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38 Plays1 year ago

Corinne and Derek are joined by Austin Rose as they learn about some of the behind the scenes drama that makes the Clone Saga so crazy! This will form the background for what they are reading moving forward.

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Transcript

Welcome and Episode Introduction

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, as always, is the wonderful Corinne Levy. Oh, hi. And for the first time in a long time, Miss Austin Rose Smith. She's back. I'm back, baby. I've missed you after a week of not seeing you.

Plans to Discuss Spider-Man Clone Saga

00:00:40
Speaker
So Austin has no real idea about what we are talking about, what we're getting into, anything like that. So this should be a lot of fun. And what actually kind of goes back to when when Corinne and I first started recording, because Corinne had absolutely no idea about any of the stuff that we were talking about. Yeah. And only a very small amount of growth has happened. So it's just a person who knows a lot of things, a person who maybe knows like
00:01:09
Speaker
2% of things. And then we have Austin, who's just our fresh baby. I am like a newborn child. Teach me your ways. Corinne and I are going to be doing a little bit of an experiment in that we are going to be reading all of the clone saga. Spider sense tingling. Something's going on here. The fun thing about the clone saga is that
00:01:39
Speaker
it is a mess and it is something that was not supposed to last nearly as long as it did. And yet they just kept throwing things out there. So we're gonna do something a little different in that we're going to alternate story arcs and read those and bring the notes to each other. Yeah, it's gonna be like a little book club where we're both equally lost
00:02:09
Speaker
We're going to see if it makes any sense as we go through it. Now, I know how it ends. I know a little bit of what we're going to get into as we move forward.

Weekly Highlights and Comic Talk

00:02:20
Speaker
I know nothing but the one issue that I've read. I know absolutely nothing. Austin's going to learn. I can't complain about it. When you just gave a description, what I got from this, this is like the Grey's Anatomy of comic book going on way too long.
00:02:40
Speaker
And just kind of not making sense anymore. The only problem is there's no McDreamy, I don't think. And that would have really helped my motivation. I think it depends on how you feel about Ben Riley. I'm gonna let you know, Ben Riley is not McDreamy. That's my opinion so far. Okay, so actually before we get started, I have to ask, well, I'll ask Corinne first and then we can go to Austin. So, Corinne, do you have a bright spot for the week?
00:03:08
Speaker
Uh, I'm hanging out with my cat. That's always fun. That's kind of, at this point, an inherent bright spot. Um, what else do I got going on? Uh, we just had a friend visit. That was fun. And oh my God, what else? I've literally forgotten everything I've done.
00:03:29
Speaker
in the past like seven days. We hung out together. We did hang out together. I felt, I can't remember if we recorded before or after that stuff. So you know what? That's going to be my bright spot. I got to hang out with Austin and I'm waiting to hang out again. Okay. So Austin, what about you? Do you have a bright spot for the week?
00:03:52
Speaker
Uh, let's see. Well, we've already covered. I saw Corinne. So that was like, you know, the highlight. We can share a bright spot. And then, um, uh, I mean, I think it's pretty great, but like, it's also probably like whatever, but I took my first A&P exam and got an a hundred. Oh, that's awesome. I think it's pretty cool. Spicy.
00:04:18
Speaker
She got a 100. It can only go down from here, but it's not going to. It's going to stay the same. You could plateau. You could plateau at 100. That's a great geographical thing. Plateau it. You got it. Erica Chase, what is your bright spot?

Exploring X-Men 'Operation Zero Tolerance'

00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. I finished reading Operation Zero Tolerance, which was an X-Men crossover.
00:04:46
Speaker
from like 1997, 98. It is a very awkward crossover event that was a lot of fun, but not great. But I enjoyed reading it. So it was a lot of fun to actually get through this major event in X-Men comics history.
00:05:12
Speaker
I honestly thought there was going to be more of a payoff to a lot of the mystery that was built up into in it. Apparently that's not for quite a while. So it's kind of a letdown of a story in that it's just kind of like, oh, the the the main bad guy is making his big move and maybe we'll find out about who he is. But maybe we won't. And then spoiler alert, you don't. He just shows up and then at the end he's like, all right, you beat me.
00:05:42
Speaker
and they arrest him. That's kind of nice though. Sometimes it's fun when it's just like, all right, it's a crime and we solve the case closed. Actually one cool thing I really liked about it was so they split the story into like three or four different plot threads. So one of them is you follow the X-Men after they have been kidnapped and then they make their way out and they're like stuck in a desert. One plot thread is
00:06:10
Speaker
involving cable trying to break into the X-Mansion to get rid of some information that Operation Zero Tolerance is trying to steal and one plot thread is where you follow Iceman as he tries to like rescue and he puts together like a tiny like a very small group of amateur X-Men
00:06:34
Speaker
to help like he's trying to protect them and he ends up actually being the one that brings the bad guy down and that was really like the ways that it went in different directions it felt bigger because of that because it's like oh there's these three things happening in different places but they're all connected not really thematically but like by a common enemy and that was pretty cool i like that kind of stuff
00:06:57
Speaker
That's fun. You don't just follow the good guy through every major plot point. You get all this information because it's happening to people in different places. Yeah. I like that kind of stuff.
00:07:09
Speaker
I dig it. How long still take you to read this? Operation Zero Tolerance. So it probably took me like two weeks, but that's how many times did you fall asleep? Yeah, that's the thing. I read it when I go to bed at night. So I fall asleep quite a bit. But I mean, it's something where I mean, I gave myself the impossible task of reading all of X-Men.
00:07:30
Speaker
Right. Cause when did you start the whole challenge essentially? So I started a few years ago. I probably started it in like 20, let's say 14. So it's been a while, but in, in that time I've made it through, uh, from like 1963 all the way up to this is 1997. So it's the tail end of 1997. Oh, okay. So that's quite a bit of time. As much as I've read with the X-Men, it has slowed way down.
00:08:00
Speaker
in part because I don't read as much X-Men as I used to, sometimes I take long breaks, but also because early on you just had the X-Men. That's the book that you read. And then they maybe did a spin-off like X-Factor and you could read that or New Mutants, you could read that.
00:08:19
Speaker
Now, where I am in the comic book world, there's Cable, Generation X, X-Factor, Excalibur, X-Men, Uncanny, X-Men, X-Man, and you don't have to read all of them. Yeah, it's all splintering. Yeah, but if you're reading all of it, then it takes a lot longer than it used to. Yeah, definitely.
00:08:46
Speaker
But we're not here to talk about the X-Men, we're here to talk about Spider-Man.

