The Ultimate Clone Saga // The Clone Sagas of Spider-Man, Part VIII

In the previous seven articles in this weird little series, we’ve looked at how the Peter Parker who was created in the 1960s dealt with being cloned and all the weirdness that followed. This was a Peter Parker who was an adult when cloned, and a family man when his clone came back into his life in a marketing stunt that only confused and enraged comic fans.

But what if Peter was a teen when this all happened?

Ultimate Spider-Man was the brainchild of Joe Quesada, and Brian Michael Bendis by way of placating the boss, Marvel publisher Bill Jemas. As we’ve mentioned in another article, Jemas originally wanted to pull a line-wide reboot in 1999 or so, starting everyone back to scratch. Not wanting to doom the company, Quesada compromised with a line that would start a new universe - starting with a new take on Spider-Man. This fell to Brian Michael Bendis, who had gained a bit of a name for himself resurrecting Daredevil and making him an A-list hero again in the eyes of editorial. With his new universe, Bendis would make a teenage Peter Parker who took a few concepts from the first Spider-Man movie released around the same time, complete with a friendship with Mary Jane Watson that would eventually grow into a romance. It would become almost a harem anime, with romantic entanglements happening with Gwen Stacy, as well as Kitty Pryde of the X-Men while Bendis was working on that Ultimate X-Men.

As the comics and universe would expand greatly from the line’s launch in 2000 until the start of where we are concerned in 2007, the comic would blaze familiar and new ground. Bendis would become famous for “writing for the trade,” also known as decompressed storytelling. While he did often have short stories that took barely an issue or two, a lot of the longer stories would be six issues long: perfect for trade paperback collections. This resulted in a lot of talking heads and dialogue sequences, but also some greatly paced and choreographed action from series penciller Mark Bagley.

Spider-Man’s cast would also see “ultimate” versions of classic characters, like Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin becoming a Hulk-like beast, and a Venom who was based off of research from the parents of Peter Parker and Eddie Brock intended to be a cancer-curing super suit of some kind. Nick Fury would be introduced as a Samuel L Jackson character, and would have a half-mentor, half-threat relationship with Peter Parker as he tried to keep a teenager out of major trouble. Bendis would also develop the cast in fantastic ways, dedicating an entire issue to how Aunt May has been coping with losing her entire family but Peter in issue 45, appropriately called Guilt.

It’s a fascinating examination of how even the original Aunt May might feel, and genuinely gets the reader to forget that Spidey is only barely in the comic called Ultimate Spider-Man.

There would also be death. The Stacys would be introduced, and while police captain George Stacy would die rather quickly like he did in the original comics, his daughter Gwen would become an integral part of the cast for a brief time. Until she was killed. Unlike in the original comics, a mutant clone of the Venom creature blended with Peter’s DNA made by a Doctor Curt Conners killed her. It also happened to look like Peter Parker.

Bendis would call it Carnage.

Ok, technically it became a clone of Peter’s dad, but…

Peter disposed of the clone by dumping it in a working smokestack, calling back the original Clone Saga. Bendis would also find itperfect to follow-up this horribly dark story filled with murder by having Peter Parker swap brains with Wolverine and implying the old man Wolverine tried to sleep with Mary Jane while in Peter’s body. 

To be fair, MJ doesn’t seem to be against the idea of sleeping with Peter. But she didn’t know this was a freaking elderly wild man who fought in World War II in the body of a teenager.

Ugh, Bendis. We really can’t write about you without having some kind of issue, can we? Well, this will have to be a different article for another day, because time would roll on for the Ultimate Universe. But like the original Clone Saga, the concept of clones would come back and rear its ugly duplicated head. 

Cutting ahead to issue 97, Bendis was fast approaching 100 straight issues of mostly good comics. Weirdly, Bendis felt the best thing to do would be to celebrate by re-telling one of the most infamously hated story lines Spider-Man had from the last decade. Bendis had already been playing with the concept, having had a lab assistant for Doctor Conners named Ben Reilly. This Ben is not a clone of Peter, but would steal a lab sample of Peter’s blood at the end of the Carnage story line before departing for parts unknown.

