she’s done enough. This includes killing Spider-Man.

Luckily, Poison and Ben come up with a quick plan to take out the kidnapper without harming her son at all. While it’s not as good as the Amazing issue, this still feels like the staff is just glad to have a Spider-Man back.

Spectacular Spider-Man 230 features a new villain known as DK. The story is fairly solid, featuring a weird ooze monster tormenting the owner of a chemical corporation, Sanders. As it turns out, Sanders had a pair of brothers killed because they’d found out that the company was pulling shady dumping practices and killing the environment. David Kallen’s body was dumped into the chemical soup, and he was resurrected as a blob of death that can dissolve any and everything.

Ben is seriously outclassed here, but uses his brain rather than his fists. Kallen has not just personal information, but also recordings of conversations and copies of documents, enough to put Sanders away for a long time. Ben is barely able to talk him down, and even convinces him willingly to go to Ravencroft for therapy and to learn how to control his abilities. It’s a shame that DK doesn’t show up again during Ben’s run, because there’s some potential there.

It’s a further shame that he only shows up after to die at the hands of another Spider-Man villain when Peter comes back to the webs.

With the three “revived” Spider-Man comics back, we still have to deal with the fact that Web of Scarlet Spider was somehow still being published! According to information from those who worked on the books at the time, Marketing swore this would generate more sales, as fans loved the Scarlet Spider and would buy Ben’s books with Scarlet Spider on the title… even if Ben was now Spider-Man. To make things even stranger, the Scarlet Spider was still around!

Specifically, the VR Scarlet Spider that had been made to ruin Ben’s good name as the Scarlet Spider. The host that had been used to run the program has somehow become infected with nanomachines that are forcing him to transform into the Scarlet Spider, and the effect is not unlike the hosts of The Mask.

The last two issues of Web of Scarlet Spider also tie in with the New Warriors, and has their trust “betrayed” by the Scarlet Spider while Ben tries not to give away the game that he used to be the Scarlet Spider. It’s amusing in that respect, because he completely gives away the game to Firestar by calling her the same nickname that he’d had for her as the Scarlet Spider.

And in true 90s fashion, the VR Scarlet Spider turns into a massive monstrosity that has barely any human physical musculature and is eventually defeated by the power of love.

I would love to see if sales really did pick up for the remaining issues of Web of Scarlet Spider, but Marvel had moved to their own distribution company by this time. Known as Heroes World, the company barely got comics out on time and collapsed in two years. This disastrous collapse also took almost any other remaining comic distribution companies with them… that weren’t Diamond Distribution. This has the weird effect of leaving a long gap of sales tracked from late 1995 to late 1996, and also making Diamond a not-named-but-really-is-a-monopoly.

I’m sure someone in marketing justified it, though.

Volume 2 of The Complete Ben Reilly Epic includes the two-part special comic Spider-Man / Punisher: Family Plot. The comic is fairly nonsensical, including Frank Castle looking as 90s as possible with a massive ponytail, and nearly everyone looking remarkably off-model. It didn’t help that the book also had three different pencilers for the first issue, and used the fastest artist of the three for the second book.

The only real good part about the issue is of Ben trying to explain how a child’s father might have been a bad guy, but that did not make him a bad guy overall. It’s a wonderful scene with the artist trying their hardest at the time. The rest of the comic might not be worth collecting outside of completionists, but this comic still had a solid character beat for Ben.

Venom returned to the newsstands with his own comic once more, this time called Along Came a Spider. To make a long story short, this acts as a weird little sequel to Planet of the Symbiotes and continues Venom’s rough story line carried along through his mini-series of the 90s. Once again, Eddie is trying to reconnect with his ex-wife Anne, who has issues with this.

Anne also becomes the She-Venom once more, with some distinct Mask-like themes going on.

The book ends with Eddie and Venom reunited, Anne understanding Eddie more than she did before, and a theme park that might be Coney Island utterly destroyed. It’s not a bad book by any means, but only real Venom fans should dig this one up.

Starting from The Sensational Spider-Man issue 1, we have the first multi-part story of the Ben era: Media Blizzard. Set during the cold winter months of New York, Ben gets to deal with web-swinging in spandex while the newly-updated Mysterio is trying to brainwash the citizens of New York with a new television station that is catching attention around the city with bizarre programming.

The new outfit is actually pretty solid. Excess belts aside, it keeps the dramatic flair of the previous Mysterio costume and slims it down a lot. Replacing the bowl-head with a head constantly shrouded in fog or flames is a nice touch to keep with the original “hidden face” theme he had going. It is a shame to lose the purple cape, but the yellow highlight does add to the eye-catching flair.