Diving into the 1990s Spider-Man Clone Saga

00:08:49
Speaker
This is starting to sound like a bad comic book plot. There have been many story arcs for Spider-Man known as the Clone Saga. There are three main ones that I can think of. Actually four, if you count the Ultimate Universe, which was my favorite version of Spider-Man.
00:09:06
Speaker
But the second and best known story arc by that name ran from October 1994 all the way through December 1996. And it quickly became one of the most controversial Spider-Man stories ever told. Spicy. Although it was intended to wrap up in less than a year, the comics sold very well and the writers were encouraged to prolong the saga as long as possible.
00:09:30
Speaker
With sales driving the creative team, problems were quick to arise. And this led to some changes to the storyline that ultimately proved unpopular in several controversies that have dogged Spider-Man throughout the years. And despite all of that, the 1990s clone saga remains one of the most popular Spider-Man story arcs of all time, although also considered one of the worst things to happen in mainstream comics.
00:09:55
Speaker
with us digging deep into the clone saga. How harsh. I think I should be careful what went wrong and where. I feel like this is like peak hate reading. Just like, you know? It's weird. So I actually, I have a lot of comics from the clone saga. In part because if you just picked up a book at that time, it was related to the clone saga. Within two years, all of it was
00:10:24
Speaker
Now they had different story elements that they were working on at any given point, but like technically it started in again, like October of 1994 and never ended until December 1996. And it's weird because I actually like a lot of what would be considered
00:10:49
Speaker
probably some of the worst things that they've done in the story. But the things that I like about them are because they're new and exciting. The reasons people don't like them is because they made no sense. They came out of nowhere and they had no plan. Whereas I feel like you could build something good out of the stuff that was introduced. Right. I'm wondering, and you'll probably answer it in a minute,
00:11:22
Speaker
So Marvel wanted them to continue because it was selling well. I'm gonna be wondering this whole time, when did that conversation happen? And then how long is the rest of the other? Okay, so you do have an answer to that. I have an exact answer for that. Okay, great. That's my first question. It was a point where it was supposed to be wrapped up and they said, hold on.
00:11:46
Speaker
Wait a minute. We need to keep this money train going. It's so bad. Why did it bring in so much money? You know what? This is, I think I have a guess. It's because it's the CW on paper.
00:12:02
Speaker
You get something good from the first two seasons, and you get one good Riverdale season. And then they're like, what if we make a musical? And you're like, that's not great, but okay. And then they're like, but what if we did?
00:12:17
Speaker
Dungeons dragons and everyone's on drugs and then it goes crazier from there because they're like we have to keep making it crazy now because that's what people know us for and that's what's bringing us money and like Derek is making a face like I'm right and I feel like this is I would like to just be a jacked real quick before Derek goes back because once he starts it's hard to stop him that's why I got
00:12:43
Speaker
I cut that bitch out. I love a good musical episode. I do too. It has to be decent though. I will say, pop them all, Buffy. Oh, that's the best one. Best one. Anyway, carry on now. We're going to get into a lot of the context for
00:13:04
Speaker
what made the clone saga the clone saga but in order to really get into where this comes from we actually we have to talk about the first clone saga because which is not the one we're reading
00:13:16
Speaker
Right. We're reading the second one. If you were to walk up to someone who had a comic bookshop, I was going to say on the street, but no one on the street would know. If you walk up to someone in a comic shop. If I walked up to somebody on the street and I was like, do you want to talk about books with me? They'd be like, who are you? What religion?
00:13:36
Speaker
If you brought up the clone saga to them, 99% of the time they would not think of the first clone saga, they would immediately think of the second one. It is the one that is the most well known. But the first one is what started it all. In the summer of
00:13:53
Speaker
1973, writer Jerry Conway made the decision to kill off Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 121 because the editorial

Origins: The First Clone Saga

00:14:03
Speaker
team felt that Gwen had become stale as a character and they wanted to instill an additional element of tragedy into Peter Parker's life. And I would agree with that. I don't really, I think Gwen Stacy is a fine character, but I think she's a much more interesting character dead than she ever was alive.
00:14:21
Speaker
That seems about right for when people try to write women in the 70s. And the thing with Gwen Stacy, that was, so for anyone that doesn't know, she was killed in a confrontation between Green Goblin and Spider-Man. If you've seen Amazing Spider-Man 2, it's very similar.
00:14:46
Speaker
He takes her. Yeah, she like falls, right? And then he tries to catch her for the moment. He tries to catch her and it just doesn't work. Yeah. I know that. I know something. I'm going to high five Austin for that one because that's like the one of the three things that I knew about Spider-Man.
00:15:00
Speaker
If you read the comic where she dies, it's kind of left a little ambiguous as to how she died. She was either murdered before the goblin threw her off the bridge, she either died from the fright of falling, or the one that I think makes the most sense and is kind of backed up by a lot of the circumstantial evidence in the comic, Spider-Man's web snapped her neck.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, I have my own reasons to believe what it is, but I will talk about it more with the episode of the first ones that I'm reading, because that gets brought up. So I'll save for that. So in the follow-up story arcs, Conway introduced a new villain called the Jackal, and he basically brought Gwen Stacy back from the dead.
00:15:57
Speaker
Which kind of seems odd because he was the one that killed her off. Is Gwen Stacy the Jackal? No. So the Jackal was the villain identity of Gwen and Peter's biology professor, Miles Warren. He couldn't cope with the fact that Gwen had died because he was secretly in love with her.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, this is one of those things that I don't think is ever quite played up as creepy as it actually is Like they just kind of like oh, yeah, he was in love with her, but that's fucked up No major red flags in love with her and then tries to bring her back from the dead like we don't mess with that
00:16:37
Speaker
There's never a good outcome when you bring people out from the dead. It's so funny now that it's like that person, that character was written in the 70s and it was probably like some just like kind of not kooky character, but like, you know, people would probably think of him as like a tragic villain. And I feel like if he was in like a movie now, he would just be a straight up villain villain. Like you could equally change the like the lighting on this.
00:17:03
Speaker
I think he was definitely played as a villain in the set because I have read, I have read this clone saga.
00:17:11
Speaker
He's definitely played as a villain. I just think that the creepiness of his love interest in Gwen Stacy is just kind of, it's just mentioned and they leave it there. It's sort of like Professor X and the X-Men in like issue three of the original X-Men comics. He mentions that he's in love with Jean Grey and it's like she's 17 and you're
00:17:34
Speaker
a full-on adult and her teacher and so it's like there's creepy moments and they get brought up much later in the comic books but early on it's just a thing that's brought up and then just left there and other people have to be like no that shit was creepy yeah so anyway uh the jackal was an expert on cloning and he created clones of both gwen and peter and because he created a clone of peter he discovered that

Complexities of Cloning in Comics

00:18:01
Speaker
peter is spider-man
00:18:03
Speaker
I mean, it's just one of the, he's like, oh, hey, this guy's got weird DNA and can suddenly stick to walls. I wonder if he's related to that superhero who can stick to walls. Wait, I just love that like my brain is like, okay, if you make a clone, they're not gonna be fully formed like person conscience yet. So part of me is just like this feral thing is just climbing up walls. Just like, they wouldn't,
00:18:31
Speaker
But don't clones like, don't they start off as like babies? So this, there's like an artificial aging that goes into making these clones. And somehow in this process, it's not fully explained. They retain memories. But how? It's a clone, not like, you know, I have the same question because of what I've read so far, but I'm just like, like, yeah, it's not like,
00:19:01
Speaker
It's a superficial copy. It's not like a soul copy. He doesn't have a soul of a Peter Parker. He's an unceded Peter. I'm sorry. I'm a science person. This is a stretch.
00:19:19
Speaker
I don't know exactly how it's explained in the comics because it's just in the 70s version it's just left at like it's it's it's as though you just took a picture of of spider-man and suddenly it is like up to that moment it was the same person. That's not how it works. You don't know how to clone someone.
00:19:43
Speaker
No, but you can clone things. You can clone cats. Did you know that? But this is the marvel. They got dolly the sheep. Yeah, exactly. And this actually gets a little confusing later on because between the clone sagas, there are. This is already confusing. There are clones that are.
00:20:01
Speaker
clone stories that are brought up. And one of them is that this clone of Gwen Stacy wasn't actually a clone. It was a person that had Gwen Stacy's DNA put into her and it overrode her DNA and made her into a Gwen Stacy lookalike person. But then that's the issues before.
00:20:26
Speaker
But then that is revealed later as being not true. It actually was a clone of Gwen Stacy. And the other thing was made up because a scientist got mad at how good of a scientist the jackal was. This was written by a child who was playing with their parents.
00:20:51
Speaker
And when the parents were starting to get into it and starting to follow the kid's rules, the kid was like, no, no, wait. That's not how you do it. It's this. And then finally, when the parents get back onto that trainer rhythm, they're like, no, that's not what it is. It's this again.
00:21:11
Speaker
So the thought process behind this is it gets confusing in part because there's so many different writers that come in and they're like, well, I kind of don't like that this was done. There is a weird thing where before the second Clone Saga starts, almost every clone that was introduced was either killed off or revealed to not have been a clone.
00:21:40
Speaker
And it seems to be like they were trying to clear the table and make Spider-Man more of a grounded superhero and less of one dealing with robots and clones and aliens and trying to go back to basics.
00:21:58
Speaker
It also seems like they're kind of trying to do the thing that we were talking about with Batman. And like, when we were talking about like, Dr. Hurt and stuff, where it's like, there's only one true Batman. And it also feels like they're kind of doing, oh, well, there's like kind of only one true Spider-Man. And it's just this kid. Like you can't have a robot do it. So they'll just like break or they just won't be a robot.
00:22:25
Speaker
Well, so it's interesting you say that, cause so like the clone saga from the seventies, you know, the Jackal made Gwen, he made Peter. Well, to get back at Spider-Man, because he believed Spider-Man was responsible for Gwen Stacy's death, he knocks Spider-Man out. And then when Spider-Man wakes up, he's in a room with another Spider-Man. They both wake up and they both think they're the original. So they get into a fight and this,
00:22:54
Speaker
one of them ends up dying not like one doesn't kill the other one it's just because of which the surviving spider-man believes that he is the original spider-man because he realizes he's in love with Mary Jane Watson which that did not happen until after professor Warren the jackal had created the clone so he couldn't be the clone because he has this love for Mary Jane which didn't exist beforehand
00:23:23
Speaker
So Spider-Man takes the body of the clone up to an incinerator and drops the body in because he's trying to hide the evidence that there's a Peter Parker dressed in a Spider-Man costume. And during that time, the Gwen Stacy clone disappears and decides she's going to live her own life. She's going to be not Gwen Stacy. She's going to do her own thing.
00:23:49
Speaker
The climactic installment of the original Clone Saga leaves it sort of ambiguous as to whether the original Spider-Man or his clone was the one who perished in the explosion during their fights. Jerry Conway has said that the ambiguity was unintentional.
00:24:05
Speaker
And that at the time he just kind of took it at face value that Marvel would never want to replace the star of The Amazing Spider-Man with a clone. So it's like there's clearly this is the original because he's the one starring in the book. Well, that's how the original clone saga ends. Okay. And then we have 20 years of following this Peter Parker around.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then we have the start of the second clone song. Which is what we're reading. That's what we're reading. Okay. So already like a new generation of like writers.
00:24:46
Speaker
Yes. Jerry Conway's not involved. It's more like Howard Mackey's involved. JMD Matias. I'm trying to remember everyone that I've gone through just in my short time with it. But even during the Clone Saga, the writers and editors get cycled out. So you have multiple people. Is the turnover of those like high or is it kind of just like an every year thing? So then it's only like about two years of new people or is it just like
00:25:16
Speaker
People just constantly are coming and going. It depends on the title and where people move and what's going on in the industry at the time. So Chris Claremont famously wrote the X-Men for like 16 years and was in charge of pretty much all of the X-Men during that time. And when the Fantastic Four started, I think Jack Kirby and Stan Lee worked together for like 105 issues.
00:25:44
Speaker
Right. So that's insane. That's one of the longest running 10 years together. But then you'll run into people who are like, oh, I'm just doing six issues. Or I'm going to do a couple of years, and then they're going to push me off. Now I'm going to go write the ghost writer for a bit. Gotcha. It gets shuffled around, but there is no average 10 years. It's just kind of whatever. And that's just normal in general for the industry of just people that constantly be shuffled. OK.
00:26:15
Speaker
So the second clone saga sprang from Marvel Comics' determination to produce a strong Spider-Man event story that would rival DC Comics' The Death of Superman and Batman Nightfall, both of which sold extremely well.

