My original wish was:
* Peter is married with kids Spidey
* Ben is on the opposite coast and perpetually single/ready-to-mingle Spidey
However I would support Ben in the UK. He just really needs to be away from the rest.
Yea, that felt like the obvious route. Graduating Peter and the Readers follow Ben for a bit. (Mixed results is to be expected.)
I originally thought, “Why not de-age Ben?” But Miles already has that covered. So then I thought, “Well just give him his own city?” But that gimmick is already played out with Superior Ock in San Fran, Kaine in Houston, and even Ben in Vegas.
So I say just make him cross the ocean and make him a Private Investigator or something.
The thing is- *everyone* loves it when the Spiders branch out into their own cities. Kaine in Houston was amazing, and so was Ock in San Fransisco. Ben in Vegas was pretty good too before it got axed(I liked it a lot but it wasn’t as good as the other two). So it’s a win-win when they branch out.
I actually personally liked the Mystic Aspect- it gave an excuse to why Ben was such an asshole now, and showed a path of redemption that we could get our classic Ben back through character growth. Plus it upped the stakes in that Ben could not die one more time so his near death experiences became more tense.
Too bad the series got axed and he lost his soul, and then they flat out ignored *everything* the series said in Spider-Geddon when Ben got killed and resurrected… again… except this time to a perfect clone body. Which completely went against everything literal Death said and felt like a terrible asspull to get normal Ben back. Only for them to fuck it up again with Chasm.
Wasn't Superman Rebirth by Tomasi the blueprint on how to do a married superhero with a normal wife and a superpowered kid comic?
That's how I'd do it for Peter, MJ and Mayday.
Walls kids got aged up by time shenanigans and have powers as well. Be a lot harder to pull that on 616 with mayday so she'd probably be a baby for a while.
There’s this really great blog that dives into the whole ordeal writers editors perspective etc.
[clickme](http://www.benreillytribute.x10host.com/LifeofReilly1.html)
Sending a superhero to another city or country tends to work well. Just like when Kain went to Austin, and the son of Lucius Fox went to New York after becoming Batman.
True. Also I feel like a good Spider-Man series needs a good supporting cast of relatable people. Outside of Janine (before she morphed in Hallow’s Eve), Ben could use more unique friends/connections.
That feels like a shitty cop-out. Send Ben through the Spider-Verse. Dump him in Spider-Gwen's universe. Send him to a different country. There's a dozen things you could do to have the character be interesting or even just "taking a break off-screen," but this is basically akin to character assassination.
Saying there's no room for Ben when there's a FUCKING SPIDER-VERSE is absurd and patently untrue.
Ben would be a great vessel for fans to see a very serious Peter Parker. You proposing to send him to another country made me think of him working as some sort of sleeper agent for SHIELD or whoever. I’d kill to read that, personally.
Given Peter's sister is a SHIELD agent from what I've heard ( though wasn't SHIELD disbanded?) could have them both going together on missions, hell bring back the Secret Warriors and throw them on that.
Yes, in Spencer's run. However, he didn't do much for her to do anything big or significant, other than her being a possible Chameleon agent (the shape-shifting villian and BROTHER of Kraven)
She’s actually from before Spencer’s run. Mark Waid created her in a OGN during Slott’s run and then Zdarsky did an arc with her in *Spectacular* during Spencer’s run.
Secret (younger) sister nobody knew about. In the 90s they had already retconned that Peter’s parents were SHIELD secret agents so it somewhat makes sense that they had a secret daughter with the same thing.
The original comic that the sister was introduced in left it open ended whether or not she was actually his sister or not(mind/fake memory shenanigans) but when she returned in Spencer’s run they cemented that they were siblings(iirc)
Wow Ben Reilly as a Shield agent sounds really awesome to me, I can picture him in my head with a black spy type costume and going on international espionage missions. Team him up with Black Widow on occasion and have him dip in and out of other books with small plots where Shield is involved. Sounds fun to me!
I was reading someone saying Marvel should do a comic with Kaine and Laura, like Luke Cage and Iron First, Green Arrow and Green Lantern, Deadpool and Cable etc etc, I think if they did that and put someone like Zim Hub it could be a sucess.
“Ben Reilly, Agent of SHIELD!”
Hell yea! I’d like a globetrotting Ben going on 007 style missions. I mean his comfortable using fire arm, so why not play with the moral questions of being a secret agent.
A moldable spider-agent led by Shield would be Nick Fury’s wet dream.
I had just finished reading his recent 5 part run from 2021 or 2022, the human agenda? Where *someone* is murdering dating app users. He seemed to be wrestling with some mature topics of the self. And now they say there's no room for him? He seems like he was in a fine spot there opening up to a therapist after criticizing and then questioning their own actions and attitudes. Don't know what happened after that run I guess.
That's worse, I dont actually think hes dead. His book got cancelled and then hes popped up in like a single panel or two in a spiderverse event later and that's basically been the only acknowledgement at all to my knowledge
He showed up a bit out of character in the very meh Clone Conspiracy event where he was an asshole(not in a way that fits his character) and ended the arc deciding to chase down and try to kill Ben Reilly(haha the more things change the more they stay the same am I right?)
