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Spider-Man Clone Saga: Web of Life
45 Plays2 years ago
Corinne details the ins and outs of Web of Life- where we see Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider, confront Grim Hunter and Kaine!
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Transcript
Introduction and Dual Personas
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Comically Pedantic, where we take a detailed look at the complicated concepts, characters, and history of comic book culture. I'm your host, Derek L. Chase, and joining me again on this episode is the wonderful Corinne Levy. It's me. Hi. Derek, what's your bright spot? I beat you too at this time. Oh, you come straight to it. Son of a bitch, I gotcha. Oh, man. So I guess, I mean, you and I were just talking a little bit before we started recording.
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm gonna go a little bit off of what I was saying beforehand. Okay.
00:00:47
Speaker
have recently realized there are two very different sides of me. One is I get very down, like I'm very serious when it comes to politics and things like that. I get very into it. Sometimes that brings me down. On the other hand, I have been so into like Sonic the Hedgehog. I just got the new game. I'm loving every single second of it.
00:01:14
Speaker
I have been reading Go Go Power Rangers to catch up on some of what I've been missing. I like I've just been having a great Oh, I've been watching the new Power Rangers. There's a new one. Yes, it's coming up on the 30th anniversary. So this is the first show since like the original where they're doing three seasons of like basically a continuing story before like Oh, wow.
00:01:42
Speaker
And I want to watch that 30th anniversary. But I also don't want to go into it not knowing anything that was going on in the previous two seasons.
Power Rangers and Starbucks Stories
00:01:54
Speaker
So I decided I was going to watch it. And it's a lot of fun. You have to sort of keep in mind it's a kid show. So a lot of the jokes are not great. They're not super funny.
00:02:06
Speaker
The comedy is for children. Yes, it is very much for children. But the action is super fun. The visuals in the show, I am so surprised because I was like, holy shit, this is not what I remember. This looks great.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. And they have a lot of like quirky little things that I really enjoy a lot. Like they basically work, they work for like a Buzzfeed kind of a place. So there's hard hitting Buzzfeed journalists. It is so funny. So like, and there's a robot that works there and it's like sometimes she malfunctions and she'll like blow bubble gums really like really big, uh, like the bubble gum bubbles. It's,
00:02:54
Speaker
It's a lot of fun. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. It's cute. Plus there's a lesbian green ranger. So I'm super into that. It's good. So I guess I have, I'm very childlike and that's going to be my bright spot.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah. There's serious Derek and then there's Sonic. I am so, so here for just like bright colors, fun times. That's, that's, that's all that I want. You know, what about you? What's, what's your bright spot?
00:03:29
Speaker
Oh, what is it? I don't know. What did I do this week? You saw me. You saw me at work. I did see you. I was going to start the episode by just being like, hello again. We found you at work. So that was a fun surprise. We walked into there into there, by the way. And I was just like,
00:03:50
Speaker
I'm surprised that Derek doesn't work at this one as we were sitting down. And then Max is like, I think he does work here. I mean, look, I'm in a different place every week, so it doesn't matter. I just think it's funny that every time I go into
00:04:10
Speaker
I don't know if people know where you work. I somehow just end up getting a discount or getting free shit just because I know you in Austin. And I think that's really funny. I am I've become the nepotism friend of Starbucks. I went so I yeah, I go to like like pick a store in the area and I've been there.
00:04:37
Speaker
Uh, because my, my job right now, uh, until it changes, uh, hopefully soon is, uh, there's a store that doesn't work. It's something's not going right. You know, it usually it's just like a series of bad circumstances that have happened to the store.
00:04:56
Speaker
And they just need to clean it up. They just send me in to keep it running long enough for either me or someone else or a team. Usually it's like me and the person who actually is running the store to fix it. Yeah. You're like the bar rescue guy.
00:05:16
Speaker
Except I'm not coming in telling people what to do. I'm just going in and being like, I'm going to give you time to do what you already know that you have to do because usually the issue is they just things have gone so poorly for such a
00:05:33
Speaker
a specific amount of time that like the normal functions of the job, they are not able to get done because they're picking up the pieces from all the stuff that has been going wrong for so long. And I come in just to give them that time to do the thing that they have to do to get the store back on track. I'm a stopgap. That's all.
00:05:59
Speaker
So I saw Derek at work. That was fun. What else did I do? I binge watched Cuphead.
00:06:08
Speaker
Like based on is that it's based on a game. It's a video game. Yeah, and some friends. I love the artwork.
Nostalgia and Current Reads
00:06:17
Speaker
It's so fun. Some friends of mine last year dressed up their couples costume was cuphead and mug man. And I thought it was so cute. And it was just like I had never heard of it before. And then like months later, I saw there was a show for it. And I was like, oh, this is great. And then I forgot about it.
00:06:36
Speaker
But then this past week I was like, I need to like disassociate for a couple hours. How can I do that? Oh, I'll watch a show. And then I saw Cuphead was still on Netflix. I was like, I'll just watch my friend's show. And they are them to a T. It's so good. It's super cute. It's a lot like if you put Chowder and Flapjack and SpongeBob all together. Oh, that sounds awesome.
00:07:06
Speaker
And then it's the art of Cuphead. And it's very fun. There's like two seasons. All the episodes are like 15 to 20 minutes. And I would just like fold laundry and put that show on. And it was just so cute and wholesome. I loved it. And I'm still playing like a Harry Potter for those of you who are interested. So the other the answer is Derek sometimes is a child, but I'm really the child.
00:07:36
Speaker
Another thing that I have been reading is I got in the miso soup by Ryo Murakami. That sounds fun. Half of it is. It's a very dark book that I was immediately
00:07:58
Speaker
I read a couple of pages at the bookstore and I was sold. I bought it. I was very excited. I read 70 pages in the first day that I had it. It's a very short book too. You can read it in an afternoon if you wanted to. I read a lot of it. The main plot of the book is he takes this guy, this weird American,
00:08:24
Speaker
And there's enough little things that are off about this guy that he starts suspecting him of being a serial killer that has been killing women in the area. Okay, don't tell me any more because now I want to read it. You can borrow it. I'll just give you the book. Hell yeah. I'm currently reading A Murder Mystery by Lucy Foley. It's called The Hunting Party. And it's like a group of friends that only meet each other once a year.
00:08:53
Speaker
And they go on like a New Year's trip together. And it's very clearly like at this point, it's a group of people that are not really friends anymore. They just kind of keep clinging to their own. Yeah. And someone dies. We don't know who yet. I like I'm.
00:09:16
Speaker
This is the dichotomy of us. We have these dark murder stories that we're super into. Yeah, I love SpongeBob, but I love murder.
00:09:32
Speaker
I like the last few movies that I've gone to go see have been like horror movies. I went to Halloween and Pearl and X before that. Like I've been really into seeing these like kind of fucked up horror movies. And then I come home and I want to play Sonic and watch Power Rangers.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah, like I just want to play my Lego Batman, which is I have it. It's on my steam, but I haven't played it yet because I have to finish Lego Harry Potter. But I love watching like just some bad stuff. I'm watching the Cabinet of Curiosities to right now. That's like it's on Netflix. It's Guillermo del Toro's. Yeah, I just okay. I just saw that. Yeah.
00:10:21
Speaker
It's fun. It's fun. It's spooky. The first two episodes are like shitty people getting come up. It's by like demons and that's cool. And I genuinely I went from watching Cabinet of Curiosities to Cuphead in the same day. I have done that many times. I have literally come home from seeing
00:10:45
Speaker
Uh, I think after I saw Halloween, I came home and I watched. Oh, now I'm going to blank on, but it was a cartoon. I came home and watched like a, like a kid's cartoon. Yeah. Okay. This is good. This is fun. You know what else is fun? Spider-Man. I think that we probably should have started talking about 10 minutes ago, but we didn't.
00:11:11
Speaker
We have a lot of fun. It's OK. We do. We have fun here on this pedantic podcast. We love wordplay. So we
Monty Python and Spider-Man Discussions
00:11:22
Speaker
left off with your issues and they focused more on Spider-Man, like the Spider-Man. He got poisoned by some birds, which is my worst nightmare.
00:11:36
Speaker
uh so like the vulture was in that we had some like owl man that was cool uh spiderman is kind of in this but he's kind of not um i'm still very much in like the ben riley focus storylines so this is mainly going to focus on ben riley but you can kind of tell overall that they're starting to like leak together a little bit
00:12:04
Speaker
So that's fun. So I, okay. I, I have read, um, the story that is happening concurrently to the one you are doing web of life and I did web of death. So that'll be the next one. Right. It's, it's interesting to see, I think, uh, the things that are happening around the same time and kind of
00:12:29
Speaker
figure out, I'm curious if you can tell me why yours would be web of life and mine would be web of death.
00:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think we'll figure that out today. I think we'll go through the journey. We'll find the meaning of life. It might be a little Monty Python-esque because the clone saga is sometimes just full of bullshit. But, you know, we'll see. Another side note to get us like distracted again. That is my favorite Monty Python movie.
00:13:07
Speaker
I got it on DVD for my birthday when I was like 12.
00:13:14
Speaker
Which is so debatable. And if that's the age, you should watch the meaning of life. I think that's when I watched it, to be honest. I might've been like a little younger. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it was like a questionable age. And I love it. I love it so much. Monty Python's great. I used to binge the Flying Circus a lot.
00:13:38
Speaker
Oh, it's so good. Which was a real hoot. But yeah, I have it on, I have Meaning of Life on DVD. So it's just one of, it's like right next to Clue and then of course like The Holy Grail. But that's the holy trinity of comedy for me. My favorite scene in Meaning of Life is there's like an animated tree and there's like a little leaf. He's like, I can't do it anymore.