Marvel's Attempt to Simplify Spider-Man

00:26:29
Speaker
So if you don't know about either of those, The Death of Superman is exactly what it sounds like. They killed Superman. Superman dies.
00:26:36
Speaker
It's a great story. We talked about it when we did the Dr. Heard episode, I think. It's like Superman dies, but then he's somehow like brought back. So it's all okay. And Batman Nightfall is another really interesting story in part where Batman is broken by Bane and someone else has to take on the mantle of Batman. You know, it's really funny.
00:27:05
Speaker
that you bring that up because now that makes me think of the, I wonder what will break first, your spirit or your body. And I, did you ever watch the show Chowder? I love Chowder. I sometimes, I would do a truffles impression, but I would do it saying that line.
00:27:33
Speaker
and to make people really uncomfortable. It was a lot of fun. Maybe one day I'll do it on this podcast. But now I'm not going to do it. You should do it right now. I shouldn't because I want to wait for it. If you're aware of either of these stories, The Death of the Superman or Batman Nightfall, they both sold extremely well. But in part, it's because they had a very clear structure to them.
00:27:57
Speaker
They were like, hey, we're going to do this story, The Death of Superman. We're also going to plan the return of Superman. We have an event that we have planned out. So that's kind of what they ended up doing originally with this second clone saga. So the Spider-Man editor, Mark Bernardo, said marching orders that we were given by upper management to come up with something similar in scope to DC's Death of Superman storyline, which at the time was breaking sales records left and right.
00:28:27
Speaker
Thus, no outrageous idea was out of bounds. Terry Cavanaugh was cajoled into blurting out his clone idea, which first met with groans and indifference until someone, to my recollection, JMD Matias, suddenly realized the radical possibilities of such a storyline. So several of the Spider-Man creators believed that the character had drifted too far from his original portrayal
00:28:51
Speaker
and sought a way to restore Spider-Man back to the way he used to be. In particular, jettisoning his marriage, getting rid of a lot of the baggage that had been brought up over the years. They wanted it basically not back in high school, but the way Peter was when he was in high school. A simple boy. Right. Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Yeah. And that's all they wanted.
00:29:20
Speaker
friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. So Howard Mackey revealed, when the story was begun, we knew it would be controversial, and that was part of the point. He also commented that the return of the single Spider-Man did enter the conversation eventually, but it was not the intent of the story when pitched. So the idea of like getting rid of his marriage, that was something that they were talking about, but when they pitched it, that wasn't the thing that got everyone excited.
00:29:48
Speaker
At this time, was he married to MJ? Yes. Okay. And I guess that was a rocky marriage. A little bit. Or just having the dynamic of like work and romance. So part of the thing is you have a weird group of people who believed that Spider-Man being married made him
00:30:15
Speaker
less interesting or less I don't want to say like recognizable but like or relatable but like a weird mix of the two they thought that the idea of having spider-man married makes it he's he's a different character now you know like too mundane or like just too like boring
00:30:43
Speaker
too boring would be a way to write in which case I would say like they just aren't writing the right stories because Mary Jane's a great character. Did she know he was Spider-Man at this point or no? Yes, she knew he was Spider-Man before they started dating and it's actually a thing where she revealed to Peter that she always knew he was Spider-Man.
00:31:06
Speaker
And it's one of my favorite Spider-Man comics is when they have like a long conversation. They spend like an entire day just talking about their lives. And it's really sweet and cute. Because it's before they even start dating, they're just friends, being friendly with each other. It's great. Right. Bernardo added that the length of the arc was initially planned to be very short. The whole arc was supposed to end in Amazing Spider-Man 400, which is less than a year's worth of comics.
00:31:35
Speaker
And that would leave Ben Riley as the one and only original Peter Parker. And it would forge a new beginning for the series. The whole storyline was supposed to simplify Spider-Man's mythos and ultimately bring him back to the basics. Eventually, editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco gave the final approval to begin the story. So that's their starting point is, hey, we're going to replace Peter with Ben Riley
00:32:03
Speaker
Ben Riley is the new Spider-Man. He was the original Spider-Man, or he was a clone that can... The idea was that he would be the original, but introducing him as a clone and then having him take over is also not out of the question. I mean, okay, so based on the one issue I've read, that does make sense. Also, though,
00:32:30
Speaker
I don't think that helps them with the goal that they want. Of making it simpler? Yeah. Cause now you've given him this weird, cause like from, again, from like the one issue I've read.
00:32:45
Speaker
He's got a pretty complex self-conflict thing going on. And we'll get into it later. But already, it seems like they are way off the goal that they originally set off. Have a big event where he's back in his home base event, essentially. And also a whole different person. And then you got to bring in the whole clone thing.
00:33:14
Speaker
That just gets crazy. I will say I was starting notes today for the next episode that we're going to do. Within the first couple of issues of what starts the Clone Saga, I was already like, shit, I have to explain the last two major storylines that ran through, or like crossover events, I guess, that ran through Spider-Man,
00:33:42
Speaker
because you don't need to know every little detail, but you do need to know these things happen because this puts Peter in a place where he is at the start of it, which is like unrecognizable almost. Yeah, because I know from what I've read, which is after whatever you're reading right now, I already have questions about where certain people are and it's interesting.
00:34:10
Speaker
I've read nothing. And I'm here. I'm just rolling with the punches. Man, I feel that. I'm just taking it one crazy turn at a time. I'm rolling down this hill, tumbling over the grass. Full speed ahead, looking for the cheese. Cane and speed.
00:34:34
Speaker
Although the readers had been getting clues about a mysterious figure with links to Peter Parker and the issues leading up to the story, the starting point for the second clone saga was the end of Spectacular Spider-Man 2.16, which was written by Tom DeFalco and Todd DeZago. I don't know how to pronounce their name. I apologize if I got it wrong.
00:34:53
Speaker
And basically the end of that issue starts with Spider-Man confronting a lookalike to himself. And the writer set up the possibility that the clone would be the real Spider-Man. The clone was then further developed editorially and given the name Ben Riley. Additionally, he became known as the superhero of the Scarlet Spider, complete with a unique costume. I do like the costume. It's pretty cool.
00:35:19
Speaker
Oh, it's like if you play this Spider-Man PS4 game, it's one of my favorite costumes. Yeah. I think we should do like, I think going along with this little series you're working on, we should do like a little, like a little like family tree almost.
00:35:36
Speaker
That's a good idea that should be like a fun little part of somebody's like issue this So this is something that we would have to take a lot of notes on Based on probably I can do like a rough one.