This issue also gets Ben a romantic interest of sorts in Jessica Carradine. She’s a photographer, and loves taking pictures of Spider-Man. This will later completely bite Ben in his webbed butt, and we’ll see it happen soon.

Meanwhile, Mysterio’s plan is moving into motion. By craftily sticking illusion lenses atop Ben’s face, he makes Ben see whatever he needs… and Ben isn’t helped with his web shooters freezing over thanks to a faulty web solution mixture. While he’s able to escape the accidental death trap, he still has a weird several fights in a snow-covered Manhattan before removing those lenses.

An attempted date with Jessica gets interrupted when disaster strikes, and she ditches him for a change.

While Ben can’t technically fight Mysterio because he can’t prove anything illegal is going on, he is able to take out the transmitter that’s making everyone addicted to his television channel. Once that’s done, the TV station collapses under its lack of good content.

Marvel was also nice enough to toss in the 1995 Spider-Man Holiday Special, featuring a pair of quick stories. One of them has Ben and Torch meeting and Ben explaining what’s been going on, while the other has Ben saving someone from taking their own life on Christmas. Both are solid little stories, and really help flesh Ben out as a character.

Volume 4 of The Complete Ben Reilly Epic actually opens by going back to Peter Parker! As it turns out, he and Mary Jane have moved out to Portland to find a new life for themselves. Titled The Final Adventure, Peter has found himself a job with a company called GARID, short for Galannan Alternative Research for Immunization Development. Not only does this bring Peter back to his science roots, but they’re also the same company (after a rebranding) that developed the very science experiment that made him into Spider-Man in the first place!

There’s also an experiment taking place with human subjects, trying to use genetic recombination to cure a flesh-eating virus. Peter dips a bit of his own blood in to see if it’s the missing link, and it turns out to be a cure! So long as you consider this a cure:

Nicknamed Dry Rot, the subject has turned into a living spider-webbing creature. It kidnaps people, intending to devour them later. While Peter has claimed to be retired, he can’t help but feel this is all his fault. Putting on the costume again, his marriage to MJ strains as he tries to fix what he feels is his fault. This is a genuinely fantastic book, easily one of the best of the era. Peter no longer being the core Spider-Man allows for the plot to change him more than just the status quo, and Fabian Nicieza as the author makes the spider-marriage that so many writers had decried sing with both great character moments and drama.

Behind the scenes drama almost killed the book, however. Fabian was promised the option to write in the birth of the baby Parker, solidifying it as Peter’s technical ending. However, editor Bob Budiansky decided that any birth of a Parker baby should happen in the core books. Further, Peter Parker was to be eventually restored as the Spider-Man eventually, which had him wanting to shoot down the ending Fabian’s proposed ending: Peter’s powers being (temporarily) removed.

You see, the ending has Peter charging into the science experiment meant to cure Dry Rot and another victim of experimentation to stop the machines from being destroyed. The same experiment also smothers his Spider-Powers, for lack of a better term. Peter claims he can still “feel” them, but they’re not accessible, and he doesn’t know if he can ever bring them back again.

It could have been worse, though. Budiansky wanted Nicieza to kill off the baby with a miscarriage. Everyone else stomped their proverbial feet down and uttered that they “wouldn’t be the one to kill Spider-Man’s baby.” Thank god for small favors, you know?

While the ending doesn’t stick for more than a few months, frankly, it’s still a great little book that most Spider-Fans should read. A guest-appearance from Ben tormenting JJJ makes a great link to the main books as well.

Spider-Man Unlimited comes back with issue 11, and still has the Returns banner slapped across the top of the book. This time, it focuses on a murder mystery where the Black Cat is the key suspect. It turns out a villain with camouflage abilities has blamed the murder on her, and Ben has to find out the real crook while also fighting his hormones.

It’s an interesting twist on the Cat/Spider relationship, though. Spidey isn’t sure if she can actually be trusted, while the Cat just can’t trust Spider-Man without knowing if the man under the mask can be trusted. Again, it feels like the crew working on the Spider-Books are having some fun here. These may not be the best stories, but the comics feel fun and enjoyable again. That feel alone cannot be understated.

The Return of Kaine was another one-month-four-part monster that took up the month of February starting with Spectacular Spider-Man 231. While Ben does appear in the book to have some banter with his new supporting cast at the Daily Grind, Kaine is the larger focus of this issue. He’s somehow become entangled with a weird rich-people-gambling-on-deathmatches thing called The Game. However, the real twist comes at the end of the issue.

Remember how Peter-the-Clone dumped Ben-the-Original into a smokestack, thinking that Ben was dead? And how Ben would later escape, and go on a journey of self-discovery as he thought he was a clone? If that’s the case, who the hell is this skeleton, found in the remains of the very same smokestack?