00:14:09
Speaker
I always, my dad loved Monty Python. Shout out to my dad, comedy genius. So I would watch all the Monty Python movies with him and we would always quote the restaurant scene.
00:14:26
Speaker
Oh, yes. Yeah. What one thin mint, I think was, was that the one with a thin mint? Yeah. Oh, I'm stuffed. I can't eat another bite. It's so fun. I love it. Uh, fetch me a bucket. I've said that many times in my life, sometimes with, with meaning. Uh, what a time we love gastro issues. Anyway, the clone saga.
00:15:01
Speaker
Why did we do this to ourselves? Okay.
00:15:06
Speaker
All right, so let's start this web of life. It does not start with birth, unfortunately, unlike the meaning of life, Monty Python. It starts with web of Spider-Man 120. So for credits for this issue, we got the writer is Terry Cavanaugh. Penciler and cover page was done by Steve Butler.
00:15:34
Speaker
The colorist is Kevin Tinsley. I did think his last name was Tinsel at first, and that's because I can't read. But it's a shame. That would have been a fun festive last name. And then the editor in chief is Tom DeFalco. Tom DeFalco is the editor in chief throughout this whole
00:15:55
Speaker
four part thing we're about to dive into. So I will say right off the bat, that was nice because it did feel like one person was overlooking the whole story. So it's pretty, it is fairly clean throughout the whole thing. It doesn't feel like the mess of the last thing I read.
00:16:17
Speaker
which was nice. Good job. I do think that the further we get into the clone saga, it does feel a little bit more, at least in this era of the clone saga, it does feel like the stories are getting a little bit more cohesive. I think there was a little bit of a shakeup at the beginning. I don't think they were so, so ready to be passing along stories back and forth to each other. But then I think they got the hang of it.
00:16:42
Speaker
I think it's it felt very much like they just got a pair of roller skates. Yeah. And they were like, oh, boy, roller skates. And they put them on and then they didn't know how to like move themselves forward. But now they're like starting to figure out, like, this is how I go forward. Don't know how to turn yet, but this is how I go forward. And I think that's OK. So. Web Spider-Man 120.
00:17:11
Speaker
Not a whole lot happens. It's kind of just like a nice little intro. You start off with Ben Riley, who is the Scarlet Spider. He beats up Tombstone, who's the wannabe crime boss attempting a heist to take a shot for every heist that happens. Shot number seventh is going to go on forever. Right before he crashes like an armored vehicle into a restaurant, Spider-Man swoops and saves the day. Tombstone, rip. Okay.
00:17:39
Speaker
Ben Riley still has like a little bit of self-doubt, but it's more to do with instead of like, oh, I can't be a superhero. It's more like, I don't really feel like a human. It's kind of more of like, he's pretty confident in his Scarlet Spider crime fighting skills, but he's a little worried about being just a, being Ben Riley.
00:18:08
Speaker
Just how do I live my everyday life? He has memories of being a different person, but he can't
Kane's Conflict and Character Mysteries
00:18:14
Speaker
be that person anymore. I can understand that. And I think...
00:18:18
Speaker
Compared to like the last run the last run was very much like I can't be anything I'm just a ghost and that's not true. You can be a vigilante because your face isn't out I get this kind of conflict that goes throughout the whole story a little more because you literally have a copy and paste face of somebody else in New York and Everybody you want to talk to knows that face
00:18:40
Speaker
So I think that's a bit more of a valid conflict. So that's what I mean when he has like some self-doubt. It's with his face. Now we're going to cut to the the Grim Hunter.
00:18:54
Speaker
He's sitting in his dad, his dad's mansion. He's in New York. His mom- This is Craven the Hunter's kid. This is Craven the Hunter's son, who is an adult now. Craven the Hunter, he basically like killed himself by going mad for trying to hunt after Spider-Man. Great story if you've never read it.
00:19:20
Speaker
Because this is, again, this is the first Spider-Man thing I've ever read. I'm learning a lot. Basically, this whole monologue is how he wants to be better than his villain of a father, and he's gonna be the one to kill Spider-Man.
00:19:39
Speaker
So that's a scene that happens. Scarlet Spider defeats some like terrorists. I think it's pronounced Aries. It's the A-E-R-E-S group.
00:19:55
Speaker
It seems like I think it's Aries. I don't know astrology, but whatever. It seems like this is a group that has been like mentioned before, just in the Spider-Man universe, but it just has never come up in these runs. So I don't know. But he beats them. It's like a two panel thing while he's fighting these terrorists. Ken Ellis and Betty Brandt are there. They're kind of fighting over who gets the story or the the paper.
00:20:24
Speaker
Um, and then as scarlet spider is leaving, he like locks eyes with Betty and he's like, wow, she's pretty cool. And as he's leaving, he's kind of like, Oh man, I've been pretty busy, like fighting all this crime. Like where's spider man? And just kind of assumes he's with his quote unquote hot wife, uh, Mary Jane. He's just like, Oh, he's probably with his gorgeous wife. So.
00:20:53
Speaker
Like, okay, you do what you want. Apparently, that's not where he is. As we know, he's been fighting poison birds. Yeah. Dealing with the weirdest plan ever from Vulture and the Owl. Still my favorite thing that we've heard. Kill everyone that even slightly remembers us.
00:21:16
Speaker
That and like the few Venom one-liners were pretty funny. So yeah, Scarlet Spider has been pretty busy. Also, at the mention of Mary Jane, we're gonna kind of do a transition.
00:21:34
Speaker
to Kane. It would be funny if it was Mary Jane in a mask. Oh my God. I would love it. So Kane is assured that the Spider-Men are going to like stay close to each other as long as Aunt May is in a coma.
00:21:51
Speaker
And he's apparently been having visions of Mary Jane being murdered. And for some reason, this like terrifies Kane and he's like, I got to stop whoever's going to kill Mary Jane. So he's just having like visions of the future and is for some reason very worried about not his hot wife, but somebody else's hot wife. But he still also wants to like destroy Spider-Man. So it's kind of.
00:22:18
Speaker
I don't fully get it. I was wondering. Conflicting thoughts. Yeah. And I, I had the question of, Oh, was this mentioned previously? No. I thought that as if you saw or listened to last episode, I thought Cain would come up in your reading. We don't know. Yeah.
00:22:43
Speaker
We didn't know he was clairvoyant. We don't know much about this man. But he really doesn't want Mary Jane to die. I know a lot about Kane. And one of the things that has always surprised me, and I'm still a little confused about, is the actual physics of the mask that he wears.
00:23:07
Speaker
because it doesn't look like a mask though. Okay. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. That's so true. Okay. So I have taken screenshots of like the panels and stuff, and I'm sure I'll send them to you eventually, but they're good. We're doing the visual thing. Yeah. The visual companion that will come out along with this episode.
00:23:31
Speaker
He's just a blue man. He's just a blue man and we don't know why. We've been given no context for Cain and that is what makes him the greatest villain of all is because it's fucking confusing and it pisses you off.
00:23:48
Speaker
Okay, so that's the end of the scene with Kane. By the way, Mary Jane has arrived. She's in New Jersey, not New Jersey. We're in New Jersey. Yes. She would probably be very upset to be in New Jersey. Honestly, aren't we all? No, she's back in New York. The
00:24:14
Speaker
The is it better than New Jersey state? We don't know. But she's back in New York from visiting her family. So that was cool to actually like see a character who hasn't been in the things that I've read show up. It does kind of feel like things are starting to melt. So that was I think it's nice to also see that it's not just we're not just introducing a character.
00:24:36
Speaker
and then forgetting about them for a handful of things to continue. That was cool. But this is not the end of the issue. So Grim Hunter.
00:24:49
Speaker
just for some reason but beats the shit out of some Navy Sealboat people because he's like on he's on Spider-Man's trail but in actuality he's on the Scarlet Spiders trail because he's all he's going by scent it's like part of the whole like predator gimmick that he has and apparently when you're a clone of somebody you smell the same so he's
00:25:14
Speaker
Trailing the scarlet spider to some extent that makes sense, but like yeah, I don't know I feel like you know done you know where you're living the things that you're eating I that goes into changing quite a bit of
00:25:30
Speaker
your scent you know yeah but basically this whole issue it started off with like prim hunter is kind of like pretty far in distance from either of the spiders and it's just him progressively like coming closer so that's like that was kind of cool also just kind of goofy um you didn't need to beat up the navy to
00:25:52
Speaker
Like you could have just swam around, but whatever. So now we're going to go to what, what's Ben Riley doing? He's dressed up as the Scarlet Spider and he is having a chat with Betty. Uh, it was going to be just about like the newspaper, but then it got like weirdly saucy.
00:26:11
Speaker
Oh yeah like they started off like six feet apart from each other and then suddenly we're just like nose to nose talking to each other and it's like there's tension there's a lot of tension it's very much like um you know in batman forever nicole kid oh yes to batman it's like
00:26:34
Speaker
They meet in the first two minutes and she's instantly like, I'm in love with you. See, and I was going to point out the scene. Have you seen the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeves and Margot Getter? No. There is a scene where she is interviewing him at her apartment and she's wearing like, like a nightgown. Yeah. And she's sort of going into like what his powers are. And one of the things she asks is like, what color are my panties?
00:27:04
Speaker
And it's such a very sexually charged scene for this superhero movie that came out in the 70s. It's very good. There's nothing explicit set or anything. So if you're looking for it, you're not going to find it. It's just the energy and the way that faces are drawn in this.
00:27:27
Speaker
Just lustful eyes. It's just wild. There has never been like a moment like that in anything we've read of this before. And suddenly it's just like, is this going to be smut? We don't know. And it's really funny. But then the Scarlet Spider has to leave an obvious fucking ruin the moment for all of us.