Introduction of New Characters

00:35:51
Speaker
I think
00:35:52
Speaker
based on some info, we actually, I think one thing that we should do is try to keep all of the evidence that's provided for the mystery of like what the fuck is actually going on and see if we can figure it out and how it fits together at the end because I don't think it's possible. Okay, well, so right now you are severely underestimating Corinne's skills here at being a master solutions
00:36:23
Speaker
I will let you know that I did a whole film project just dissecting the corpse bride and I got an A on it. I think I can do this. She is basically an expert in her field. I have written a five page essay comparing
00:36:41
Speaker
and contrasting Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson. And believe it or not, they're a lot more similar than you think. And I can send you that five page essay. Just a lot of feet. Also got in it. No, actually not. Wes Anderson doesn't have a lot of feet. It's the only thing I could think of. He's only got two.
00:37:03
Speaker
Left or right? Same. So starting early on, characters such as Scryer, which I had to look up before we recorded because I have for years read it as Scrier. Scryer? It doesn't really make sense now that I look at it. I think I was just dumb when I first read it. It's S-C-R-I-E-R. It sounds and...
00:37:28
Speaker
genetically. It looks how it's spelled looks like that one Icelandic yogurt. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what it's called. They're like, they sell it right. I'm gonna. Yeah, they do sell it. I think he's I think he's. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty good. But it is called skier.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's like SKY something, Icelandic spelled. Yeah. Phonetics, I don't know. So what does this man do? Is he dairy based or no? Is he delicious and yogurty? He is very white. I mean, that fits, that checks.
00:38:15
Speaker
So they introduced characters Scryer and Judas Traveler, but very little planning was actually put in place to bring those characters in. They were just introduced and fuck it, we'll figure it out. And according to established Spider-Man assistant editor,
00:38:34
Speaker
Glenn Greenberg. No one, not the writers, not the editors, seemed to know who or what the hell Judas Traveler was. He was seemingly this immensely powerful, quasi-mystical being with amazing abilities, but what was the real deal with him? To be honest, a character like Traveler didn't really fit into Spider-Man's world.
00:38:53
Speaker
And as such, Traveler's role would remain a mystery to readers for a while, as the writers would drop him in and out of the saga. Like, just randomly, this guy would be part of it. Okay, so we're gonna have a random mystery man. What did he do, though? What was his, like, thing? Was he a good guy? Was he a bad guy? Do we know that, at least? So we're gonna go over it in the next episode, but I'll give you a brief overview.
00:39:20
Speaker
He is like a psychologist slash philosopher that is obsessed with the origins of evil within humanity. Did he ever turn in a long-haired bearded man?
00:39:34
Speaker
So he has long hair and has the handlebar mustache thing. He looks like a cowboy from the Wild West that happened to get really into esoteric bullshit and wears like a lot of jewelry. So like a cowboy in Providence.
00:39:57
Speaker
He wears one glove and he... Like Michael Jackson. Wow, he's a lot of things. He has a lot of random powers. I like him. He has a lot of random powers. And so when he first shows up, he becomes obsessed. Well, again, we're going to talk about it more next episode. He becomes obsessed with looking into the criminals, the criminal insanity, I guess. Okay, I can see where that's coming in. And then...
00:40:27
Speaker
also becomes obsessed with Spider-Man and trying to figure out Spider-Man's whole deal. And Skryre is a weird white skinned person. And like white, I mean like chalk white. Yeah. Like he has like all buttons on her. And he wears a black cloak. And as far, like where I am in my reading of the Clone Saga,
00:40:57
Speaker
That's it. That's the entirety of their character. He only wears a black cloak. Is he just naked underneath the cloak? I'm pretty sure, yeah, actually. He's kind of like... Who's the one teacher and fairly odd parents? He's the Chris Crocker of this series. He's just trying to unsolved... He's just trying to solve stuff. So we have... We have Scryer and Judas Traveler that are introduced and no one really knows what to do with them.
00:41:28
Speaker
Um, so they're going to bring them in and out of the saga as they kind of come up with random shit for them to do. Okay. And this is where we run into Marvel's first big problem. You have money, right? I'm not very liquid