Despite being labeled The Clone Saga on the cover, the issue started innocently enough. A new villain was introduced by Bendis, the Ultimate version of The Scorpion. This one had a weird exo-suit that made him look hunched and withered, while also fearsome with a bizarre back-tentacle. He also seemed remarkably unhinged, as he began screaming in his opening panels.

He was more fearsome than Peter reckoned with, shooting acid from launchers in his fists and tail. A powerful beatdown would also reveal something shocking: this Scorpion was also Peter Parker! Peter would take him to the Fantastic Four in a blind panic and ask them for help, the kind of help that wouldn’t alert superspy Nick Fury. This would also bring the FF and Spidey closer together, as Peter would reveal his desperation by showing who he was.

While Reed Richards promised to make further tests to dig into what was going on, Peter returned home only to find out that Mary Jane had run away from home. Only… not.

The last time MJ had run away, she’d gone to a warehouse to decompress and clear her mind. It was her and Peter’s special home, but she’s not there either. Someone else is.

This person is some kind of Spider-Woman, and banters just as good as Peter does. Bendis is dropping obvious hints that we’re not going to have the same Clone Saga we had back in the day, and this is the biggest piece of that. Peter tries to attack the mystery woman, but she thrashes him quickly with organic webbing shot from her fingertips and faster reflexes. She’s also looking for Mary Jane, but also mentions something about how “they didn’t deserve this” before going off into the night.

Waking up hours later, Peter goes to his old home, wondering if MJ went there. Someone is there, but it’s not MJ.

It’s Gwen.

Oh, and we find out who took MJ. Say hello to… well, Bendis calls him Kaine.

You can guess why.

Aunt May comes to her old home as well, looking for Peter and MJ, and nearly has a panic attack over seeing Gwen alive again. Peter explains everything, including that he is really Spider-Man. Aunt May realizes things make some sense, but despises that Peter has been lying to her this whole time. She demands he leaves her hou-

-and now Peter’s dead dad shows up!

I’ll give Bendis this: He is utterly trumping the original Clone Sagas in terms of both pace and confusion. He ramps it up further by establishing that Aunt May somehow knew that Peter’s dad was still alive, and also introducing a six-armed black-clad Spider-Man who tries to protect MJ from Ultimate Kaine, but is ultimately trounced by the deformed Parker. Bendis would call him Tarantula in his notes. While Richard Parker tries to explain where he’s been all this time, Nick Fury shows up at the Parker Residence armed for war.

He’s here to take Peter into custody. Gwen freaks out and transforms into Carnage before ripping out of the house. The instant stress jump gives Aunt May a heart attack, what Peter had feared most. At the urging of his father, Peter goes out to stop Fury and his men from killing what Gwen has become. It doesn’t take long for Peter to be taken out, but the Fantastic Four come in and stop Fury from doing anything drastic.

Luckily, Fury’s men are somehow able to depower Gwen back to normal, but Fury’s done playing mentor now.

Oh, and Kaine is done messing with MJ. He’s injected her with the same secret ingredient that created Peter Parker’s spider-powers and the various Goblin transformations. Only MJ turns into…

...a male wendigo of some kind. Bendis would call this Ultimate Demogoblin, but the name would not be officially used in the comic. Still, it’s interesting that this seems to be a female to male transformation, considering the Spider-Woman we just saw earlier.

Peter is in chains, and Fury isn’t being talked out of his final decision to capture Peter Parker and likely detain him forever. However, he’s saved by the quipping Spider-Woman from earlier. Hitching a ride on a semi-truck to Ozcorp, where she believes Mary Jane has been taken, this mystery woman reveals her face and identity to an audience who already had an inkling as to what she was.

