Blood Brothers // The Clone Sagas of Spider-Man, Part VI
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’s 1996, and The Clone Saga is finally in its last year of life. Not that the fans knew it at the time, but Marvel was realizing that readers were getting tired of the mystery of the Clone, and letters were arriving in droves begging for Peter to be restored as the real Spidey. Fans still loved Ben, however, and there was a desire for Marvel to have their single Spider-Man named Peter Parker and make the fans happy too. Memos started to fly around the office, begging for some kind of answer.
June 29th, 1995: Todd Dezago proposes “The Death of the Clone.” It’s all set up so that Peter will die, but then Ben melts as the dramatic climax happens, and Peter is restored. However, Mary Jane is also revealed to be a clone as well, and the real MJ has been in clone storage for the past 5 years. No marriage, no baby, and Peter might even stay away from MJ because he felt guilty for her losing 5 years of her life!
July 1995, from the trio of Bob Budiansky, Eric Fein, and Mark Bernardo. It was simple: Time Loop. They’re both the same person, because Peter Parker would be hurled back in time 5 years to become Ben, and then Ben would have his memories as Peter restored. This story would use Judas Traveller as a literal fallen angel who was sentenced by God to find the nature of good and evil as he walked the Earth. Scrier, Traveller’s assistant Scrier would be revealed as Mephisto, and intent on keeping him from continuing his research. MJ would have a miscarriage, and Mephisto and/or Traveller would send Peter back in time to become Ben. Another option was using Doctor Doom’s time travel platform, as “Mephisto is not a Spider-Man villain.”
That would become horribly ironic by 2007.
Undated, signed anonymously. Both Ben and Peter are caught in a horrible explosion fighting crime and taking Daily Bugle pictures respectively. Only one survives, but the surviving Parker has partial amnesia and didn’t know if he was Peter or Ben! Since there’s little way to prove who he is, Peter just continues as himself. The memo cites Cable and Wolverine as characters with amnesia and mysterious pasts who were ultra-popular at the time, and how it could work with Spidey if they didn’t focus on the amnesia beyond a story line and references. MJ would also be missing, which leads to a “Search for Mary Jane” story line, and she’s given birth… but the baby’s gone! So now there’s a Baby Quest. This would all keep people guessing and reading and keeping the same Clone Saga energy while dropping the Clones. There were no answers planned, either. Why?
"(The readers) may claim to want all the answers... they may demand the answers... we may even want to give the answers to the readers, but... once you do, you are bound to piss someone off... (The readers) don't really want to know! Take away the mystery and it's over."
As the ridiculous options began to fly, the office turned into a bunch of different options. This one was by Dan Jurgens, the writer on Sensational Spider-Man. Doctor Octopus, who isn’t actually dead, is the one behind the clone kerfuffle. This would make it more personal, as Doc was Peter’s first real Super-Villain, and Doc had just saved Peter’s life as well. It would take some doing, but it could work.
Tom deFalco wanted to make it even simpler. Both Ben and Peter are critically injured during a fight happening while MJ is miscarrying. Judas Traveller uses his powers to blend Peter and Ben into a single person, making the clone mystery irrelevant. This was not something Jurgens liked, since he strongly felt that Traveller was not a Spider-Man character and this was losing sight of what made Spidey Spidey.
Dan was open to other options than Doctor Octopus, but had the idea that Ben would sacrifice himself for Peter while Pete was Spidey and Ben was in civilian clothes. MJ would leave Peter, as she just can't deal with this crap anymore. Dan Jurgens was in a similar state, saying that if his idea was rejected, he was just done with helping fix this. From this would come the skeleton of Blood Brothers, planned to finish off the Clone Saga entirely and restore someone named Peter Parker as the real deal. Only, it didn’t happen.
Blood Brothers started in Sensational Spider-Man issue 4, and the issue is fairy common for the time. Ben is out on a date with Jessica when he has to duck out as Spidey. Jessica being a photographer who despises Spidey, follows him into the alley and actually snaps a picture of Ben changing.