Impact of Marvel's Financial Troubles

00:41:44
Speaker
right now. Marvel Comics experienced a major financial crisis, which nearly bankrupted the company.
00:41:51
Speaker
I would say this is Marvel's second problem because their first problem was they didn't plan anything. Their first problem was trying to clone things without understanding cloning. Well, yeah, exactly. They didn't plan anything. They didn't think about like, you know, I'm not saying they should have gone like full on interstellar study with how shit should work, but maybe like just enter.
00:42:18
Speaker
I don't need the stellar part, I just need the inter part. I think this is going to be an ongoing issue for you because I do know there is at least one issue dealing with virtual reality where I don't think anyone that wrote for this or edited the book understood what virtual reality was. Oh, and it's going to be so interesting because now it's like actually a thing.
00:42:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's I know. I don't know where that is within the close. I know I have that issue because I remember going, what the fuck? I would have gone in on it. So Marvel Comics is there. Their financial crisis came about for a lot of different reasons, a lot of their own fault.
00:43:08
Speaker
So in the early nineties, it's really important to understand that there was a huge comic book boom, where a lot of people were buying comic books, thinking it was going to be the new action comics number one, and you could sell it for a million dollars. That's why X-Men number one in 1992 is still one of the, uh, I think adjusted for inflation is the number one selling comic book of all time.
00:43:32
Speaker
That's cool. Don't quote me on that, but I think so. And it did hold a record for a really long time. And it's because all of these people were going out and they were buying a bunch and then they would die off because they only need the early ones. They needed the important issues. So there was an artificial inflation of the market, sort of like the Beanie Babies of the late 90s. Oh, love a Beanie Baby.
00:43:57
Speaker
And the problem with that when you have a bubble like that is sometimes they burst and people stopped buying these books. So suddenly
00:44:08
Speaker
The way that Marvel was making all of their money was they were constantly pumping out newer books. That's why you had Spider-Man with four titles. That's why you had X-Men had like six or seven at the time. You just keep expanding the line because people are gonna keep wanting to buy the new thing because that might be the thing that gets them a lot of money later on. Then when that stops, suddenly you have a shitload of things on the market that do not sell and you are just pumping money into a pit.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, because your demands gone down.
00:44:41
Speaker
Right. And this is also around the time, because of this bankruptcy, they sold off the rights to Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Daredevil. That's why you have Sony making Spider-Man movies. That's why Fox and the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. This was their way of trying to save their company. And interestingly, some of the comics
00:45:10
Speaker
or some of the IP that they could not sell were the Avengers comics, like the Captain America, the Iron Man, Thor, because they were seen as too silly to be able to make a movie out of. And that's why Marvel held on to the intellectual property of those characters and were able to make... Let's be real. If Marvel had the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man,
00:45:39
Speaker
Even Daredevil, if they had the rights to those when they started making movies, there would not have been an Iron Man. Or at least if there was, it would have been way down the line and it would not have been done the way that it was. The reason we have the Avengers as a whole movie movement is because those were the only characters they had rights to.
00:46:09
Speaker
So this financial crisis that they found themselves in got a lot of people in trouble. So Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco was fired, and Marvel's comic line was broken into five separate groups, each with its own Editor-in-Chief. So Bob Budiansky became Editor-in-Chief of the Spider-Man line. So the way that this was supposed to work is you would have like the X office, the Spider-Man office. I'm trying to remember what the rest of them are. Let's say the Avengers office.
00:46:40
Speaker
Right. And you had underneath that, everyone reported to that person. But it also became a little difficult because these editors didn't necessarily need to coordinate with each other because you're kind of doing your own thing, you know? Because they kind of made like a weird bureaucracy for it. Right. Yeah. That's one of the reasons why that doesn't exist anymore. They still have editors, but it's they all it's done a little differently than it used to be, you know? Yeah. And at this point, the creative staff
00:47:09
Speaker
seemingly without any strict direction, inserted just a lot of open plot points that they wanted. Hey, I kind of want to follow this thing for a while. And a lot of these were never resolved because they had to keep moving things further on. So you just have, oh, I'm going to introduce this. I'm going to introduce this. And well, it's like the TV show Lost. If you just keep throwing things out there, eventually we'll figure it out.
00:47:36
Speaker
I still get very CW show vibes too. They're just trying to grab for that thing that their old fans or their fans want, what they think that people will look into. I get that. Keep in mind, with a financial crisis like this and Spider-Man comics still selling extremely well,
00:48:01
Speaker
There is a huge incentive to keep that shit going because you want to keep the company afloat. So the sales department requested extensions to the storyline, buoyed by strong sales on the book when most others were experiencing a strong decline. The X-Men were going downhill at this time up until Grant Morrison came in in the early 2000s and revamped everything.
00:48:27
Speaker
And with that extension, the storyline ended up outliving a lot of the creative staff and many of the decisions of the eventual direction of the storyline had to be changed. So you get, everyone's leaving, but the thing that they started is still going. So when, at what point in years are we at here then? So they filed for bankruptcy in 1996.
00:48:50
Speaker
which means this would have been probably starting in, I would say, 95, so. So like right in the middle of the clone saga. Right in the middle. That's my, you know, I don't have the hard data in front of me, but that's gonna be my guess based off of all of that. Right. So that's when shit's gonna get extra spicy weird.
00:49:12
Speaker
The next chapter in the saga was supposed to begin the new era of Spider-Man. Peter and Mary Jane would be written out of the books and sent off to live in peace, and Ben would have to be established as Spider-Man and would need to move forward. But he was trying to be the clone, is that what you said? So Ben Riley is the clone of Peter Parker. But didn't he incinerate him?
00:49:39
Speaker
That's in a different one. That's in the 70s. Now we're in the 90s and they're like, let's just restart. So when they sat down, they did write out a small plan for what happened to Ben between the 70s and the 90s. Incineration. Apparently he didn't get incinerated.
00:50:03
Speaker
We're gonna work our way through how this makes sense, or if it does, as we move forward. So going into the planning stages for what would turn out to be a storyline called Maximum Clonage, the intent was indeed to finish up the clone storyline once and for all and quickly get Ben started as Spider-Man. Now, this actually gives a lot of credence to what I said about 1995 being around the time
00:50:30
Speaker
that everything was going to shit. Yes. Because maximum clonage came out in the summer of 1995. So that would mean they probably started working on that in early 95. And if that's when things were going to shit, that checks out. OK. So the Gwen Stacy clone, who had started the whole clone saga in the 1970s, was supposed to be killed off to provide a fitting in, just get like clearing house.
00:51:00
Speaker
But didn't you say that she went to go live a life as somebody else? Yes. He's killing her off. Everybody's killing women. She really loved to kill the women. Burn the witch with the women. We're only good for killing. Here's the problem though. Impressed by the Age of Apocalypse crossover of the sister Marvel Comics title X-Men,
00:51:24
Speaker
in which huge sales were achieved by long spread out storylines, Bob Budiansky ordered to duplicate the recipe for the Maximum Clonage Project. So Age of Apocalypse was a weird story arc in the X-Men where they literally shut down all of the X-Titles and replaced them with an X-Title set in an alternate universe.
00:51:52
Speaker
where Apocalypse had taken over. And it was, everyone went crazy. It's actually a really good story. So everyone went crazy about it. Right. And because that sold really well, they were like, we have to do this and do it with Spider-Man. Now, if you're catching on to a pattern here, they just keep going, look, someone did something popular. Let's do that with Spider-Man. Yeah. Over and over again.
00:52:19
Speaker
It's a shame because like there's so many other things you could just do with Spider-Man. That's like his own individual thing. But for some reason, nobody's thinking of that then. I would have liked to see like.
00:52:34
Speaker
Spider-Man married, living his best life, doing the Disney thing. You could do so much with that. And like, oh my God, imagine being a superhero and then hitting like the family planning stage of your life. Right. But that would be so hard. What if he had kids and his like weird Spidey things passed on to his kids?
00:52:54
Speaker
And like, oh my god, who better to teach power and responsibility to little spidey kids crawling out of eggs. That would have been so good. I'm so sad that that's not true. You would have had MJ running around being like, get your kids off the ceiling. So one of the things that I fell in love with
00:53:19
Speaker
when I started reading comics was a, there was a project that Marvel put out called the MC2, which was Marvel Comics 2. It was their sequel to everything that they had been publishing at that point. And their flagship title for that was a comic book called Spider Girl. And Spider Girl was May Day Parker,
00:53:47
Speaker
the daughter of Peter and Mary Jane. And you follow her while she's in high school, and she takes on the identity of Spider-Man. Yeah, that was cool. I support that. It's a lot of fun. It's really good. I want to see more of that kind of content.
00:54:07
Speaker
It's, it's one of my favorite books to go. Now it's very dated, but it's very, it's, it was a lot of fun when it was coming out and they ended up building an entire line around that, that concept, including a secondary Avengers. There was a, an X-Men series. There was, uh, a character that would pop in and out of spider girl known as dark devil, uh, who was a kind of a demonic daredevil. It was great.
00:54:37
Speaker
And I think now, unfortunately, I would say until we finish the Clone Saga, maybe don't check out those books because they were published after this. So they took a lot of stuff that happened in the Clone Saga and use that as the basis for their sequel idea. Yeah. OK. I mean, it sounds cool. Add it to the list.
00:55:01
Speaker
I already have so much on the list. Add it to the list, Corinne. It keeps going. We're going to be busy for the next 20 years. And more. You're going to be on your deathbed. My coffin's just going to be pages, Mod Podge, all around. Now, the problem that they ran into after deciding that they were going to mimic
00:55:27
Speaker
at the age of apocalypse. They always run into problems. They had to change everything again. So now they decided they were not going to kill the Gwen Stacy clone. They literally create these problems though. Literally. Like this could have been avoided. And a lot of the they were criticized pretty heavily during this time for like characters kind of having no motive or their motive not being understood.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, because you keep turning, it's like you're turning a kid around with the pinata and they don't know where to swing. Like they just, they got to just pick a thing and like commit to it. And then the other thing was they would have issues with like villains, heroes. They were just acting, they were all acting the same.
00:56:18
Speaker
And they were like, I don't know who to fucking vote for because they're all just kind of doing what the fuck ever they want, you know? Yeah, because it's also very much like, again, if you're having these characters go back and forth on like, oh, I'm a clone. Oh, I'm not a clone. I'm alive. Just kidding. I'm dead again. Like, then there is no point to having them. I'm dead. I'm dead.
00:56:40
Speaker
Fuck you.