This is a female version of Peter Parker, made from his DNA. Much like how Ben was Peter’s proverbial twin brother in the 90s clone saga, this is Peter’s proverbial twin sister for the Ultimate Universe. However, she wasn’t born of someone’s twisted idea of revenge. As this Peter explains her origin, we find out some really truly weird things. Ben Reilly is the one behind her creation, and admits they made clones of Spider-Man just for the hell of it, and because having Spider-Soldiers could be a great thing. In this Peter’s case, they even did a twist for no real reason.

This is where Bendis has accidentally hit on a perfect comic concept, and one that genuinely can only happen in the bizarre world of the superhero. Brian Michael Bendis has made, through mad science gone wrong, a male-to-female transsexual Peter Parker. He even has this Ben explain that, yes, the memories of the original Peter are there to some point. There’s literally no good explanation for this in-universe other than Ben and his benefactors being just cruel, which is fantastic character development for them in this case.

It also makes me wonder if Bendis had this as an escape clause if someone higher-up freaked out over a Trans Spider-Person.

As she continues, we learn that the plan was to wipe her memories and make her into Jessica Drew, an agent for the CIA. Spider-Woman. Obviously a reference to the original hero from the main Marvel universe, we see the day she was set to become Jessica Drew with her costume and everything. And interestingly, she seems to have some gender dysphoria during the flashback.

Interestingly,someone showed “Jessica” how to use some kind of lip stain before mind-wiping her. Priorities, I suppose.

As you would expect from a man forced into a woman’s body (from their perspective) and being told their name is now something else. Before the brainwashing can be performed, however, the Gwen Carnage hybrid causes a massive collapse of the facility, ripping the place apart and freeing all five of the clones: Kaine, Scorpion, Tarantula, Jessica (used now for less confusion)… and Richard Parker?

Yeah, while the comic wouldn’t outright explain it for another bunch of pages, Richard Parker is a hyper-aged clone of Peter, brainwashed to think he’s actually Richard Parker. He would quickly age and die before being forgotten about by the plot.

Peter and Jessica come across the enraged Demogoblin trying to rip Kaine in half, and are able to convince MJ to revert back to normal. However, when Peter tries questioning Kaine how he got the formula to mess with MJ, another familiar face makes an appearance.

Hey, look! Dan Jurgens’ original plan of Doctor Octopus being behind the Clone Saga gets referenced here. This isn’t about any particular menace or malice towards Peter, though. Otto has been contracted by the government to make super soldiers that Fury won’t have any control over. The fact that it happens to involve Peter’s DNA is just the frosting on the cake. Otto gloats over Peter’s helplessness, and the fact that Fury is going to take him out for him.

While Fury processes this, the FF takes MJ for the best care they can, and Fury’s men kill Kaine when he tries to stop them from taking MJ. Realizing he’s in the dumbest possible situation where he can’t arrest Otto and Peter’s completely innocent, Fury does the only move he can.

He walks away, and lets the infuriated Spider-people do their thing. They assault Otto, but it turns out that Octavious is a weird mutation along the same level of Magneto, able to manipulate metal to create arms like his namesake. He uses this power to skewer Tarantula, and the pair of Jessica and Peter take Otto down in a spectacular battle. 

The final issue of the Clone Saga, 105, acts as an epilogue that starts setting up the status quo for the next 100 issues. Gwen is alive again and depowered, MJ is depowered, Jessica somehow runs away to live a new life, and Nick Fury finally realizes that Peter is a good egg and won’t prepare to take him out anymore. Aunt May knows Peter is Spider-Man, and is kinda ok with it. In fact, she would go on to be his biggest supporter of the heroic life.

But… something still feels off about the story. And it’s right here.

The female clone of Peter is now calling herself Jessica Drew, and just decides to up and leave town. She’s literally a month old, with memories of a 16 year old of the opposite gender shoved in her head, and she’s going to go out and find herself. Even if Jessica sticking around in the book couldn’t happen due to editorial throwing a fit over a transsexual character, this is still a great jumping off point for a series or one-shot exploring what it means to now be the opposite gender and coming to terms with that while also being a superhero. What did happen?