00:27:54
Speaker
And then immediately after, Grim Hunter comes in and is about to attack Betty.
00:28:02
Speaker
And just being like, where's Spider-Man? I'm gonna kill you. And she's like, chill out. He just left. Leave me alone. Get out of my house. And he's just like, okay. And leaves. Well, I guess that's nice, you know? Yeah. It's really just cause he's like, I'm going to use her as bait for later. But it's just like so goofy. It sounds it.
00:28:30
Speaker
Cause also like, and again, there will be visuals, go to the website. But he's just like, he's in like furs and like, he looks goofy. And he's just breaking into people's like New York townhouses being like, where is he?
00:28:47
Speaker
Oh, wrong house. Goodbye. So that's how that issue ends. We kind of talked about as we were going through it, like what I liked about it. Again, I liked that people came back. I like that Betty's back. It's cool to have like a female lead because she is like in this quite a bit, which is cool and relevant for she was in the last thing that I read. Good for the writers.
00:29:14
Speaker
It's also cool because she's like a working woman. We like a person who likes to try and get to the top. That's always fun. Also, though we were joking about the funny close ups of people, it's drawn well.
00:29:32
Speaker
I was going to say I really like Steven Butler. So I thought it was really cool. It kind of reminds you of like whenever people post like on Instagram or Tumblr or whatever of those like sad comic women and they're like, I'm going to murder my husband. I don't need a man. It kind of reminds me of that a little bit. I was like, oh, that's fun. We like that aesthetic. And then I again, I thought it was fun that like Mary Jane came back. So it does feel like
00:30:02
Speaker
Because when I first started reading, like with the whole venom bits, I was like, there is like, where is Spider-Man? We have no idea where he is. It's nice to actually feel like, oh, he is still here. It's kind of ambiguous what's happening to him right now. But it is confirmed that he does still like float around. Yeah, that's one of the things that I think
00:30:28
Speaker
I miss a little bit of some of the older, like the MCU movies where they would just acknowledge that other people existed. I don't need them in all, I don't need all of them in the movies. I don't need five cameos for a movie to be considered good. If anything, I think that makes it like, as we saw with the last issue, when you see all these characters.
00:30:54
Speaker
It gets overwhelming. It feels kind of like an overload of things. But if you just mention like, oh, like he's, I don't know, in Queens. It's like, oh, okay. Other Spider-Man's in Queens. I'm not worried. Like that's fine. I don't need to see him. I'm happy to just acknowledge that this is happening, that people are out there living their lives. I don't necessarily need to see every detail of it, nor do they need to be in the story if it doesn't pertain to them.
00:31:22
Speaker
Exactly, it's kind of like, so sometimes like Stephen King novels are kind of canonical to each other, but they don't directly relate. It's kind of just like they'll mention like, oh yeah, this sheriff from the other county, and that sheriff was like the lead in another book, which- Yeah, like it has something to do with like some of these, right? Like there's a, there's like a King universe.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah, there is. Like what did I just I had just read Gerald's game kind of going back to how I like fun things and then I like fucked up. But in Gerald's game, there's a connection to another book called Needful Things, which I really liked a lot. So it's fun. That sounds so familiar. It's about a it's about a store run by the devil.
00:32:21
Speaker
Gotcha, okay, yes, I do know what this is. Okay. It's long. It's a long book, but it's a good book. I liked it. I'd probably reread it again, but not right now. We're reading Spider-Man right now. Issue number two. So this is going to be Spider-Man 54 in the Shadow of Cain.
00:32:43
Speaker
It's pretty much the same people as before. The only difference is we've got Scott Hanna on ink and story and art is Howard Mackey and Tom Lyle. I like Howard Mackey. Yeah, I think that's fun. And Tom Lyle does some of the unlimited stories. Oh, good for him. OK, this is another like, it's all
00:33:12
Speaker
pretty broken up to be a pretty quick read. Like I did this all in one day. It was nice. So what happens here is it's late night and the Scarlet Spider kind of goes into the Daily Bugle office. He sneaks in and he's originally looking for Ken Ellis because he wants to kind of chew him out a little bit. He doesn't love the Scarlet Spider like name.
00:33:38
Speaker
He just wants to be a hero. He doesn't want like all the publicity added to it. And so he's just like, why did you give me this like shitty name? Like, just let me do my job. But instead of running into Ken, he runs into J. Jonah Jameson, which is the funnest name ever. I wrote Triple J on it. Love that. Which is a lot of fun. So instead of just like leaving when he doesn't find Ken, he decides to chew out J. Jonah.
00:34:09
Speaker
And he takes like a lot of joy in this because he's like, haha, I'm saying all the things that Peter Parker would want to say. But he can't because he's Peter Parker. But I'm Ben and I can say what I want. Because I'm a different person. So he has like a little bit of a confidence boost, which is kind of nice. You can tell like he wants to like have a life and like be a person and, you know, kind of take advantage of like the opportunity he has. Yeah.
00:34:37
Speaker
Um, but you know, sometimes that don't work. I'm getting like this sort of, it's, I don't have a full, uh, doing things that the other person wants to do and can't fulfill, but also wanting to like, well, I guess it's really, he just wants to live his own version of how he would if he was Peter Parker.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'm getting this. I'm getting the feeling of either someone coming in and out of dealing with depression or like a bipolar kind of thing where it's like you get the really the depths and everything is is is awful about my life. But then realizing that like there's no rules to your life anymore. So then you kind of get to have fun with it. I think it's very much like
00:35:34
Speaker
When triggered, he has these really big existential crises. Yes, okay, yes. Yeah, I think that's pretty much what it is. So the Scarlet Spider is swinging around. He's got a nice little high from a chewing out Triple J. Kane is watching and waiting. He's just stalking our little Ben, because that's what Kane does. Grim, we're going to a new scene.
00:36:04
Speaker
You can tell that he's starting to get like the Spidey fever. He's starting to go a little crazy. It is quite a time. You kind of also, as you progressively go through these, like, because he's always at the mansion when he's going crazy, you start to notice this guy named Gregor. He's just kind of in the background. He's almost like his Alfred. Yeah, he's there. That's what happens.
00:36:30
Speaker
I love that in comic books, all rich people have a very like specific servant. Like a fake father figure, also their butler though. Yeah. It's, it's like, and it's always the one guy who has no personal life. It's just glasses. Yeah. It's a time. It's a typecast. It's a typecast. Anyway, back to Spider-Man. So, Grim is slowly going crazy. That's a scene. Okay.
00:37:00
Speaker
Another character returns. It's Gabby. I don't know if anyone remembers Gabby. She was kind of a throwaway in the last thing I read, but she's the lady that took Ben Riley to the hospital when he had the stomach injury from Venom. I only remember this because I'm literally editing that episode.
00:37:20
Speaker
Like right, right before we started recording, but it's like from the hospital, he like escapes and then runs into scream and then everything gets crazy. Okay. But so the irrelevant woman from, she's back. She's not as irrelevant anymore. She's checking up on Ben. She's like, Hey, how's the Tom? Oh, it's good. Do you want to go out? She asks Ben Riley to dinner. And that's when I realized that Ben Riley is a little slut.
00:37:52
Speaker
Cause he's just like, wow, like Betty and Gabby like me. I'm so excited about this. And I'm just like, he's going to, he's going to agree to go to the same dance with both of them. He's going to pull a Mrs. Doubtfire like one of them, one spider and the other one's the boy. Oh man.
00:38:15
Speaker
But I'm just like, oh, good for, good for our little Ben. I'm just going to keep calling him Lil Ben. Hey, look, if everyone is on board, then there's like no downside to this, you know? Yeah. I mean, like right now I'm calling this his like, his like freshman year of college, like his little bloody face. And that's, yeah, that's fine. It's all like fine. No one's committed to anything.
00:38:45
Speaker
So that's like a fun, things you can tell they're kind of going a little bit on the up and up for Ben Riley.
00:38:52
Speaker
Now we're gonna go back to Mary Jane. She's in this again. That's cool. She's usually in it for really tiny scenes. This one's super tiny. She's at the doctor for stomach pain. We don't know what the stomach pain is from. Part of me is like, es pregante? We don't know. She could be pregnant or maybe it's cancer. Usually in something like this, it's one or the other. Or both.
00:39:20
Speaker
Oh my God. The baby is cancer. I don't know if you've read any of hack slash yet, but there hasn't. It's on my coffee table later in the series. I don't remember exactly when, but there's like a little, uh, baby demon character and his name is stillbirth. It's again,
00:39:49
Speaker
You know, it's the fun, quirky, weird stuff. And then the really fucked up stuff. Yeah, that's fine. I'm going to read it next. The last comic I read was, uh, the curse of the white knight.
00:40:02
Speaker
Oh yeah. I finished it. Oh my God. That should have been my bright spot, but that was like three weeks ago. I thought I forgot about it. Anyway, back to spider man. I'm just going to keep saying that so we know where to cut. Anyway, back to Spidey boy. Stomach pain. We don't know what it is. Is it still birth? Who knows? So now we're going back. Um,
00:40:31
Speaker
Oh, it just has a quick shot of Spider-Man poisoned by Vulture. That was a quick thing. He's just like kind of unconscious laying sideways. Another person in pain. So that's kind of how I knew like, oh, the Vulture is involved somehow. And that's where Spider-Man is. He's not with his hot wife. His hot wife's at the doctor. He's in pain somewhere else. It does not tell you where.
00:40:59
Speaker
It looks like a rooftop or like in a sewer, one or the other. He is not at home though. So he is ill, he is close to death. It did not say he was dead though. I have a slight update to something that we had discussed previously. And that is I have now read different versions of the same bird poisoning scene.