As we mentioned before, Ben is miserable at keeping his identity a secret. Ben won’t tell Peter that Jessica sussed him out easily, and the two of them bury the Amazingly Dead Spider-Skeleton at a cemetery on the outskirts of New York. Peter thinks that Seward, who’s been missing lately, is still full of crap, and he’s going to hunt him down and get some answers.
While Peter starts to dig into things, Ben’s rent check bounces. Some shady folks in official clothes who look like they’re from NYPD Blue start asking questions at the Daily Grind. As it turns out, the IRS has flagged Ben’s Social Security Number as being wrong somehow. Seward made Ben’s SSN, so something weird is happening.
I work at a bank, and this is 100% accurate. We’re more lenient these days, but this is serious business
Unfortunately, Peter’s determination to find Seward has resulted in some unwanted attention. Dragging Peter and MJ into an abandoned alley, a group of cybernetic thugs named Cell-12 are determined to beat the ever-loving crap out of the powerless Peter Parker!
Also, one of them is hilariously named Nard.
Ben’s apartment is also emptied of everything, with red paint splashed across the floor declaring that the people responsible know who he is. Oh, and the Daily Grind? Yeah, that’s on fire now.
Ben confronts Jessica, jumping to the reasonable conclusion that she gave out his secret identity, She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and Ben goes off in a huff. Ben tracks down one of Seward Trainer’s shipped scientific equipment boxes, only to stumble into an ambush by Cell-12. Their leader is a familiar face, upgraded for the 90s.
The Hobgoblin! This is the second man to wear the mask, Jason Macendale. At this time, it was believed the original Hobgoblin was probably Ned Leeds, the husband of former Peter Parker romantic fling Betty Brant. He was killed wearing the costume, so it tracks. Later comics would establish exactly what happened, and the original Hobgoblin is still around to this day. Macendale started as a similarly-themed villain, Jack O’Lantern, and would upgrade to the Hobgoblin in the late-80s. While his demonically-themed doppelganger Demogoblin had been popular for a time in the early 90s, Macendale’s version of the character just wasn’t as fun as the original Hobgoblin had been in the 80s.
And, as we’ve seen already, this time had a lot of villains get updated for the “now” 90s. Amusingly, the original design had been provided by John Romita Jr, and now he was getting to revisit the design again.
Ben gets his butt kicked by this new Hobgoblin. He can fly without a glider, he has sharp spines shooting out of his arms like Wolverine, and he can erupt with energy blasts like a character from Dragonball. Seward shows up after Ben loses, and asks him to stop looking for him, that they’re done as friends. Ben does the only thing he can think of, and goes to Peter and MJ for help, and finally comes clean about how badly he seems to have screwed up.
Meanwhile, a new villain has started to show up. Known only as Gaunt, something is keeping him locked up in this life support costume, and he seems to be the one behind a lot of the antics now. At the time, he was the person behind the whole Clone Saga. This would not be the case.
Ben tries to make up with Jessica, but shoves his spandex-clad foot in his mouth, basically breaking what was a promising relationship in half. Ben and Peter go to confront Seward together, and the resulting fight with Hobgoblin and Cell-12 nearly got the both of them killed. However, they now know he’s working for Gaunt, and are determined to get to the bottom of this.
Finally, Peter and Ben infiltrate the headquarters of Gaunt: Osborn Industries. The resulting fight is massive, involves the Molten Man, and nearly gets everyone involved killed. Seward appears to die, and Gaunt now has a new boss to answer to. Who? The shadows hide them.
Blood Brothers was a weird but fun story that did it’s best to both push forward the overall Peter/Ben plot, while also throwing Ben’s life into chaos. The new Hobgoblin design looked awesome at the time, but it was also 1996 and we thought things like that were cool. The mystery deepens, while also refusing to give an actual explanation as to what was going on.