Nothing.

Oh, Jessica returns. She shows up in Ultimate Spider-Man 130 during the horrendous Ultimatum storyline to rescue Aunt May from a global disaster caused by Magneto. She shows up for the event books Ultimate Enemy, Ultimate Mystery, and Ultimate Doom. Jessica also joins the Ultimates (basically the Avengers) in the redundantly-named Ultimate Comics Ultimates. However, in all of these comics, Jessica is a prop for a Spider-Person aside from talking with Aunt May for less than a minute. All this “finding herself” is something that happens entirely off-screen, even when she becomes a pseudo mentor to Miles Morales for a few issues of his turn at being Spider-Man.

There is one shining spot where Jessica gets to appear as more than a background character, in the relaunched Ultimate Spider-Man issue 9. She shows up to fight a pair of villains, and Johnny Storm (who is staying with Peter Parker at this point) shows up to assist and flirt endlessly with Jessica. It even ends with him almost proposing marriage to her, much to Jessica’s… hard to tell reaction.

Johnny has dyed his hair to try and live a civilian life. He doesn’t really succeed.

Johnny Storm goes home bragging about how he’s fallen in love with the Spider-Woman, and that they might have made out. It’s hard to tell if Johnny is bragging or what, but Peter reacts like he personally made out with Johnny and spends a two-page montage splash screaming over the next two pages for comedy.

She comes back.

For a gay joke.

And then she’s gone again, and just vanishes from the book. Any character she’s built offscreen just… isn’t there. Jessica Drew became vaguely sexual wallpaper in a world where Marvel was trying to be more “modern.” Or a joke.

Jessica isn’t the first transsexual character in Marvel. That honor belongs to Jessie Drake, who was a one-shot character for a Wolverine-centric Marvel Comics Presents story in 1994. But Jessica landed at the right time for so many people, and the potential she had as a character literally makes me want to rip my hair out. I feel like I’m the wrong person to write about how much of a missed potential this is, being a cis-gendered white male. However, the concept of finding one’s self after a dramatic life change is something any author should have jumped for.

While I was having a few friends read over this very article, I realized I had missed a massive piece of the puzzle that is this Jessica Drew. Thanks, Kira. When Brian Michael Bendis chose to move along the mantle of Spider-Man to Miles Morales, he went for an incredibly slow burn kind of story. This is a good thing, as the story got to show us who Miles is as a person, and how an average too-young kid can easily get in over his head. During his journey to accepting the mantle of Spider-Man, he would actually cross paths with Jessica Drew’s Spider-Woman multiple times. She would try to prevent him from becoming Spider-Man, perhaps feeling guilty over not being there to help save her “brother” Peter from dying at the hands of Norman Osborn.

Oh. Right. Bendis chose to kill off Peter Parker, and it was a well-done story. A lot of right-wing racists were incredibly mad when Miles was given spider-powers and the costume, so some of this may stem from pressure from higher-ups to try and tamp down the rage of a few very vocal people.

Jessica would also be the one to deliver Miles Morales his first official costume and web shooters, delivering Nick Fury’s permission to be Spider-Man. Jess would also find herself partnered up with Miles Morales during the highly confusing event Divided We Fall / United We Stand, where the United States went through a civil war caused by Hydra and had Captain America become President of the United States. It was a thing. She would also save Miles from being stranded in the middle of Kansas, and Miles could tell she was looking out for him. Jessica would deliver still another costume and web shooter set to Miles after he’d quit for over a year due to the death of his mom being connected to his adventures with the webs, and helped encourage him to become Spider-Man once more.

You might notice a small issue here. Jessica Drew is almost entirely used as a plot device used to further the development of Miles Morales as a hero. This connection isn’t a bad idea, as Jessica could have filled a mentor role to the new guy. However, she keeps Miles at arm’s length and it isn’t until Ultimate Comics All-New Spider-Man issue 25 that we get an explanation why.