00:41:28
Speaker
And I can tell you that the artists chose different birds to represent the one that attacked him. So there is no conclusive he was attacked by a specific bird. It was just, depending on the comic, a different bird.
00:41:47
Speaker
We have no idea. OK, so yeah, it cuts to Spider-Man. He's like near death and he's pretty much unconscious. And then also Ben Riley is going to bed. That's where this makes sense. So Ben Riley is going to bed. They have a shared dream. This whole part of the comic was a bit confusing because it's kind of just these little half like thoughts like a man being made.
00:42:18
Speaker
like, and then rising from that, like it's all very vague short pieces of wording that
Spider-Man Clone Saga Confrontations
00:42:24
Speaker
don't really tell you, but it looks like it's, it's kind of a flashback to when Ben Riley is like quote unquote birth essentially. And so they have this shared dream, very strange. Also at the same time that this is happening with them having the shared dream,
00:42:50
Speaker
Cain also gets just like a bunch of like headaches. Just a bunch of head pain and he can't shake it off. Very weird. Don't really know. It's a lot of weird connections, especially because like, they never addressed them before, but it's, it's seeming like somehow like Cain is some version or something. Like there is definitely something connecting
00:43:18
Speaker
both Spidey's and Kane, but they haven't addressed what or why. We'll get into that later. Um, well, and if Peter Kane is bringing a lot of problems too, if Peter is the original, it's also weird that he would be having memories of being cloned. Yeah. It's really confusing. We're going to have to keep a list of, of, uh,
00:43:46
Speaker
uh, clues that we have so that we can try to figure out who's behind. Like, who's the ultimate villain, you know? Yes, absolutely. So this whole weird dream thing, like wakes up Ben and he's like pretty shaken up. So he calls this guy Dr. C word and kind of is starting to ask about degeneration, like the degeneration of a clone. So,
00:44:15
Speaker
It sounds like he has known this Dr. C word prior. I guess it's while he left New York. But again, this is like not context that is addressed at any point really. Yeah, we have we have mystery person on top of mystery person with mysterious pasts between everyone.
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, so if anyone's confused, so am I. Welcome to the club. Alrighty, so to cool off.
00:44:53
Speaker
Ben is gonna go on a little adventure. He's gonna find Betty, apparently his girlfriend. He's decided, he's like, forget Gabby, I'm gonna go straight to Betty. So he's got his little mask on and they start flirting again.
00:45:11
Speaker
But the moment is ruined, not from Spider-Man or Scarlet Spider leaving early, but from Grim Hunter crashing in because he really commits to if I'm using this woman as bait, I'm using this woman as bait immediately. So he is back and Betty is like, why is this man in my backyard? Please get him out.
00:45:34
Speaker
and Scarlet Spider's like, Betty, get back inside. She's like, but I live here. Ben is just like, Betty, get back inside. So she goes inside. So that's the time they fight a little bit. Craven now realizes while he is fighting Scarlet Spider that this is not OG Spider-Man. So Craven doesn't love that. And he's like, you're not really what I'm hunting for.
00:45:57
Speaker
and leaves. He goes away in search of the real Spider-Man. So that's where you kind of learn that clones have the same smell, essentially, as their origin. But the fighting is what? Yeah, it's like the style of fighting. This Spider-Man fights slightly different than the other Spider-Man. That's kind of the sense of how a lot of people are learning.
00:46:22
Speaker
that Ben is not eater. Yeah. Cause like in the last issues, it was like, hi, you may have changed your costume, but you still spider-man and then they'll fight and they'll be like, ha, you fight differently. Your strength is different. So that's how grim kind of finds out and picks up a different set and goes to find the, the, the spider-man.
00:46:47
Speaker
So now Scarlet Spider is checking on Betty, but he's sad because he's starting to now think like, oh no, I can't have a normal life because whenever I go on a date with my girlfriend when I'm wearing my superhero mask, a super villain comes. Isn't that the darndest thing? So he's sad. That's also that it kind of brings up a weird thing because Betty not only knows Peter, she dated Peter.
00:47:17
Speaker
So if she were to see Ben without a mask, it's way more complicated than just, I kind of like this woman. Cause then she'd be like, Oh my God, you're cheating on your wife. Right. Okay. So, but did Betty date Peter canonically to this? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Like way back in the day, like,
00:47:44
Speaker
Like like Stanley era Spider-Man. Early Spider-Man. Cool. Yeah. OK. Also, he's sad and he leaves kind of sad. And then the final scene of this issue is Detective Raven. He was in the finale of the last thing I read. He is out of Salt Lake City and he is now in New York and he's going to
00:48:14
Speaker
find the murderer who killed his partner. That's why we realize he's like flown all this way because this killer in New York is leaving the same kind of wounds as whoever was in Salt Lake and that person also killed his partner. So he's a detective with some vengeance.
00:48:36
Speaker
And that's where it ends. I had a bit of a prediction. I had a feeling that Cain is the one that Detective Raven is looking for. Yeah, that checks out. I just have a feeling. I have a feeling.
00:48:55
Speaker
and I like feelings. So that's a little thought. We'll see if I was right or wrong. I know if I was right or wrong, but I'm not going to tell you until later. Things that I liked.
00:49:06
Speaker
The art was cool. It's again, it's very similar to like the last issue. I liked that some more characters came back like Detective Raven. And then even though we only saw her for two seconds and then Ben Riley pretty much just like gave up on her. Gabby's still there. So that's cool. Nice to know she's still a good neighbor who just wants to take her friend out to dinner. Things I don't like. I think Grim Hunter is kind of whatever.
00:49:37
Speaker
He's just goofy. And I love goofy, but he's just kinda like... I don't know. He seems like he is not really the major villain, but he so badly wants to be. You find in further Spider-Man stories, Sergei Craven, he has many children.
00:50:05
Speaker
And they all show up as some version of like a Craven the Hunter sort of wannabe and they're all boring as hell. I do not like a single one of them. And I think it's also because I do like a sense of mystery.
00:50:25
Speaker
We already know his deal very like head on. We knew it in the finale that he was there to like do his dad's work and kill Spider-Man. And when that's all you have to say, it's a little boring. You have to have like a conflict within himself. You have to have an interesting plan then to hold this character because the character is not interesting.
00:50:50
Speaker
So your plan has to be interesting. Yeah. Like he doesn't have any poison birds or like fear gas or something, you know, like something weird. That's like, Oh, that's a fun thing to follow. It's just, this guy is, is smelling his way through New York city. Spider-Man uses like some kind of like
00:51:16
Speaker
drug or something to do it. And like, I don't know, I thought it'd be cool if like, maybe if you like, kind of give him an addiction to like the predator mode, like, and then he hurt someone that he loved. Like, I don't know, but it's just like, he, my cat's behind me. But yeah, he's just, he's very like one-dimensional. And I think he's just kind of whatever. The cartoon, I think, does a better job with Craven.
00:51:44
Speaker
And one of the episodes, he's talked down by a woman that he's in love with. And it's in part because the stuff that he's taking to make him craven is making him more violent and more obsessive. That's what I'm saying. I think that would be really interesting to see that you don't end this. I understand why later on, but because he really is just like, I think it's because he's just very clearly like the secondary villain.
00:52:14
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you get that vibe. And it's kind of it's OK. He's just kind of whatever. I think it's funny when he interrupts flirty moments because it's just like, oh, my God, are they going to kiss? No, there's a man dressed like a saber tooth. And it's just funny. So he's OK. He's whatever. That was kind of my con. Anyway, back to Spider-Man, the web of life. Where are we?
00:52:45
Speaker
This is part three of four. This is the web of Spider-Man 121. And this time it opens up with Cain, who beats up a bunch of punks who are harassing a homeless woman who's named Annie. She was given a name she does not return.
00:53:06
Speaker
but we love Annie. Okay. Yeah. It's better than in, in most of the Chris Claremont era, X-Men books, if a character is introduced and given a name, it is a death sentence. It's like within a few, that means that like within a few pages, they are going to die because he wants you to care about them so that he can kill them off. Yeah. Annie's just a lady.
00:53:30
Speaker
she was getting harassed, Kane beats up the people who were harassing her, and it's like in a very like neutral way, like in terms of character alignment, like with Venom, it was kind of like this chaotic good. I was just gonna say, if you had to like D&D this, the alignment chart. Which I often have had to do, I've met so many characters. He's kind of like,
00:54:00
Speaker
He's a chaotic neutral, but he's definitely not as chaotic as Venom. I would say Venom is very much like a chaotic evil. Okay. Yeah. All right. I can see this.
00:54:19
Speaker
Yeah, like Kane doesn't really care if he beats, like if he kills anybody, but like he's main goal is just to incapacitate when it's a thing that has nothing to do with him. Like people are just in the way and they were inconveniencing him and apparently this lady. So that is the first scene. I guess it's kind of to show you that just like a little bit of like who Kane is,
00:54:46
Speaker
Like, he doesn't hurt the homeless woman, but he beats up the punks, but he also very clearly wants to kill Spider-Man. So again, it's just kind of giving you a highlight of his character alignment. I feel like they didn't really have a good idea on how to show characterization for these characters that did not involve some sort of an action scene. Which I kind of get, because like, I know it's like... I think it's due with detriment though.
00:55:12
Speaker
Like I don't love it. And I know that I don't feel like every like comic has to have like punching on every single like panel. Like I'm cool with a comic that has like some emotional moments. But I don't know if it's like just this era of Spider-Man where like everything has to be like fists and kicking, you know, fists and kicking. Yeah, I like that.
00:55:40
Speaker
So I don't know. I don't know if it's like part of just what the era is and just this is the genre that we're reading. Maybe just this is not my favorite genre because again, I want more like character building moments. And I don't need. I think it really depends on for that.