Creative Challenges in Concluding the Saga

00:56:42
Speaker
No, there's like no point to have a motive at that point, though, because you're like, I don't even know what I don't even know who I am today. Like, unless they're really a very popular TikTok sound, apparently. I mean, unless like identity crisis is going to be your conflict, like, which it doesn't seem like it is right now. Well, maybe a little bit with one character. But like, that's that can't be everybody's problem. You know, right.
00:57:10
Speaker
So following the end of Maximum Clonage, the creative staff launched revamps of established villains. So there was a female Doctor Octopus, a new Vulture, the Grim Hunter, who was the son of Craven the Hunter. And all of these were supposed to be just like, look, we're doing something new and exciting, but no one really cared. Right. Now, this is one of those things where I like the female Doctor Octopus. I think that's a cool idea.
00:57:41
Speaker
Into the spider-verse. Into the spider-verse, yeah. Right. She's a little different in that universe, but it's the same basic idea. Yeah, it's still cool. And J.M.D. Matthias resigned out of creative weariness with the saga's repeated extensions. I would, too. I'd be very wary. It was like writing chapter two of a multi-part story month after month.
00:58:05
Speaker
I'm really glad I essentially started with chapter two then. I've immediately been brought into the mood because I started reading and I was like, who's this? What's that? What are we doing? Where are we? I'm doing that now.
00:58:20
Speaker
The sister editor, Greenberg, recalled that the idea was to have each Spider-Man book retitled so that the Scarlet Spider's name would replace Spider-Man's. And this, if you remember, that was what they did during the Age of Apocalypse. You would end the title and relaunch it under a different name that was slightly different. And you would have now it would be Amazing Scarlet Spider, Spectacular Scarlet Spider, Ben Riley Scarlet Spider, and The Web of Scarlet Spider.
00:58:50
Speaker
And during that month, you would get four new number one titles out of it. The issue here is again, you're introducing more titles, more things to like try to sell well, but that's just like trying to capitalize on a new concept without actually building anything out. So most of the editorial staff was against this, but the Scarlet Spider was popular enough for the sales and marketing team.
00:59:19
Speaker
So they ended up doing two issues of each title under the Scarlet Spider name. And then now we're going to go back to
00:59:30
Speaker
There is a storyline called The Return of Spider-Man. And after that, the series would go into Spider-Man finding a new suit and developing a new life. This has been Riley. And more efforts were taken to solidify Ben as the new Spider-Man and trying to solidify like, we do have an idea. We are actually making something out of this. Now, is that essentially like
00:59:58
Speaker
where you have me starting? Nope. Oh no, this is after. Way later. You're right, it is. Oh wow. Okay. So the problem that they had with this time was that the editorial staff and the writing staff didn't really care about Ben and they really kind of just wanted to write Peter Parker.
01:00:24
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, you just through like, listen, no one really wants to write about like, I feel like no one really wants to write about a clone unless like, they have something new to the table. If you're introducing like, a person who doesn't even have the name Peter Parker, but that's what you want him to be. Like, what's the point? You know?
01:00:48
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, by the way, do you know why he's named Ben Riley? Have you come across that? Well, it's an Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben and Aunt May's maiden name was Riley. Oh, I didn't know the Riley part. I was just like, Uncle Ben is a character. Yeah, that's why he took that name. So it's kind of cute and tied to interesting things. It is cute. It would be cooler if
01:01:17
Speaker
He was, if it was like, oh, I'm a clone of this person, but I want to be like my own person now. But I'm also- Well, and I think that was the idea going into this sort of- And maybe it'll actually happen when we read it. I don't know. But right now it sounds like that's not what's going on. Well, so Dan Jurgens, who was writing for Spider-Man at the time, he just took over Sensational Spider-Man.
01:01:47
Speaker
He basically went to the editor and was like, look, I think it's kind of bullshit that we're writing Ben Riley. It's a disappointment to a lot of our longtime readers. They want Peter Parker because that's who we've had for the last 30 years of comics. And I think that we should, uh, do something with Peter Parker. And the editor, uh, Budiansky was sold on that idea.
01:02:13
Speaker
The task of actually establishing Parker as the true Spider-Man without it seeming like a cop-out was kind of a daunting process for them to think about. Because if you go back through what they've been writing, they keep flip-flopping on what's going on and trying to establish Ben as the true Spider-Man. Yeah.
01:02:36
Speaker
So Greenberg recalled, I think even the janitor and the mail room guys ended up weighing in at one point. It got a little out of hand, to put it mildly. The memos really started coming in at this point, fast and furious. And I've still got every single one of them in one big, thick, hernia-inducing file. And so to make matters worse, all throughout this, while they're trying to come up with how are we going to end this and bring Peter in again,
01:03:02
Speaker
They introduced a skeleton that was discovered in the original Clone Saga lab wearing a Spider-Man suit. So that would lead you to believe that is Ben Riley who was thrown into the incinerator. However... So how would it be a skeleton?
01:03:18
Speaker
None of the writers or editorial staff- Wait, is that the ending of the clone saga? Did you just spoil it? No, it's not the ending. Trust me. Okay, you can't go into any more details of this series or else I'm gonna have a heart attack. No, this is just, that is a random thing that is introduced and nobody has any idea of what they are doing with it. Someone throws this out there and says, what if this,
01:03:47
Speaker
And then nothing. But like how? How would I have lost my shit on it? How would that be the incinerated one when it's incinerated? I'm going to eventually give you what was a planned change to end the Clone Saga. And the only thing I will tell you is what I'm going to tell you is not what happens.
01:04:17
Speaker
He's about to spoil the whole thing for you, Corinne. I'm upset. I just had, my heart is pounding. I was like, all right, we had a conversation. Everybody, the 10 people that listened, we had a conversation before we did this recording. And we said, Derek, we love you, but don't spoil it. I can almost guarantee
01:04:42
Speaker
Even with every bit of evidence that we will write down as we go through this there is no way you're going to guess the ending of this Okay, but I will tell you this is so the idea for the clone saga was a mysterious figure had to be the sole mastermind behind the entire clones
01:05:01
Speaker
Their thought process was, we got to make it one guy who was in charge of everything. And they had to be manipulating Peter Parker, manipulating Ben Riley and doing all of it without ever actually stepping out and going, ha ha ha, it was me the entire time. And eventually they were going to reveal, they started the idea, we're going to set this up and we're going to reveal who this is.
01:05:27
Speaker
However, in July of 1995, Tom Brevoort proposed a story in which Ben Riley is sent five years back in time. Now, we're talking about five years in Marvel Comics timeline. Five years is the equivalent of 20.
01:05:45
Speaker
in hours. They have a sliding time scale. So this would go back to the original Clone Saga. So he'd be sent back in time by the Scryer as part of a contest between himself and Judas Traveler. The Scryer would be revealed as Mephisto, who is basically the- He's the devil thing that everybody wanted to be in that one movie. The Doctor Strange movie, I think.
01:06:10
Speaker
And this would set up a time loop and he would show up to give Ben the option of saving Peter's life in place of his own. And this would eliminate the idea that either Ben or Peter was a clone and instead that Ben was Peter from five years in the future and sent back by Mephisto to coexist with the current Peter Parker. And then
01:06:35
Speaker
They would introduce like the Jackal being responsible for convincing Peter, uh, of all of this and, and that like that he was actually a clone. And all of this was to restore Ben Riley's memories as Peter Parker.
01:06:52
Speaker
and then that would somehow satisfy all of the readers that we have now. The actual Peter Parker is Ben Riley, so we weren't fucking with you this entire time. So this is just one of those examples of crazy things that they had to come up with in order to fix this crazy thing that they built. Right. So as far as fleshing out all of this storyline,
01:07:20
Speaker
and were planning to publish it in 1996. Now, that had won the approval of the editorial staff, the writers, everyone was on board with this. The problem was that Spider-Man himself didn't really appear much throughout this storyline. It was just, hey, we got this guy named Ben and there's a lot of time travel stuff and that's weird.
01:07:43
Speaker
So some of the writers started proposing alternate solutions, and none of them got any sort of approval. And as a result, the Spider-Man group was unable to proceed with any of the conclusions that they had planned for the Sokka, despite agreeing between the writers and the editors that it should end as soon as possible. So they had multiple plans that they keep putting out to end it as soon as they possibly fucking can.
01:08:11
Speaker
And they end up, because they disagree on minor things, they keep pushing it off and just prolonging this thing. Man, nerds are the worst. We suck. You guys are crazy. I know. It's almost worse than engineers, but not quite. A problem that came in also around this time was the five editor in chief positions were, that was dissolved. So now you have one person in charge, Bob Harris.
01:08:41
Speaker
And Bob Harris decided to replace Budiansky with Ralph Macchio, not that Ralph Macchio. Oh, man. I got so excited. He decided to replace Budiansky with Ralph Macchio as the editor on the Spider-Man titles. And they unilaterally decided who the mastermind of the entire saga should be and said, we're not doing the time loop thing. We're going to do this other thing entirely now.
01:09:08
Speaker
And the great thing about that was basically no one liked it. And so that's the one that stuck. Nobody involved liked this idea. And according to Glenn Greenberg, from the writers to the editor, editors to the assistant editors, no one agreed with Harris's idea. But the rationale certainly made sense to a certain extent. So they did decide to go with that. And the saga was resolved eventually in Spider-Man 75.
01:09:39
Speaker
So the ending of the clone saga was decided by someone who had nothing to do with it from the very beginning and just made everyone follow it because no one liked it. That's very much like a mom. Just like, I don't care who started it. I'm finishing it. Go to your room.
01:10:07
Speaker
Corinne, how do you think it's gonna end? How do I think it's gonna end? Oh, that's actually a good point. Yeah, let's wonder your thoughts. I think that Peter Parker is gonna find a gun and just shoot Ben Riley. And then like Venom will be there.
01:10:36
Speaker
And that's it. Interesting. I will update everybody on my opinions of the ending. Can I give you my learn more thoughts? Yeah, please do. What do you think it's going to be? OK, so I don't know why, but we're going with the CW kind of vibe here. Yes. I feel like the ending is going to be one, either completely, like something very tragic,
01:11:02
Speaker
and completely off base. This doesn't make sense. It's just tragic and it's done. Or my other thought process was going to be crazy, crazy, crazy, and then a very mundane, boring, normal ending of just like, oh, out of nowhere, this was all a dream. We all woke up and it's actually just like,
01:11:27
Speaker
Peter Parker had like a bad nightmare. He's so married to like MJ and they have kids and like, you know what I mean? And they're crawling on the ceiling. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be like this was like a terrible, terrible dream. Or it's going to be like tragic. Like, like Peter Parker like went into like an alcoholism, like coma or something crazy because MJ left him and
01:11:53
Speaker
now he's dreaming up this whole other reality that he's fighting on. You know what I mean? You know what else it could be? It could be like Jughead wakes up in an Archie comic and it was his dream the whole time. I think I would prefer that. So if we follow the plan that I have,
01:12:16
Speaker
for going along with the Clone Saga. The very last episode that I have planned for our thing is actually a book that Marvel put out called 101 Ways to End the Clone Saga. And it's just a bunch of random ideas that they had to end the Clone Saga, which I think is a fun way to end it. Oh, I see it. Yeah.
01:12:40
Speaker
Now, ex-editor and chief Tom DeFalco said that under him, the clone saga would have been resolved in a different way. Their plan was to structure the clone saga like a three-act play. Act 1 would climax at or around Amazing Spider-Man 400, when it would be revealed that Peter was the clone and Ben was the real guy. Act 2 would last around three months and follow Ben's adventures. And in Act 3, Peter would triumphantly return as the one true Spider-Man.
01:13:09
Speaker
And according to him, Mark and I was hoping the Spider crew would make Ben a viable character during his turn in the spotlight. And we plan to star Ben in his own monthly title after Peter returned. It was kind of like what I had already done with Thor and Thunderstrike. Two very different titles based on a single concept. Of course, our plan went into the trash the day I got fired. So, which I think is an interesting way to do it. Here's my other question. Was he fired or was he just laid off?
01:13:38
Speaker
Wait, what's the difference? Well, so if he was laid off, it's because of their financial like they had to let people go. But if he was fired, he very clearly violated something. No, no, no, it was it was because of the financial. OK, so he got he got like they had to move a bunch of weird shit. A lot of people got fired during this time in September of 2009, a six part miniseries based on the outline of the original Clone Saga came