I’m not going to lie: this kind of self-deprecation and internalized hatred is utterly fascinating. At this point, Jessica feels she’s a walking lab accident. Something that isn’t real doesn’t deserve to be Spider-Man, which is likely why she’s never contacted Aunt May, Gwen, or Mary Jane. This might even go some way to explain why Jessica went from showing up briefly during Ultimatum to joining the Ultimates. If she’s not a person, there’s no reason she shouldn’t just ignore the idea of having a life and just do what feels natural: helping people. All of this is a wonderful moment of character development for Jessica.

And it’s literally used to explain to Miles Morales why Miles Morales needs to be Spider-Man. That’s her entire story.

It’s entirely probable that Bendis was told not to explore any sexual identity with Jessica, resulting in her becoming little more than a background character or plot device until Michael Fiffe’s excellent All-New Ultimates with Jessica Drew finding a new identity in the Black Widow and leading a team of teenage heroes against street level crime. The outfit is snazzy, too.

Fiffe would actually at least reference Jessica basically being a transsexual Peter Parker, unlike his and Bendis’ contemporaries who wrote her as a woman only. It’s barely surface level, but it’s something worth at least acknowledging.

This is Jessica flirting with Kitty Pryde, who is also technically her ex. Nothing comes of it.

But again, with all of the possibilities with a character like Jessica Drew, it feels like nothing but wasted potential. She’s somehow gotten past all of her issues between the pages, including not feeling like a person. The first reboot of Ultimate Spider-Man would establish this universe’s Aunt May as taking in nearly every super-powered teenager under the sun, so she would have accepted Jessica with minimum of issues. Not to mention, a trans-Spider would actually be fantastic representation for that part of the population. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be.

Luckily, a lot of people really loved Jessica despite her lack of growth as a character or a person. While this article was percolating, I was able to get permission from twitter user @RaeGun2k to share some of their thoughts as well by reposting from their twitter. Give them a follow, she’s good people.

I miss trans Peter Parker. Anyone unfamiliar with the Ultimate Spiderman universe, Jessica Drew (Spider Woman) in that universe was a clone of Peter, in that comic book-like "cloned with all their memories" magical way. When they were tweaking his genes it made a gorl Peter. Thread.

Now Bendis likely just did this as a cute way to introduce the character during the clone saga, and kinda wasted it (not entirely his fault, Marvel kept trying to kill the universe tho that did eventually get us to Miles, so a net win).

But there was a LOT of potential here.

Given a trans writer (@Marvel, seriously give @MagsVisaggs a Spiderverse gig already) there are repercussions to that arc that would have been wildly amazing to explore. For one thing, Jessica was still attracted to Mary Jane, who didn't know who she was, but was ALSO developing a crush on Peter's in-universe roommate Johnny Blaze (Human Torch) and was processing those feelings around the time she mostly got written away.

But more so: Jessica, once she took stock of what happened, DIDN'T MIND HER BODY.

Again, she's a mind-clone of Peter. Put a cis man in that body and you'd get, well, hella powerful dysphoria. Now, again, I think the absence of that dysphoria was a factor of a (albeit talented) cis writer not really considering that (or maybe Bendis is an egg?)

But again, given the proper writer, and especially that Peter in that universe was eventually marked for death (giving us Miles) it absolutely could have been explored and Jessica's acceptance of her body definitely mirrors trans/NB mentality.

What I'm saying is the Ultimate Universe gave us the closest we came to a canonically trans Peter Parker and thus concludes my TED talk.

Also, all of Jessica's childhood memories are of being called a boy, being put into boy places, having boy expectations, etc.... Sound familiar? THEY COULD HAVE DONE SO MUCH.