00:55:59
Speaker
I was a big fan of the sort of bronze era Spider-Man comic books, which was around the eighties. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of like fists and kicking, but there's also like, there's an entire issue where Mary Jane and Peter go on a long walk and just talk about their lives.
00:56:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I think like little moments like that are cool. And I do like action scenes. I think I like very stylized action scenes. Like I think I liked the fighting more in the last thing that I read, because just the way that like the poses were, were very cool and like, very like picturesque fighting. This one doesn't feel so much like that. Again, the art's still good though.
00:56:50
Speaker
So after we see Kane beat up a bunch of people, Scarlet Spider is saving a lady and a cab. Basically the cab was going to be like, it's snowing. This is like the Christmas episode. A lady and a cab. New Disney movie. So like it's snowing at the moment. It's like Christmas time.
00:57:13
Speaker
or some arbitrary winter. A weird side note off of that is that is one of the things I kind of miss about comics is they used to do a lot more of like very seasonal things. Yeah. And I love that. Like we didn't get any before. So like I could have just assumed it was like October or I could have assumed it was July. I had no idea. But it's snowing right now. So it has to be winter.
00:57:43
Speaker
unless the world is falling apart. But right now it's not, so it's winter. So this cab was like coming forward, there's ice on the road and he's like, I've been a cab driver for 10 years, nothing ever bad has happened to me. But he's about to crash into a lady and then the Scarlet Spider comes and like saves everybody. That's cool.
00:58:02
Speaker
So nothing bad still hasn't like he's fine. Yeah, good. Now, because we ended with Grim, the hunter hunting for the real Spider-Man, the Scarlet Spider is on his way to Spider-Man to try and save him from Grim Hunter. Gotcha. So he saves the cattle and the lady on the way. Now,
00:58:32
Speaker
Remember when I said that Grim Hunter had a silent butler? Yes. We speak now. All right. Character development. New scene. Gregor has a monologue. And it's pretty much just being like, ah, yes, like this guy, his actual name is Vlad, like Vlad mayor. Classic villain name. So Gregor's talking about how Vlad slash Grim
00:59:01
Speaker
Um, he's sad that he's descending into obsession over Spider-Man and it's kind of like this family curse that he just kind of has to watch happen as Gregor was friends with, uh, Craven the Hunter. And when he died, Gregor kind of took over as like Brim's father figure again, the Alfred.
00:59:25
Speaker
and really sees him as like a son and it's just kind of sad that like he can't really do anything to help him except for just if anything feed into the obsession like helping him get the chopper ready for when they want to go fly to New York and kill Spider-Man like make sure the weapons are like he can't stop him. Yeah. So he kind of just has to help him.
00:59:49
Speaker
Which sucks. Yeah, I kind of feel bad for, uh, for him. I liked Gregor. I thought he was just, I was like, yeah, he's, he's there. I feel like he drinks tea. Good for him. Also sad for him. Next, we're going to go to detective Raven. He does confirm that the killer in NYC
01:00:12
Speaker
who again, I think it's Kane. He confirms it's the same one. They look at some photos of victims, compare them. It's confirmed. Okay. Yeah. Next scene. Scarlet's. I would hope so. Cause otherwise it's like, man, they wasted a lot of, a lot of time on this one person or just hunting in the wrong, like, yeah. Or it would be like, they're kind of alluding to like the next bad guy.
01:00:40
Speaker
Yeah, which is like if you're going to be like alluding from like the last finale to like this one, like it's like just get on. What a time. But so it's been confirmed. They kind of do it in this like kind of fun like.
01:00:58
Speaker
classic 90s thriller way where it kind of just like it takes your time. It might feel like a bit of a slow burn. It's cool. They're confirming things. That's fun. So now we're back to Ben Riley, Scarlet Spider. He is at Peter's apartment. He's on the outside on a different rooftop. He's kind of looking in just to make sure he's keeping watch for his, for his OG.
01:01:25
Speaker
While he's on watch, he is attacked by Kane. So Kane has finally done something directly to another character. This is like another main character. This is the first time that this has happened. However, they have like, there's always a conversation while people are fighting. They have a conversation as though they have met and have fought before. And that Kane had essentially won the last battle.
01:01:57
Speaker
So it's already known to Scarlet Spider that Kane is a tough cookie and he is caught unawares by him. Like they do make it clear that the Spidey Sense didn't go off when Kane was behind him. So that's another interesting thing. Usually the Spidey Sense goes off whenever any trouble is around. And usually it wouldn't go off with like
01:02:24
Speaker
between Ben and Peter because they're kind of the same person, or with like venom because they had been connected at some point, you know? So that was like kind of a thing that it's like, they gotta be connected, but they haven't told us. It's really annoying. While Cain attacks
01:02:54
Speaker
Scarlet Spider. Grim appears at Peter Parker's apartment and he's ready to kill Spider-Man. But before he can make it in, Kane pretty much incapacitated Scarlet Spider just long enough to get over to Grim.
01:03:14
Speaker
because he sees Grim as an interference to his mission, which is to also kill Spider-Man. So now you have two villains, one who is clearly a side character and one who is a no context, possibly main villain. At odds, they've now crossed paths and they're both in each other's way. Because the one thing about Grim Hunter is he is like very determined. He has his one mission and he is like fully committed to his one mission. So,
01:03:43
Speaker
Now, because these two see each other as an interference, it is presumed that they are going to fight. Which is what happens in the next issue. We're at the last one. It's Spider-Man 55! Okay. We've made it. This has gone on so much quicker than the last one.
01:04:04
Speaker
I feel like there's a lot less going on in this one too. It's very straightforward. It's a very clear cut story, which I found very refreshing. Again, I powered through this in two hours. It was delightful. I was like, this is easy.
01:04:20
Speaker
I can see this being kind of upsetting if you're paying for the comic books as they're coming out just to pay for four different books to get a very straightforward, very simple story. But like if you're going to read it, it's kind of fun. Like it's fun and refreshing if you're like, you know, you're getting a lot of like heavy story. And this is kind of the quick in between like it's the way for thin minutes before we vomit excessively.
01:04:50
Speaker
Well, when when Chris Claremont would do big, big X-Men stories, he would always follow them up with what kind of became his quiet issues, who would be like Kitty pride alone in the mansion wondering about like her life or the X-Men play baseball, you know, or something like something like that. And that's so that's where Twilight got it from.
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah. That's that. The X-Men playing baseball is one of my favorite things to keep coming back to. And one of the first issues I ever had, I got from a subscription that I got from marble with the X-Men. They're playing basketball. And I was like, this is bullshit. That's not the game that they play. They play baseball and baseball. They won't even veer to softball.
01:05:45
Speaker
That's okay. But yeah, this was like very quick and easy. And it's like kind of surprising we've already made it to part four. Very fun. So starts off, Scarlet Spider, he's pretty beaten up and he's pretty bruised, but he doesn't want to like give up because now there are two people dying to kill.
01:06:06
Speaker
So he's like, I gotta stop these two. And though I am not super like confident that I'm physically able to defeat two super bad guys at once, I'm still gonna try. And he also doesn't want one of them to kill the other. He just doesn't really want anyone to die. He'd rather go through the rest of his life. See, this is continuing Ben's role as the
01:06:28
Speaker
So far, the better Spider-Man than Spider-Man. Yeah, because it's like, like, you know what, Grim or Kane, to kill each other. Like, he just, he just wants everyone to chill out. Like, you go, Ben. So he's got to find a way to stop them from killing each other in Peter, which is when
01:06:54
Speaker
just kind of coincidentally, Dr. Seaward shows up and he comes to Ben's aid and he takes him to his New York lab. So it is clear that Dr. Seaward met with Ben when he was not in New York, when he was somewhere else. I do not know where that was. We do not know for how long.
01:07:21
Speaker
We know that they did lab testing on Ben, but they didn't finish it. It's kind of what you learn in this little bit. And Dr. Seaword knows of Cain. That's kind of, that's like the bare bones of what we know after reading these four, like, had made this lab issue. We can infer that Dr. Seaword has,
01:07:47
Speaker
at least some money because he has a lab in New York City that he just isn't there for up until this scene. So he's paying to keep that. Yeah. And it's clearly been empty for like, like unused for a while dropping money. He's like, and he sets up, you know, he sets up labs in every major city.
01:08:16
Speaker
I got a lab in Idaho, but like, I don't know, this New York City one, that real estate's just throw away. This one in Idaho though, prime real estate. Also, I don't actually know if it's in Ohio or Idaho. I don't know what state I picked for this bit. I don't know where it is. Do not take my word for it. I'll be really happily surprised if it's in Idaho though. I think I picked Idaho.
01:08:46
Speaker
I don't know. Anyway, back to Spider-Man. I wonder if there will be a counter of how many times I say back to Spider-Man and how progressively insane they get.
01:09:00
Speaker
I'm curious how many I'm going to leave in because so many of them come after us having like very weird things that have pulled us away from actually recording. We've been recording like, this is the shortest recording we've ever had. But we've been recording for two hours, but not like not according to the ticker on your guess. We've stopped it. Yeah.
01:09:25
Speaker
Oh my God, we're such a mess. It's okay. So is this thing? Okay. So Kane, he is chasing Grim. And cause again, they're, they've reached a crossroads.
01:09:45
Speaker
So he's chasing after Grimm. He also kind of has this like feeling that Grimm was going to be the one who was going to murder Mary Jane. So he feels like he has to stop him.