Miniseries to Streamline the Clone Saga

01:14:06
Speaker
out.
01:14:06
Speaker
written by Tom DeFalco and Howard Mackey and drawn by Todd Knox. According to DeFalco, the series closely followed Mackey's notes, but necessarily filled out what was essentially a rough outline with details. They then added in some of the characters that were introduced in the Clone Saga because people would be more interested in seeing them even though they weren't part of the original plot outline. Because as we get into the Clone Saga, a lot of characters are introduced.
01:14:34
Speaker
Oh, I'm sure. I mean, if it's going on for two years, like you read like the long Halloween, literally every single villain comes up. If you just read one book of the white knight, literally every villain, like Batman appears. So like I have no doubt we're going to see a ton of people, especially if it's two years worth of stuff. Well, and keep in mind that it's two years over four titles.
01:15:04
Speaker
plus miniseries that were introduced during this time. And honestly, that does make more sense as to like what my reading list is for like the first. Yep, yes, that idea. And this is one of the things that I actually really hated about Marvel Comics at that time. And they still sometimes do this where you have a character like Spider-Man.
01:15:29
Speaker
who has four titles. So in order to get a full story, you would have to buy all four titles. Yeah, it seems like it should be, it should be one of those things like, you can have four titles, that's fine, but don't connect them. That was the original plan for a lot of the way they handled, like when they did X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, it was supposed to be two different teams that you would be following.
01:15:54
Speaker
or when they were originally split Spider-Man into two different titles, you would only have certain things overlap, but you wouldn't have to read one book to understand what was happening in the other book. You would just have different characters show up here or there. Yeah. And that was the original idea. And then they were like, but we can make people give us more money
01:16:20
Speaker
If we make it so that in order to understand what's going on, you have to buy all of these. Yeah. It'd be so much, if people will a hundred percent buy it, if we make it more inconvenient for them to get a story in these trying times. That's part of the reason why I didn't get into comics for so long was because this is how it felt.
01:16:44
Speaker
Well, I mean, you can even see if if you look at our notes for... Like the clone saga doesn't even technically start on like a number one. It starts on a 216. And like, what the heck? That's where a lot of these things go. And then if you if you look at our notes, you'll see I don't go through when I do my abbreviations, I don't write out what volume that book is.
01:17:11
Speaker
But there's a reason why in my key for understanding my abbreviations, they're all listed as volume one. And that's because they've relaunched a lot of these titles. And so you'll run into Amazing Spider-Man number, let's say 30. And there are multiple versions of that depending on the volume that you're reading. Yeah. Technically, even like I keep coming back to the X-Men, but when the X-Men were first introduced,
01:17:39
Speaker
The book's title was X-Men, and then later was changed to Uncanny X-Men. So for a while, you had, I think, three different books that you could pick up that were X-Men number one. Yeah. And that's a problem that keeps happening.
01:18:00
Speaker
you have to look at either the volume or the year that that series started. It's so weird, because I feel like comics are the only ones that have this problem. Austin, can you think of literally anything else that has this problem of just finding a consecutive part one and two? I don't think so. I feel like comics are, for me, they jump all over the place. I usually have to ask Derek before I read anything.
01:18:29
Speaker
Can you just like film me in? Can you give me like, you know what I mean? Like guidance because like, it's such a niche problem. Like even when we were, um, like watching, um, the movies just to watch them in order of like how they should go, like he had like a whole browser page set up so he could just be like, what do we watch next? Like,
01:18:54
Speaker
so that it's chronological. That drives me nuts about the movies. But it was so different from the release date of the actual movie. Yeah. And that was just the Avengers movies. Exactly. But I feel like whenever I go, we go to comic bookstores and I find a comic and he's like, well, you can't read that one because you have to read this, this, and this.
01:19:23
Speaker
or you need to like start here and I'm like, okay, let's get that one. But then you can never find it. It's like a whole thing. So it's a nightmare. Anytime you just pick up a book, just dive in. And if you don't understand it, just acknowledge that you won't ever understand it. The only other thing that's terrible advice is deal with the unknown. The only other thing completely confused the entire time have no context.
01:19:53
Speaker
and then lose interest halfway through. Or just hold on to your questions and then find what pieces you're missing so then you can order them. One of the things I noticed when starting my research for our next episode was the very first issue, technically what I started the Clone Saga with isn't really the start of the Clone Saga. It is a
01:20:19
Speaker
It is the end of a different story arc that directly leads into the start of the Clone Saga. And I figured, fuck it, might as well start there because it actually like, it shows you how we got to the thing that starts it. I learned in picking it up that I have part one to that story, but I've never read part two.
01:20:42
Speaker
And Silly Me thought that the stuff that was introduced in part one would be explained in part two. And it turns out, no. They just threw things in and said, screw it, we'll figure it out later, but no one ever revisits it. So it's just a random thing that happens. You know what? This is the most like,
01:21:06
Speaker
when you're on Instagram or if you have TikTok, when you're on TikTok and you find part one of a story time and then your algorithm never gives you part two or you somehow find like part four of it or maybe you only see part four. That's exactly what this is. So apparently only comics and like sometimes the internet has this problem. So I would say there are two things that I can think of that are
01:21:37
Speaker
a little similar. And they're kind of related. If you are a Godzilla fan, depending on the movie you pick up, there are one of a dozen different continuities that you are following. Oh, and then there's also Fast and Furious. That's kind of weird with their timeline. Oh, and Star Trek.
01:22:03
Speaker
Oh my god. Wow. I feel like we're validating comics now. Don't even try to defend it, Derek. This is good. Because you can figure it out. But every time you're watching Star Trek, I'm always like, which version is it? And I've seen Star Trek. And the problem with when I'm watching Star Trek is I hop around between series.
01:22:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I know. But also, on a, what I think is a weirder note, because you kind of expect it with like a weird sci-fi Godzilla concept or a Star Trek. You know, eventually you're going to just restart and do something different and find something else out. Halloween. The movie series. Oh my God. Yeah. There are four different timelines. I can't even agree. Never seen them.
01:22:52
Speaker
So if you watch Halloween 1 and 2, they have nothing to do with Halloween 3. Halloween 3 is its own timeline. Yeah, it's the spooky masks. Right. And then you can go Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween 4, 5, and 6. And those are their own timeline. Or you can do Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween 7, and Halloween 8. And those are their own timeline.
01:23:21
Speaker
And then there was Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween 2, which is its own timeline. And then there's the new one, which is Halloween, then the sequel, also called Halloween, and then Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, all within their own timeline. You know, I'm really wondering, is Halloween 3 like it's just only unique thing? Yes.
01:23:48
Speaker
I love that. So the idea for that was, um, they were just going, and I think, I kind of wish they actually did this. I was very against it as a kid, but as, as an adult, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, this is way smarter. Halloween was going to be an anthology series where every year they would release a new movie with the name Halloween, but it would be a different thing. And they would sometimes pick up like Halloween one and two follow Michael Myers.
01:24:17
Speaker
but like Halloween three has nothing to do with Michael Myers. It's about spooky masks. And then like Halloween four would end up being, I don't know, zombies or some shit. And that was their plan. And I love that idea. That's fun. But unfortunately people were so pissed that Halloween three had nothing to do with Michael Myers that they had to bring him back in Halloween four and basically just redo Halloween. Oh, real quick. Just the sidebar.
01:24:47
Speaker
One weird thing for me, I was a big fan of the Halloween Town movies as a kid. Not Halloween, Halloween now. I believe the first three of them are the same cast. They're the fourth one. Whole new cast. Yeah! They just replace everybody, but they're the same people.
01:25:09
Speaker
It's so jarring. But it's just like, here's this completely different person playing the main character that you have grown to love for the last three movies. Yeah, it's super weird. And you're supposed to accept it. Absolutely. Anyway, go ahead. It makes no sense. It's very weird. I hate when they do that.
01:25:27
Speaker
It's a crime my final aside and then we can I promise we can talk about the clone saga again. We should do an episode where you know where people can do the like make your own tier list things. We should do a tier list of horror movies.
01:25:45
Speaker
I did one of the Halloween series. I did like my favorite Halloween's from like, what is there 13 movies now? I now just want to rank horror movies. This would be very hard for me because some of them are very precious to me and I can't put them above each other. You can have multiple things in one ranking.
01:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, but then, ooh, it's gonna be so hard for me. That's okay. All right, anyway, Clone Saga. Well, we actually, like, without telling you the ending to the Clone Saga, we've basically wrapped up all of the behind-the-scenes nightmare that was there.