Let’s cut to Tom deFalco, currently writing Amazing Spider-Man, and his reactions to this new plot. The excerpt comes from an interview with The Life of Reilly.

[Bob Budiansky] had only one question [about my story for Amazing Spider-Man that month], “What about the skeleton in the smokestack?”

"The WHAT?!" I asked. That's when I learned that somewhere between the time my plot was finalized and I delivered it - a period that couldn't have been longer than twenty-four hours - someone had proposed the "skeleton in the smokestack" subplot, Bob agreed to it, and decided that it should begin in the issue that preceded mine.

"Let me get this straight," I asked in what I'm sure was a less than civil tone, "The issue before mine ends with the discovery of the original clone's skeleton in a smokestack and you want to know how I intend to address this cliffhanger in my story."

”That's right," he responded. "What are you going to do?"

"Do we know if this skeleton actually is the original clone?"

“No."

"Do we know if it's fake?"

"No."

"Do we know ANYTHING about it?"

"No."

"Do we have the slightest idea WHERE WE ARE GOING WITH THIS #%^@& SUBPLOT?"

"Errrr...no."

"And you want to know HOW I'm going to address it?"

"Yes".

"ARRRRGHHHH!"

(If memory serves, the conversation went downhill from there!)

Apparently, the skeleton was the idea of Kurt Busiek, who was working on the Untold Tales of Spider-Man series at the time. That book focused on teen Peter, with adventures set back in between his earliest issues. It was just an idea to shake things up, as a suggestion. Unfortunately, Budiansky jumped on the idea and ran with it… with no idea as to where it was going to go. Apparently, they almost decided that both Ben and Peter were the same person that were split into two via genetic mockery before someone at the meeting just shouted out in frustration “what if the skeleton is just a mind-fuck?!”

Which is all it is, so keep that in mind. Still, it didn’t stop the crew from having some fun with it.

However, the real point of this story was to bring Kaine back and see if he could be used as a main character for a book. Much like Venom from barely 5 years ago, editorial wanted to use the hype behind him to have a new book. Amusingly, Kaine would eventually star in his own book… in 2011.

The other reason for the skeleton shows up in the final part of The Return of Kaine from Spider-Man 66. Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson-Parker are back!

This, sadly, came barely a month after the final pages of The Final Adventure, which really leaves fans with no chance to miss Peter in comics. It’s great to see Peter and MJ back in New York City, I admit, but this feels like editorial is trying to reset back to Peter sooner rather than later.

Peter and Ben come face to face once again in Spectacular Spider-Man 232, and it is genuinely hilarious. You see, Ben stole the Spider-skeleton, and was showing it off to Peter and MJ, only to forget that Jessica was stopping by for another date. So we get something out of Three’s Company, if Three’s Company involved clones, murdered clones, and superpowers.

Luckily, all is perfectly fine and normal with Ben and Jessica, despite the antics.

Perfectly.

Normal.

You see, Jessica has a bit of a mad-on for Spider-Man. Her mother died when she was young, and her dad was in and out of jail a few times. As it turns out, she’s actually the daughter of the man who killed Uncle Ben. And then was accidentally killed by a heart attack when he came back to the Parker residence in Amazing Spider-Man 200 to find loot from an old crime, and found Spider-Man waiting for him.

Meanwhile, Ben and Peter both go to the Avengers to have the skeleton analyzed. It’s another clone, of course.

We move on to Web of Carnage, one of the stronger early stories of the Ben Reilly era. While Cletus Cassidy is still safe in prison, the beast that is Carnage is loose on the streets of New York City. Finding it, Ben is able to fight Carnage, and takes it down… until…

Ladies and gentlemen, Spider-Carnage. Ben is screwed. The design is quite nice, though it depends on the art team. He’s either blue and red, or red and black,with the design looking striking with Ben’s costume. It’s fantastic.

And, since it’s another consciousness fighting with Ben’s himbo heart, we get some fantastic scenes of arguing narration boxes.

Finally, Ben fights this long enough to make it to Ravencroft, where Cletus Cassidy is still held captive. Cletus is dying with the Carnage symbiote, and Ben is willing to actually sacrifice his life by being hit with intense radiation to destroy Carnage and him along with it. It doesn’t work, but it’s another great piece of character work for Ben. Peter also being back gives us actual moments of interaction between them that feels delightful for the first time since this whole Clone debacle began.

As a side-note, the crew on Spider-Man went hard on their incarnation of Spider-Carnage. I especially love when Ben is struggling to keep the symbiote under control.

While some of the stories are only ok and average, it’s hard to not notice the new energy these books have. The writers and editorial are having a blast, even if drama behind the scenes is harming these books as much as it is helping them. The drama of The Clone Saga will return once more, however, in our next installment of The Clone Sagas of Spider-Man!