01:09:59
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of warranted with like everything. Yeah. I mean, like if Rim was at the apartment, like Mary Jane lives at the apartment. It's a 50-50 of who he's going to murder. Maybe he thinks Mary Jane is Spider-Man. Which would be pretty cool, but unfortunately that was not the case. So Kane kind of has two reasons why he wants to kill Rim and
01:10:27
Speaker
Grim just wants Cain out of the way because he wants to kill Spider-Man. So the two villains, they catch up to each other, they're fighting now. Scarlet Spider catches up with them and he uses his special web shooters now that he's kind of regained strength after hanging out in the lab. He paralyzes Cain.
01:10:46
Speaker
and Cain falls into the water because they end up at some kind of like woodsy park or whatever. It's probably Central Park. He falls in the water. It's the arbitrary villain falls in water so they can't actually die. That happens. Two story long in a row. Yeah. I got a lot of wet villains here. I got a heist and you got wet villains. We got heist and soggy villains.
01:11:15
Speaker
what a weird comic god if i wasn't naming these after the the storylines it would be heists and soggy villains yeah heist is the first one soggy villains to electric boogaloo is this episode
01:11:32
Speaker
We can always hear a little parentheses, but we're not going to try that hard. It's fine. So obviously, Cain's not going to die because he's just fallen into water. Nowhere to be found, but he'll be there somewhere. Grim has kind of gone missing during the kerfuffle of paralyzing Cain. So we don't know where he is. Now, Scarlet Spider finds it very important to go warn Peter
01:12:02
Speaker
about the two people going after him. And again, for context, Ben Riley does not know that Spider-Man is currently poisoned by birds. We saw like, we saw while reading that that was a thing that happened. Like we also, we didn't know it was poisoned by birds. We just heard he was poisoned. So we don't, he doesn't know. Ben doesn't know, we know. So
01:12:33
Speaker
Scarlet Spider's gonna go warn Peter. While Ben leaves, now we cut back to Grim, and he's kind of called in reinforcements by Gregor to get some more weapons with their helicopter, because he always attacked Gregor, part of just as many weird gadgets. I feel like he shouldn't have a hard time fighting anyone.
01:13:02
Speaker
if you can call in a helicopter at any point. Like I'm always an advantage to have a helicopter. It's not the most stealthy mode of transportation. Like a razor scooter is far more stealthier than a helicopter. But I would always much rather have a functioning helicopter that someone is licensed to drive than a razor scooter because your shin only hurts for so long.
01:13:33
Speaker
I have to ask, you brought up, you brought up Razor Scooters. Are you aware of the Spider-Man villain Rocket Racer? No. Is he a Razor Scooter guy? And he's not on a Razor Scooter, but he's got like, so I think it's different things at different points, but it's like roller blades that just go super fast.
01:14:01
Speaker
Iconic. Oh my God. I think at one point it's like it's a skateboard that like it's so. It's any wheels. I love it. It's also.
01:14:15
Speaker
mildly racist because they were like, let's put a black guy on a skateboard. Like it's been called out before by people being like, you decided that this was what you were going to do. Like based in that, that sort of era of, uh, pop culture of the, like the black kids skating out there and being punks. Damn it. Oh, okay. It took me a minute. I was like,
01:14:46
Speaker
Now I do. Now I do. I'm okay now. I was just like, why are roller skates racing? So Dwayne McDuffie, who was a wonderful comic book writer, he created static shock. Oh, I love static shock. He's so fun. One of the things he put forth was a pitch, and it was kind of like a modest proposal.
01:15:14
Speaker
Right. I'm going to I'm going to fuck with you by being like super serious on a thing. Yeah. So I'm just going to read to you from a pitch that he put together called. I hate the name, but that's part of why it's fun. It was Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers. Wow. It starts with in the past year, 25 percent of all African-American superheroes appearing in the Marvel universe possessed
01:15:44
Speaker
skateboard-based superpowers. In an attempt to remain on the cutting edge of comics, I hereby propose a new series that will fully exploit this exciting new trend. When a group of teenage Negroes find cosmic-powered skateboards, their lives are forever changed. A team of distinct characters join together, swearing an oath to use their powers for good. Rocket Racer, who is already a character. A black guy on a skateboard.
01:16:13
Speaker
Night Thrasher, already a character, a black guy on a skateboard. Dark Wheely, and this one I don't know if it is a real character or not. And it is described as a black guy on a skateboard. And their leader, the mysterious black guy on a skateboard known only as that mysterious black guy on a skateboard. So like, he, and this is, that's only half of his pitch. It keeps going. It is so funny.
01:16:40
Speaker
It is unfortunately so true of like where where comics were at at the time and sort of where race relations were at at the time. Yeah. This goes along with what I was saying in my fridging episode about like you have
01:16:55
Speaker
percentages of characters and the ways that that small percentage is handled. Yeah. And, you know, you have completely derailed the Spider-Man thing, but you have like a minority group of characters and then you make them entirely based around stereotypes of the time. Yeah, absolutely. It's pain in the ass. And I really love that he just shoved that in their faces.
01:17:22
Speaker
Dwayne McDuffie, wonderful, wonderful man. Yeah, I'm a fan. You go, Dwayne. We like you. Yeah. And I love static shock. I just think he's beat. And he went back to Spiderman.
01:17:42
Speaker
We're almost done, I promise. This is actually like the very end. So Grim with Gregor kind of in the background with a helicopter tracks down Kane again. So this time, shit just gets shut down quick. Kane marks Grim. He does like special move that marks him, which kills Grim.
01:18:11
Speaker
leaving Gregor to watch his like, quote unquote, son die. Which really alludes to like, I guess the curse is going to go to Gregor now of like being obsessed with Spider-Man or Kane or whoever. Because Gregor certainly sounds like a name that could become part of this villain family. So that that ends there. And you see the mark when
01:18:41
Speaker
Grimm dies, and it matches the photos that Detective Raven saw. So Detective Corinne was read all along.
01:18:55
Speaker
And in fact, we have now learned that Cain is from Utah and maybe a Mormon. And that's where it ends. That's it. I liked it. I thought it was short and sweet. Again, it's that little wafer thin mint after you're about to vomit profusely. Classic Montepay fan.
01:19:24
Speaker
But again, the thing I really didn't like was this just shows you how much of a gap in the timeline there is regarding Ben Riley context. And it seems very important, but nobody is telling you what you need to know. So I liked that this was like a clear cut story. Like if this was just all one shot and you had the information about like Kane,
01:19:51
Speaker
Mm hmm. Great. This is this is great. But you don't have that information about Cain or Ben Riley's like previous time with Dr. C word. So it's very like. That's kind of what brings it down, because it's like you want to just understand the story you're reading. But and they're not alluding like the way it's written, it's not like it's written like
01:20:19
Speaker
you're gonna learn about it later. It's written like this very clearly already happened and we're just kind of tossing it in there so you remember that it happened. And they don't give you like the little asterisk of like, oh, read this issue here. That's not a thing. They just haven't told you.
01:20:42
Speaker
like anything. And so that kind of, that annoyed me, but otherwise it was one clear storyline. And I thought that was fun. I had a lot of fun with this. I could follow this a lot more closely than the last storyline. Yes, absolutely.
01:21:05
Speaker
it was easier to be like, okay, this is how this leads to this. And this is how this leads to this. And not just kind of like, Ben sort of figures out venom is around somewhere. And then at some point they run into each other. Like, yeah. So, and again, with last one, there were just so many people
01:21:29
Speaker
who had their own thing that they wanted to do. But with this story, everyone still kind of had their own thing, but they were all like very connected, you know? Like we honestly, as much as I liked the character last, like last thing that I read, Scream was not really relevant to the story. They were just a character that wanted to talk to Venom
01:21:56
Speaker
But very clearly like then I'm pushing them out of the panel. Yeah. Like it was almost like the writers, like one of them really wanted this character and then the rest of them didn't. So they kept trying to push it out, making it like irrelevant. But with this, it's like everybody was on the same page. Mm hmm. It was it's just the cane crap that like if I knew more
01:22:21
Speaker
about the context of like, what was the previous fight that he had with the Scarlet Spider? When did they meet? Why does the Doctor know about him? Also, who the hell is the Doctor? And what does he have to do with Ben? If we knew all of that prior, it would have made it more interesting. If anything, because again, it seems like Kane is going to be very relevant, there should have been like a little two-parter of just like,
01:22:50
Speaker
Here's what happened, the adventures of Ben Riley and the doctor. Just a little toss in, but that kind of doesn't make this as far as I know. I have some good news for you. This won't come as quickly as you would hope, but in about nine episodes or so, we're gonna do a storyline called The Lost Years.
01:23:20
Speaker
And we will follow Ben through the years that he was no longer in New York City. So he was gone for years. It's about five years. Okay. It does not seem like it was five years. Yeah. It seems like he, cause like in the last one, they say that he's gonna leave and then he comes back. So,
01:23:48
Speaker
So no, no, no, I'm talking about the time between Ben first being cloned and like disappearing and coming back to New York. That's about five years. So before like the first thing we read. Yes. Those years. Okay. We're going to get an entire flashback storyline. Okay.
01:24:16
Speaker
cool i was i was confused for a while because so the last episode two like for us the second thing what i the first thing i read it's felt like that exile returns right so it makes it seem like the part where he's like i'm gonna leave new york but then he comes back for like the last like
01:24:41
Speaker
issue. It made it seem like that's where all this stuff happened, like he was gone for a weekend. But then you said here, but I was like, why would he just like, that's not in character for him to just leave. Yeah. Five years while Venom is still murdering people on rooftop.
01:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, we're going to do, we're going to cover the actual storyline, what happened to it. And you will get definitive answers on what happened with the detective Raven and Kane and Ben. It's all connected.