Comic Industry Struggles and Editorial Shifts

01:26:28
Speaker
Oh, awesome. And you have bankruptcy, a lack of planning, constant editorial shifts, people getting fired, people deciding- Not agreeing with each other on ideas.
01:26:39
Speaker
not agreeing with each other. There was even, we have to extend this because we want it to end on an anniversary issue. The reason why they kept saying we were going to end on like Amazing Spider-Man 400 is because it's the 400th issue. Whereas you could just end it. You can make another one and have a cool episode then or whatever.

Revisiting the Clone Saga with Ultimate Spider-Man

01:27:05
Speaker
Interestingly enough, I didn't write anything about this. I didn't copy anything about this. But years later, when Ultimate Spider-Man was coming out, Brian Michael Bendis decided to do the Ultimate Clone Saga. And Ultimate not meaning like this is the one to end all, but like that was the line of comics that were coming out at the time, the Ultimate line. It's like Amazing Spider-Man Spectacular. Yeah.
01:27:29
Speaker
Right. And I believe the ultimate clone saga ended on issue 100. No, it concluded on 104, but issue 100 had like a bunch of like the special we're introducing this character and we're going to totally change the way you look at what we've been doing. And it is.
01:27:49
Speaker
by far so much better than this fucking thing. And part of why is it started in like issue 97 and ended in 104. That is, they kept it short and sweet. They introduced characters. They made it like, yes, there were twists and turns, but you didn't live with it for two years.
01:28:14
Speaker
across multiple titles. We did it. And if it was a bad story, then it's a short, bad story. Yeah. But that's it. That's what you and I are going to dig into and hopefully get a little bit of clarity on. I think we're going to have a good time.
01:28:36
Speaker
I think so too. And I like the idea of coming at it from very different angles and seeing how we can make the pieces fit. I think it'll be a lot of fun. And we'll, we're, we have a lot of work in

Challenges with Digital Comic Platforms

01:28:51
Speaker
this. We're gonna learn a lot. Yeah, we do. We sure do. I just, I keep looking at this list and I'm like, who are we? I gotta get reading. Well, the good news is because these are comics, you can read them pretty quickly.
01:29:04
Speaker
This is true. I have not quite gotten used to Marvel Unlimited yet, but I think I will. They updated it a few months ago, and it has been the bane of my existence ever since. They've made it, I think, so much more complicated, and I'm not a huge DC comic. It was quite complicated to find the first issue that I needed. Oh, yeah.
01:29:30
Speaker
which I don't have to complain about whilst recording.

Cat Stories and Comic Journey Reflections

01:29:35
Speaker
I will also tell you, so I didn't point this out. You can look for the Clone Saga and they have a, what is essentially like a playlist for you to read through. Don't follow that because they put things in the timeline that they want them to be read.
01:29:52
Speaker
Not the timeline that they were coming out and make the most sense. So I I'll follow our our Excel spreadsheet that I am intentionally not like showing you that. But one of the things that DC has in their app that I think is far more interesting is like, let's say you're reading The Death of Superman.
01:30:17
Speaker
and it's across multiple titles. If you choose that story arc and you start with Man of Steel or whatever, it will show you the next issue that you're supposed to read. Whereas with Marvel Unlimited, they just show you the next issue in Web of Spider-Man or Spectacular Spider-Man. They don't show you the next one you're supposed to read. And it's fucking infuriating because you have to keep exiting and going and finding it. I could go on forever. It's it's clearly we're not paid by Marvel.
01:30:47
Speaker
No, we're not paid by anybody. Thank you for starting this journey with

Pet Care and Listener Engagement

01:30:54
Speaker
me. Thank you, Austin, for coming on this episode. Thanks for hanging out. Yeah. I am honored. I had so much fun inviting. Austin's been showing me her cat's scenes the whole time, and it's been fun. Well, if I don't give them attention during this, they will just meow and scratch me until I give them attention. So I figured.
01:31:15
Speaker
I'll show you the beans instead. Now they're sleeping like the butt heads they are. Yeah, my cat's been meowing a lot recently.
01:31:26
Speaker
He's a needy boy. He's a needy boy that doesn't understand that he only goes outside once a day. On a leash. He's learning. Yes. I walk my cat. He's a responsible pet owner and does not let their cat just. I don't just let my cat go partially feral. Not in this house. No bird killing for her. No. Or the maybe. He likes squirrels more than the birds.
01:31:54
Speaker
but we still don't let them catch him. You can find more information, including all of the sources for today's episode, which I will just flat out say most of this I just pulled straight from Wikipedia. Wikipedia.org. There's no point in me going and hunting down every little thing. We're going to be digging through the clone saga and I will be going through as much like granular detail as I can with like the trivia that I can throw out. It's going to be difficult because it's,
01:32:22
Speaker
It's not like everything happens all at once. So we're gonna take it piece by piece and we'll figure out where we fall. You can find all of that at comicallypedantic.com. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram by searching at pedanticast on both platforms.
01:32:36
Speaker
New episodes come out most Sundays on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and at comicallypedantic.com. If you have any comments or questions, you can send them in text or audio recording to comicallypedantic at gmail.com. Please indicate if you'd like your name or question right on the air. We will be back soon with another deep dive into the culture of comics, but until then, you can find more exciting adventures at your local comic shop.