To add in some background information, Gaunt was literally supposed to be Harry Osborn. It turns out he didn’t die after his alleged death in Spectacular Spider-Man 200, but instead had withered into becoming a walking corpse. The suit was to keep him alive, and he was blackmailing Seward into restoring him to normal.
Then Bob Harras was made the overall Editor in Chief of Marvel as the deck chairs on the Titanic that was Marvel Editorial was re-shuffled once more. Harras had been the EiC of the X-Men group, and didn’t want one of their babies to be upset with Spider-Man having the Clone Saga end so soon. Summer 1996 was going to be their first big event since last year’s big event, and Onslaught was going to be the word on everybody’s lips. Not clones.
Harris also veto’d the idea of Harry as a villain midway into the story. Which now made Gaunt into a mystery man with no answer, who had a boss who had no identity aside from Editor Bob Budiansky refusing to allow it to be Norman Osborn.Oh well.
And then Budiansky was fired when Marvel tried to cut positions to keep from hemorrhaging money. Now there was almost no one working on the Clone Saga who’d started the story. Editor Ralph Macchio was made editor of the Spider-Books and told to just finish the stupid thing. Ralph was told by Harras that Ben was certainly going to die, and that was the one thing that was certain about the ending of the Clone Saga. Since that was the case, Ralph decided to let the writers have as much fun as humanly possible - and to make everyone care about Ben for when he eventually died.
Back to the comics, Spider-Man 69 works as an epilogue to Blood Brothers, with the Hobgoblin killing off Cell-12 out of petty vindictiveness. His cool new stature as a villain is further undermined, however, by Ben making a complete fool out of him and getting him to confess to single-handedly ruining Ben’s life and gunning for Peter. He doesn’t seem to make the connection between Ben and Spidey, but it really is hilarious.
Sensational Spider-Man 6 resolves the Jessica story advanced during Blood Brothers in an interesting way. Jessica walks the streets of NYC, trying to figure out if the monstrous Spider-Man is who she hates, or if she loves Ben and who he’s been with her. It takes a fire in a nearby skyscraper with Ben diving in to save people who are trapped for her to realize that Ben and Spider-Man are truly heroic and that she was wrong.
With that, she leaves town. Jessica does stop to wish Aunt May and Uncle Ben well in a callback to Sensational Spider-Man issue 0, which was also Dan Jurgen’s final issue on Sensational. The six month delay demanded of the Clone Saga was the last straw for the man, who had just wanted to write a married Peter Parker this whole time.
Taken from the Life of Reilly blog.
Amazing Spider-Man 413 had Ben fighting the menace of Mysterio once again, this time recreating creating a Toy-Story-esque environment to torment Spidey. Amusingly, the art for the Godzilla dinosaur toy that Ben destroys was so much like Godzilla that Toho filed a cease and desist for Marvel. Allegedly, there was an alteration of the art for reprints, but the Complete Ben Reilly Epic volume 4 doesn’t actually have any altered art, nor does any digital copy.
During these issues, though, something weird was happening to Peter.
Muscle spasms were starting to hit Peter hard, and even massive headaches were becoming a thing. Each writer was told that Peter would be returning, and the depowering of The Final Adventure would need to be undone. Because Ben’s planned death was a department secret, it meant writers could continue to have fun, and everyone made sure to work in these troubles. After all, fans could be convinced that this was some kind of clone degeneration, and then shocked when both have their powers.
...or they could just kill Peter! Whatever was “wrong” with Peter was now driving his body to destroy itself, and it looked to readers like his body was going to hit that same degeneration that all other clones had.
Amazing Spider-Man 414 would also introduce one of the genuinely weirder flexes of lettering, the assassin Delilah. She would be introduced as a regular villain of a sorts, a femme fatale who was going to stick around outside the last days of the clonage as an assistant to the crime boss The Rose. However, to make her stand out, the creative crew would make her stand out beyond any others with some of the strangest font choices known to man.