01:25:23
Speaker
Okay. It's just very poorly connected. Very poorly like plotted out in these little things. And this is, it's in, I've mentioned before, it's indicative of how Marvel was doing things at the time. You had Cable showing up and having a mysterious past and he's connected to all these characters and it's, oh, isn't it so mysterious that everyone kind of knows Cable? And it's like, no, it's not interesting. It shouldn't, I feel like if they were going to elude something about Kane,
01:25:52
Speaker
It would have been more of, it should have been more of like, maybe just talking about his time with the doctor or like just maybe a glimpse on like the last fight he had with the Scarlet Spider instead of the whole like, I'm having visions of Mary Jane being murdered. Right. So, but
01:26:15
Speaker
and maybe just push that a bit later, but I could be wrong by the next thing I read. It might then come into play, kind of like when I thought that like, oh, they just like made some cameos with Betty and Gabby or whatever, because now they're back and it does make sense. So it was nice that this thing kind of confirmed some solidness to like some people.
01:26:46
Speaker
but it also made some even more ambiguous. So all in all, it was fine. If you need a one shot to read, go ahead. Web of Life is a fun little like quick thing that sometimes has the essence of a Michael Douglas 90s thriller.
01:27:07
Speaker
Because you get those really random sexual tension scenes, and then it immediately cuts to an old man trying to solve a crime sometimes. It is really weird that Michael Douglas has so many very oddly sexual scenes, because that's not at all... Like fatal attraction? Yeah.
01:27:32
Speaker
Like we got a basic instinct. I was going to just mention basic instinct. It's weird. Basic instinct is like so weird. I think the game sometimes has like some weird moments like that. I'm starting to slowly realize that I have watched a lot of Michael Douglas thrillers.
01:27:53
Speaker
Well, it was in a lot of really good ones and really like popular ones. It's just that they're all weird and have some very sexual undertone. That was the 90s though. The 90s was all, and like maybe the late 80s, but they were all about horny thrillers. And sometimes they're really funny. They're just so interesting. What a time. But yeah.
01:28:15
Speaker
Serve the web, serve the web. Shut up, Brock. We don't have time. I have some trivia for this episode. Love it. And I would suggest to you, before you read the next storyline, you're going to read. And this might push us off some of our schedule. And that's OK. Before you read the next storyline,
01:28:44
Speaker
wait until after we record our next episode. OK. Because I can tell you for a fact, there is like this big bump, unless you unless you don't care about spoilers. That's fine. There is like a thing that happens in Peter's life that is going to be big in coming episodes. OK. As of right now, where we're at is like the things that we've been reading are have been quite separate.
01:29:14
Speaker
Yeah, they're going to start coming together. It only just kind of started with this with the web of life because you did have shots of like you like you saw Mary Jane getting off the plane. You saw her at the doctor. So like very clearly those people are still around and you saw like Spider-Man being like, oh, ouch. Bird poison. Bird poison. Like I can tell that it's starting to like
01:29:45
Speaker
Mighty Morphin' spider voice together. Okay, so one piece of trivia is while you were talking, I looked up Gregor from the Marvel Comics. Gregor! Gregor continues as a character
01:30:06
Speaker
outside of just this storyline, which, or at least outside of the Craven, the Hunter storyline, not for a long, not for like a super long time, but essentially he becomes like a, a, a vigilante mercenary kind of guy and becomes obsessed with hunting down Cain and
01:30:36
Speaker
somehow gets tied into The Savage Land in K-ZAR. I don't know if you know The Savage Land or K-ZAR. The Savage Land is one of my favorite Marvel Comics concepts. It is an area in the middle of Antarctica that is a prehistoric jungle. There's like a hole in the middle of Antarctica.
01:31:03
Speaker
where there is no ice and it is a tropical climate and there's various reasons given as to why and dinosaurs exist and there's like
01:31:17
Speaker
jungle people and there's different mutant tribes and animal people. It's a lot of fun. It's one of my favorite, favorite concepts. That reminds me of, do you know what Danger Five is? Yes. It's like the episode of Danger Five where they're recreating the dinosaurs and they have to go to the islands.
01:31:40
Speaker
I was actually just talking about Danger 5 today. I was talking about some of the memes that come out of it. And my coworker had no idea what I was talking about and so I just sent one to them and they were like, this is great. Which one was it? Was it the sensible chuckles? It was the sensible chuckle.
Marvel's Evolution and Character Potential
01:32:02
Speaker
Iconic I used to follow that that guy on Instagram and He would just share a lot of pictures of his plug. I like that. That's great. He's cool. That whole cast is so funny. I Loved that show I'm continuing your love of Australians Like on brand everything I
01:32:28
Speaker
So, uh, Gregor, uh, gets it, uh, tied into, uh, the Savage land and Kesar in particular. Kesar is a guy who at some point, I don't remember his full story, but he somehow ended up in the Savage land and kind of just becomes like a warrior for the people there. Uh, it's,
01:32:51
Speaker
weird. And it's just, it's like, it's fine. It's fine. If you want to, if you want to read sort of He-Man kind of stories, that's kind of where you would go. So that's, that's the first big piece of trivia there, just that he does exist and he does continue on. And apparently he, there is, there is no actual definitive end to his story. He, no one has just written him in like the last 20 years. So
01:33:20
Speaker
Anyone could pick him up at any point and just be like, Oh yeah, he's been knitting for a while. Now he's back. Like we always do.
01:33:31
Speaker
At the end of these episodes, I'm going to read from some of Glenn Greenberg, who was an editor at the time on Spider-Man comics about sort of where he was in all of this and sort of some of the behind the scenes stuff that was going on. I'm going to skip over some of it because some of it does detail what I'm going to be going over in our next episode. But I'll focus pretty heavily on what he says about Ben.
01:33:58
Speaker
So this is quoting from, from Glenn around the time of web of life and web of death. Marvel was split into five groups by the geniuses who were running the company. And then in parentheses, wrote into the ground at that point, comedy.
01:34:16
Speaker
Tom DeFalco was suddenly out as editor in chief. So this is going to be around this time where Tom's kicked out. He's no longer going to be editor. A status quo change that many of us at the company would greatly regret in the months and years to come. There were now five editor in chiefs, each heading up, which is kind of hard to be in chief if there are five of you. Yeah.
01:34:40
Speaker
Each heading up their own line of books. There was the X-Men group with Bob Harris, the Marvel Heroes group with Mark Gruenwald, the Marvel Edge group with Bobby Chase, and licensed titles slash Marvel Eternaverse group with Karl Potts. Many of these names should be kind of familiar to anyone who's reading comics around the time. They're all kind of big names within the comic book industry. Karl Potts with a lot of Punisher stuff.
01:35:06
Speaker
Bob Harris ends up doing a lot of really cool stuff with Ultimate Spider-Man and things like that. A lot of good times. And the Spider-Man group is now overseen by Bob Budiansky. Budiansky, if you remember from the primer episode that we did, he ends up coming in and there's a lot of back and forth with him. In fact, I pulled a quote from that particular episode that we did where
01:35:34
Speaker
They kind of talk about how he was mired and indecision. He was like, so he, he becomes so overwhelmed with the clone saga that he can't make a decision about anything. And that's part of why it just keeps going. Right. So long time, Spider-Man editor, Danny Fingroth was still on board a Spider-Man group editor and the clone saga was already well underway. As a result of these department changes, Tom Breivor and I were phased into the Spider-Man group.
01:36:02
Speaker
So this is gonna be around the time that Glenn comes in. Tom was a full editor and I had been his assistant for about a year or two by this point. We were to produce special Spider-Man projects in addition to the monthly titles like New Warriors, which we had just inherited from another editor. And I'm gonna skip the next little section of comments on here because that details some of the stuff that I'm gonna be going over next week. Dr. Seaward, Dr. Seaward Trainer was named after Howard Mackey's father-in-law.
01:36:32
Speaker
and he was a pretty intriguing character. Okay. This is according to Glenn. I liked C word. I thought there was a lot of potential for characterization with him. Looking back, it's pretty ironic that I ended up writing the last word on the character when the clone saga finally ended. So there's gonna be some more information about him coming out. Okay, well, that's good. Again, I love context. Kane throughout this
01:37:00
Speaker
was particularly like they chose him to kill off some of Spider-Man's villains. And so like that was, I mean, pretty clear early on, even in this, I think. Okay. So that's good. The idea was to clear the decks a bit, make room for some new villains and shown Kane was really strutting his stuff.
01:37:22
Speaker
Glenn says, my understanding is that Howard Mackey offered up the Grim Hunter as Kane's next victim. Howard had introduced the Grim Hunter only a short time earlier with much accompanying hype and fireworks, but I presume that Howard realized very quickly that he really had no idea where to go with the character. So he offered the Grim Hunter up as a sacrifice to the larger storyline and the character was pretty much forgotten after that, which
01:37:46
Speaker
Makes sense. We were talking about how it's kind of boring. You have a character. Yeah. Just a one line guy. Yeah. Uh, Glenn goes on. As I mentioned before, there was a lot of talk about Kane at this point, his future potential as a franchise character. And there were discussions about possibly spinning him off eventually into his own title, the way Venom had been, which I think is incredibly premature. That's pretty bold. It's also like,
01:38:14
Speaker
from so this is supposed to be like an event saga like a big big event at the moment I'm as a reader of what I have read I'm not feeling as though it's like a like a big event I kind of feel like I'm just reading like some short stories some short little issues and
01:38:45
Speaker
maybe that's just because like, and no, but I don't think it does have to do with like how we've divvied up the reading. It like it, it all feels kind of just like, small. And I wonder if that's because there are so many villains at the moment. I think it's a way being used, you know, like, so when I read, um,
01:39:13
Speaker
Oh, because I've read so few things. Um, when I read the, the white knight, so you, it was very clear that you had, um, Jack Napier slash like the Joker and you had this other part, like there were two different Harley Quinn's. There was the one that was very attached to the Joker and there's one that's very attached to Jack Napier. So the one that's very attached to the Joker.