I was also able to approach one of my oldest friends on this subject. I’ve known her for over 15 years now, and she has recently come out to our small circle of friends as trans (she/they). The two of us had a lot of love for the Ultimate line of comics when the issues were being released, so I asked them what they thought about Jessica. She was happy to help, but asked me to keep their identity a secret as she is not out to her family yet.

So, with that, I am proud to present one of my friends’ thoughts on Jessica Drew.

Though it’s been a very long time since I read Ultimate Spider-Man and was last really familiar with Ultimate Spider-Woman and Jessica Drew I will say I had at one time been very much a fan of her before I was aware of who I was myself as a trans person (she/they). Looking back now I feel like I can see things in her I recognize that probably went overlooked by many readers, myself included at the time.

For example, Jessica Drew ended up on the streets at the end of her storyline. This actually, sadly, mirrors a lot of real world realities for young trans people. Was there ever any good reason why this happened to Jessica to begin with? Did Aunt May not have enough room, despite housing every other wayward teen? Later I learned she ends up in SHIELD.

Which I suppose sounds great till you realize she’s the barely few year old clone of a teenager now on a black ops government superpower thug squad because she has literally nowhere else to go.

Something important that I feel that wasn’t given proper consideration is Jessica’s potential for dysphoria and how that might be resolved. As a clone of Peter Parker, with Peter’s memories, there’s no doubt she would – and already did – exhibit dysphoria over her body and identity.

(This isn’t an isolated issue either, but one that could be found with all types of characters similar to Jessica. When characters like this are created if they’re never given any sort of depth or consideration regarding that then it really shows how far the author was planning when they were creating the character.)

In either case neither one was confronted, acknowledged, or resolved. Instead, she was brought up and treated as part of the Clone Saga, then brushed aside because the writer didn’t know how to or simply did not want to deal with her. I really liked her a lot but it’s not hard to look back now and read into some things with what I know now, and then see some other things for what they were as well.

Utimately what kills me at the end is this question: where does Jessica Drew go at the end of the Ultimate Clone Saga? She has nowhere to go. She has no one to turn to. And she has nothing to call her own. She is on her own in a way that really underlines how much her existence mattered to the authors when they were writing her.

While I don’t wish to speak for everyone who’s come out as trans after reading about Jessica Drew or were trans beforehand, she still had an impact on so many readers at the time. It’s one of those weird things where Jessica Drew should have had more page time to develop as a character, and explore what it means to be born a man who feels just as comfortable as the opposite gender. Not to mention what that could even mean for Peter himself. I admit, it may have needed a writer who was obviously more comfortable in developing what had been made, or an editor who was willing to fight against what the higher-ups demanded. 

Much like almost the entire rest of the Ultimate Universe, Jessica Drew was pushed off into limbo with all of her other universe’s characters in 2015 when Marvel finally shuttered the Ultimate universe for good. Miles Morales was able to escape with a big push from Brian Michael Bendis, and that was a great decision from Marvel, if only because it helped give us the fantastic Into the Spider-Verse and proved that more than just a white guy from Queens can become Spider-Man.

Allegedly, Bendis also fought for Jessica to also come over. That she didn’t means either Bendis was given a choice, or that some higher-ups shot this down hard. However, she did make one last appearance. 2014’s Spider-Verse would bring in almost every Spider-person across the multiverse, and she would even share a spinoff title of Scarlet Spiders with the original Kaine Parker and an alternate Ben Reilly.

In a weird strike for progressive representation in art for trans characters, Jessica was also treated like a woman with the same objectualization that any other female in the comics experience.

I mean, either that or artist Paco Diaz wasn’t informed of the origin of Jessica Drew. Either way, hooray for equality, even if it remains that same level of institutionalized creepy.

It seems like Spider-Man will never truly escape clones, and I’m ok with that. Most fans seem to be as well, even if I’m sure half of them groaned with dread once Miles’ clone was announced. I just hope that this new clone for Miles isn’t wasted potential like Jessica Drew was, or tossed aside when marketing getst bored like Ben Reilly was.