Similar to people stressing words in bold, I like to imagine she’s pulling funny voices with every single font change.
During a small mob war, Peter Parker would die. His heart flat lined, and just plain shut down.
Or did it? Yeah, Peter Parker was alive, it was just his body somehow pushing away the suppression of his powers in a drastic way. However, his powers weren’t entirely back, cutting in and out from time to time. Ben and Peter would find out the hard way with Peter trying to help Ben fight a new and improved Lizard, only for his powers to cut out mid-fight. Meanwhile, Spider-Man Unlimited 13 would bring in a new and updated Scorpion, adding gold trim and the acid-spewing feature his tail had in the animated series to his arsenal. Also, a fast-acting neurotoxin if he happened to sting you.
In all, these months were quite special without actually doing anything noteworthy. There wasn’t an overall ongoing narrative, and Ben was allowed to just be himself. The books didn’t give a huge chance for Ben’s Daily Grind cast to expand and grow, but their presence was still welcome. The Daily Bugle staff was still around, thanks to Peter Parker becoming a staff photographer for the Bugle. It was great, and at least it felt like the writers were having some kind of fun with Ben as the Spider-Man once again.
Also, Bob Harras had decided who the mastermind behind the whole Clone Saga should be. We’ll cover who that is next time, but no one at the office liked it.
And then the Onslaught event hit, and Spider-Man was brought into the world of the X-Men.
As it was happening in the X-Men books, some horrible monster called Onslaught was taking over the Marvel Universe piece by piece. As of recent issues in their saga, Onslaught had somehow taken over Sentinels made by the Government, and were using them to suppress the civilians in New York. I mean, it was potentially happening elsewhere, but it was only shown in New York. Everyone would get involved as Sentinels tried to take out the news sources of the city.
This would also end the run of the Green Goblin, as the Sentinel would somehow destroy the super technology that made his costume.
Spider-Man 72 is easily the highlight of the era as well, with John Romita Jr using some of his best art to make Ben into an underdog on the level Spider-Man hadn’t been on before. Like multiple Sentinels, leaving Ben to throw cars at the robot menaces.
Peter Parker would be providing most of the narration for this issue, a nice hint that a changeover would be happening soon.
Ben would take on dozens of Sentinels, although he would wind up taking more than his fair share of damage in return. Ben almost died during this time, but would be saved by a temporarily-powered Peter who would rip up a trio of Sentinels himself. The brothers also shared some bonding time in a similar smokestack to the one Peter dropped Ben into all those years ago, and the issue promised that Peter and Ben would show up for the big shebang at the end.
But they didn’t. The Life of Reilly just breezes over the whole Onslaught tie-in and doesn’t address it beyond acknowledging that it existed. However, the fact that the entire Clone Saga resolution had been put on hold for six months meant that any appearance would have been disallowed from participating in the final battle. At the same time as Onslaught, Marvel was using the event as a way to purge some of their lower-selling flagship books from the main universe and start over with another universe. Called Heroes Reborn, it would be run by a bunch of guys from Image Comics, including Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld.
Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and Captain America were books slated for the shuffling off to the Image-based sub-universe. The excuse they cooked up at the time was that Onslaught was reduced to sentient psychic energy after being pounded on by the Hulk. If any mutants were to be sent into the void, Onslaught would simply take over their bodies and resurrect, so the heroes of Earth who weren’t mutants were forced to throw their bodies into the energy mass for reasons that feel like the author confused the heroes with lemmings.
Of course, this didn’t stop the Scarlet Witch from diving in and Onslaught being unable to use her body. There was some hand-waive about magic. Still, while Marvel had built a backdoor to bring everyone back should the Heroes Reborn project fail, it was a perfect chance to write out Ben by having him join the other heroes in that “death.” The fact that everyone in editorial was convinced that they could only restore Peter back with an actual story in the pages of Spider-Man was likely why Peter and Ben just don’t even show up.