01:39:41
Speaker
slowly grows and grows and grows to be the big bad. And you get to see that growth. And there are still some like, you know, some other like you see some play face, you see some mad hatter, like, you see a bunch of like these guys. But they're all used specifically, very quickly and to clearly support the growth of the big bad. Like, yeah, my face is involved because they use parts of him to
01:40:11
Speaker
like affect other bad guys or whatever. And the Mad Hatter's there to like use his mind, equipment, whatever. And all the bad guys are used for this one like big raid or something. So like, so yes, there are a lot of them and they do get beat up, but it's not so important of what they're individually doing. It's what they're doing as a group.
01:40:39
Speaker
And right now with this, it feels kind of more just like the monster of the week. Like, the vulture's here. He's bad. Oh, now he's gone. Venom's here. He's bad. Oh, now he's gone. Like, Cain has kind of been the only one that they're like growing. You can't, you're so distracted to see the growth because you're just, you have all these other people getting thrown at you.
01:41:09
Speaker
So I think right now it doesn't feel very much like an event. But it is very cold of them to just put all this on like a new character that they apparently don't really want to give much context for. I don't think it's going to. I think there's going to be a mix of it kind of staying this way and being sort of like, well, it's just this story. It's not a like it's not bleeding into the next one. And I think
01:41:39
Speaker
it's also going to start feeling way more like a saga in that it feels it will just keep going with mystery and. Yeah. Like right now it's just like Peter doesn't even know Ben's alive. Like. Yeah. I think it's kind of just like I'm sure my opinion will change as we read more and more things connect to each other or more things don't. I think just right now after reading I guess like four
01:42:09
Speaker
books, read a lot of issues. Like I don't really know what to call what we've read right now. I'm going to say four books though. It does seem like they are pretty like individual and they're kind of soft sequels of each other, you know? Yeah. And I think with this particular, so some of the plan was they were going to try to wrap things up by Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man 400.
01:42:39
Speaker
that was because it's a big round number, hey, we're going to do a big thing, we're going to change the status quo. And I think the idea of it being a saga was less about this one big story that's driving everything and more about the ending that's going to change everything.
01:43:00
Speaker
However, I also know that Spider-Man 400 no longer ends up being the thing that they wanted it to be and becomes a different story entirely. And I think it's also just like, how do you get people to give a shit about the ending if you didn't work hard on the beginning or middle? You know? And I think it's...
01:43:26
Speaker
I think that if I were to guess, the thought process is that with it changing and it basically being like Peter is no longer, because the idea is Peter is not gonna be involved anymore. Yeah, it's gonna be Ben. It's gonna be Ben. And I think the idea would be you would pick it up knowing that Ben is moving the story forward.
01:43:55
Speaker
It's sort of like when Marvel went through and decided that they were going to do the one moment in time, one more day, brand new day, weird mix of storylines there. The idea was that Peter would end his marriage and brand new day was going to set up
01:44:22
Speaker
a basically a different timeline where everything is different now. And that did kind of, it pissed a lot of people off, but it did kind of work in that people were like, okay, I care a little bit about this story that it's also kind of shitty, but only because it sets up an entirely different story.
Identity and Speculation in Spider-Man Universe
01:44:46
Speaker
Right. Okay.
01:44:49
Speaker
I think what really defines the clone saga as a saga is that it just is this weird mess that just keeps going in different, it's a web, it keeps going in different directions and you kind of get caught up in little things along the way. So it's one huge story, but there's so many tiny little stories within it, you know?
01:45:20
Speaker
I don't know that that was the idea at the time. Yeah, I don't know either. I guess we will figure that out as we continue to read. Now I do have a question for you because I asked you at the beginning if you could tell me why you thought this was titled Web of Life and why mine would be Web of Death.
01:45:43
Speaker
Oh, so I think so with this, um, Ben Riley very much wants to like have a life, you know, he, he does have a very big crush on Betty and he does want to like, he wants to see more of her. And that's kind of like his big motivation of like, I want to be a person and.
01:46:08
Speaker
He keeps getting tripped up like, you know, he'll have like his flirty saucy moment, but then a bad guy comes in. Yeah. Because it gets in the way. And so I think he's like just trying to figure out.
01:46:22
Speaker
the mess of having a life. Now that he's kind of accepted, I'm in New York, like I have to be here. How do I go about existing in order to do that? Life is not a straight line, whether it is in reality or in comics. And he's just figuring his out. So I think the title made sense. And yeah, that's what I'm going with. I'm gonna make a guess for Web of Death.
01:46:52
Speaker
Okay, it sounds like a lot of people are gonna die. And maybe the deaths are connected to each other. There is a bit of like, death sort of hanging over death, at least like, you know, death hanging over the all of the characters in one way or another. That is going to be one of the things that makes that web of death. And web of life is
01:47:23
Speaker
Kind of like what you said, it's supposed to be Ben Riley starting his life like separate from Peter. Yeah. He is, he's becoming his own person now. And I think he's doing an okay job. Yeah, I like Ben. Yeah, I like him. I think it's great that like, you know, he wants to pursue feelings he has for like a person.
01:47:47
Speaker
Do I think like, Hey, maybe try and meet some people like, you know, don't just go off of your, your Peter Parker memories, because then you were just off-handedly making it difficult for you. But I also like, I don't really think too much about that because he does have these memories and memories do provoke feelings and emotions for anybody. So like, of course he's probably going to have a crush on someone from Peter's
01:48:17
Speaker
life because he holds strong memories of those people already. Yeah, of course. And wants to explore them because the other one can't. So I get it. From a logic standpoint, if it were me and not a piece of story fiction that needs probably a romance plot, I would maybe just be like, damn, I got to find my own.
01:48:44
Speaker
Like if I were Ben Riley, maybe I'd go for Gabby instead. Cause Gabby has seen Ben Riley's face and clearly does not know that it is Peter Parker. And New York is big. So I feel like that's a good safe option. But like, if you don't want to follow that, that's fine. More drama to read. And along those lines, there's a character that's introduced in the ultimate Spider-Man clone saga. Yeah. Which I wish they,
01:49:14
Speaker
I wish there was a way for them to bring into the main Marvel universe and try to like play with because it was such an interesting idea. And it is, there's a character that is cloned from Peter, but she is a woman. And it's the idea of following someone who has all of the memories of being a man,
01:49:42
Speaker
is physically a woman. And that includes like all of the, like the romances, like Mary Jane, like that is a thing that was
01:49:54
Speaker
like she remembers and later on they do a lot of playing with like her sexuality mostly in stories I don't care about that aren't very good but I think that would be really interesting especially if you let's say get a trans woman to write this character yeah I would love this I don't know allegory
01:50:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little messy, but it's still like, it's the sci-fi way of doing some of this stuff. And like, hey, I don't know, maybe give her a trans friend, maybe a trans man, and like compare and contrast sort of like, hey, you know, we're kind of going through this weird experience that's not necessarily the same, but we can help each other kind of a thing. Yeah, and just kind of create like a cool kinship
01:50:47
Speaker
And this kind of, this comes up in my mind because like, you know, again, Ben is going after Betty, someone that Peter dated. It would have been so much more interesting. Like that's a funny, interesting thing, but it would have been really interesting. Like what if Ben was gay or like anything like that? And it's like, wow, this is why are things like what quirk happened, you know? And how does this change Peter's relationship with people? How does it change Ben's relationship?
01:51:18
Speaker
I feel like they they went with the bare bones on what could be done with this. Yeah. And I think like it would be really cool to kind of flesh out like those others, but they they just they they threw all like what they thought would be interesting in the villains. This kind of getting thrown out there instead of really like. Owning it on the character sometimes it feels like that.
01:51:46
Speaker
Cause I still like Ben Riley. I think he's cool. He has grown on me. I remember at first I was like, man, this guy's kind of annoying, but now we're like, oh, you go baby Ben. Like I'm okay with him. He's fine. Um, but yeah, it, sometimes it, you can kind of tell in the writing that there are possibly too many cooks in the kitchen.
01:52:12
Speaker
Yes. And I can again, we've talked about Sandman coming out around the same time. All I can think of is like Neil Gaiman being in charge of being in charge of like Peter or Ben. And then like imagine, you know, you might still have all of these characters. You also might not, you know, instead of having
01:52:42
Speaker
Oh, in the course of eight issues, we've had six different villains. You just have Peter and whatever Peter's going through. And I'm sure that would be very, you would get a lot out of it. But I mean, we have what we have and I don't think it's terrible. I think we're getting a lot of fun stuff. I think like as of right now, the shit talking of the Clone Saga is a bit hyperbolic.
01:53:11
Speaker
It's fine. No, it, it gets way worse. That's why I added as of now, three important words that can be highlighted as of now. It's fine. I'll let you know when to stop bothering with, uh, yeah, no, I thought it was fine. This is it. Read it. And if you have an hour to spare,
01:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's really simple.
Outro and Additional Content
01:53:43
Speaker
You can find more information, including the recommended reading and some of the visual companion for today's episode at comicallypedantic.com. You can follow us on Instagram, no Twitter anymore, by searching at pedantic cast. New episodes come out most Sundays on iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, Spotify, and at comicallypedantic.com.
01:54:06
Speaker
If you have any comments or questions, you can send them in text or audio recording to comicallypotanticagmail.com. Please indicate if you'd like your name or question read on the air. We will be back soon where we will dive deep into Web of Death and how Peter's dealing with his little bird flu. But until then, you can find more exciting adventures at your local comic shop.
01:54:44
Speaker
Oliver, what are you doing? What are you doing? You trying to go into the blanket? Okay. This will be the Derek is typing something fun for a side conversation that might not make it into the show.