With that, the world was a darker place. New York was a bit more heavy hit with criminals, and Spider-Man was one of the few major heroes who remained (alongside Daredevil). There were a couple of issues that worked with this, having Ben mourn and remember those who had died while carrying on. During this time, Marvel itself was also going through massive layoffs, and the feeling of carrying on while missing those who have left hits home especially hard once you know that.
With the last month before the Clone Saga was slated to end, Amazing Spider-Man 417 would talk about Judas Traveler and Scrier, revealing the truth about them. As it turns out, Judas Traveller was a simple mutant with the ability to alter the perception of those around them, and a mental breakdown when his powers manifested had caused them to distort his sanity. As for Scrier, it turns out they were a massive group of Scriers. A cult from Europe who based themselves on an ancient figure of legend, they would use high technology and multiple people to create the illusion of massive powers and being everywhere.
And, aside from Spider-Man Team-Up, ends the massive lead-up to the final story. However, there’s something amusing to relate within that series. Spider-Man Team-Up exists mostly outside of The Clone Saga, but each issue that happened during that time period is kept within The Clone Saga and Ben Reilly Epic volumes. Issue 5 is what concerns us, released during the final months of The Clone Saga.
Split into two stories, our concern is the backup story. While the Gambit story is nice, and features more of Ben’s lost years, it’s actually the Howard the Duck tale that we’re going to look at. It doesn’t just feature Howard the Duck, it also has Image Comics phenomenon Savage Dragon!
This story was written by Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber. He and Marvel had parted on less than ideal terms, with debates over creator’s rights being an important piece of their dispute. During the 80s, Gerber worked with Jack Kirby in making another duck-based character: Destroyer Duck.
Published by Eclipse Comics, the profits off the comic would actually go to the lawsuit that Gerber had with Marvel. However, it had been about a decade and the hatchet seemed to have been buried. Editor Tom Brevoort actually came to Gerber to see if he would be willing to work on Howard again for a team-up. Gerber actually had a naughty idea as well, and approached Brevoort with an idea: What about a Team-Up that was also an unofficial cross-company crossover? If they said yes, he’d do it.
Working with Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, the two came up with a way for the “real” Howard the Duck to be “saved” from Marvel whileMarvel would be none the wiser. Using a classic Gerber character, The Elf With a Gun, both Savage Dragon and Spider-Man were drawn to the same warehouse at the same time, with Destroyer and Howard running into one another as well. If you read the comics side-by-side, they almost start to line up perfectly… until the end.
If you read Spider-Man Team-Up, the issue ends with Howard and Beverly flying out and just not knowing what the heck happened. If you picked up the actual Savage Dragon / Destroyer Duck one-shot, though? The Howard in the finale of the Spider-Man Team-Up was a clone, along with his Beverly. The real Howard and Beverly were now in witness protection, given new clothes and dye jobs.
And just to make it even less subtle…
A complete rip on the original cover from the 1970s. Tom Brevort was incensed, worried he’d lose his job for somehow losing a Marvel creation. While he was eventually let go, it wasn’t for Gerber’s clever plan. Erik Larsen would actually write up an essay about how he was thrilled about this idea, and wanted to help a pal out. So they got Howard, and now Howard was at Image under the new name of Leonard. They even wanted to see if people were willing to read about Leonard, according to Steve’s own behind the scenes look included in the book.
Of course, Steve would later return to Marvel under their MAX imprint to make another Howard the Duck book. He would continue to skewer Marvel’s treatment of his boy, but that would be the last time he touched Howard in any way, shape, or form. There were no Leonard the Duck comics, but I’m sure he was still happy to have saved his boy from Marvel somehow.
But that’s all for the comics leading up to the grand finale of The Clone Saga. Be sure to come back next time for Revelations.