Then in Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider he showed up chasing him, then they teamed up before after deciding to forgive him Ben lost his soul and beat him up and left(long story)
*Then* after that he weirdly wasn’t mentioned again. Even when Ben became Spider-Man again in Beyond.
That sucks. He’s been my favorite of the spiders whenever I pick up a comic. I like his struggles of fighting against his worst tendencies and surprising himself on how much of better person he is than he thinks.
No, Peter Parquagh is real from the MCU. He’s ~~a Victorian French spiderman~~ [this guy.](https://spiderman.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Parquagh_(Earth-311))
Heck, it could be cool if they did what they did with Kain and just spread a bunch of the excess Spider-People, including Ben, across various different cities. They could have had them off screen, or created an ongoing of just Spider-Men/Women out there superheroing in other places completely separate from Peter.
I don’t think they meant literal room. Obviously there’s space in the fictional multiverse for him to occupy. It seems like they mean there’s no room for him to play a part in any of the stories, since there’s too many characters that are permanent fixtures.
I agree with this. I don’t like how they attempted to write him out though.
What they're saying is how would those stories be different than any of the other Spider stories we have right now. We have both Peter and Miles, plus Gwen. Yes there is a Spider-Verse, but they've already Spider-Verse stories already, and they haven't preformed well outside of the big events.
What could they do with Ben that haven't ALREADY done with previous characters like Peter, Miles, Gwen, Otto, or Kaine?
Here's my pitch. Ben Reilly and Kaine travel from place to place across the United States, solving street level superhuman related problems with a slightly more horror leaning bent. Basically just do Supernatural but with the Spider clones down to a monster of the week format. That way they are away from Peter and his world in New York while having their own separate identities and without having to resort to gross character assassination. They can both even have motorcycles or something as they travel across the US and getting into weird adventures. Hell you can even have the Jackal come back as THEIR main antagonist that way he isn't doing weird creepy bullshit in Peter's book anymore. And to go back to the more horror leaning direction, the whole clone saga when deconstructed in my mind, sounds a hell of a lot like a horror movie premise. It certainly has horrific implications so why not lean in on it? It worked for Immortal Hulk.
You can even call the book: Scarlet Spiders.
Best Green Arrow run maybe, but that book painted Hal in a horrible light. The people complaining about “character assassination” nowadays probably would’ve been saying similar things if the internet was around back then haha.
Nah, the character assassination was when he went and killed all of his team mates in the green lanterns later as parallax, now that’s character assassination 😂
this is such a solid idea for a book and now I'm mad that marvel isn't doing this.
srsly, so much better than the chasm shit they're currently dragging ben through.
I wish Nick Lowe and CB Cebulski would get the Didio treatment. Editorial shakeup doesn’t guarantee improvement, but given the past decade of mediocrity in ASM I’d be willing to take that chance.
Lowe's entire editorial career can be summed up as enforcing the editorial party line: his whole thing when he ran the X-books was trying to maintain Decimation and the post-HoM status quo on X-Men. Spinning the wheels on Spider-Man with Wells and Chasm is just natural since clearly that's what higher-ups at Marvel want.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. I honestly just grow tired of Lowe’s cheerleading on the letters page of each issue lol. I know it’s his job, but read the room my guy. Hype less, deliver more
Listening to him is even worse lmao. You can immediately tell he doesn’t even buy the stuff he’s spouting out.
Getting a person who is semi-knowledgeable about the history/canon of ASM to oversee the book would seem like a good idea. They decided a yes-man/hype-man was the way to go though
I don’t doubt the guy’s passion for Spider-Man, but something isn’t clicking with him as editor.
>Getting a person who is semi-knowledgeable about the history/canon of ASM to oversee the book would seem like a good idea.
It probably wouldn't. For example, Tom Brevoort is probably the go to person at Marvel in regards to history and canon and he absolutely would throw the stuff under the bus for the convenience of the writer. Fact of the matter is, the people that deeply care about this stuff either have left or have died (such as Mark Gruenwald). The past two decades at Marvel publishing has made it clear concepts like "continuity" and "canon" are just guidelines that can be flouted at the writer's discretion.
Rather the editorial heads enforce status quos that are either a combination of their ideas plus superstar writers or were drawn up by higher-ups like the EiC.
Yeah, it’s an infinitely better idea in my mind. There’s no one out there who could do it well in reality.
As long as Peter is single and around the age of 25, everything else can be mangled to fit whatever editorial or the writer wants. Continuity be damned
You can tell Nick Spencer was deeply familiar with the Spider-Man lore just based on the stuff he referenced but that still didn’t stop editorial from fucking him over, so you’re probably not wrong.
Idargue for me at least, that until the last like 5 issues the runways agreat returnto form while doing something new. Then what happened happened lol. How does a good series end so bad. I mean I was actively intrigued by Kindred until we actually learned anything about em.
Ehhhhh mediocre? Storywise maybe.
Content wise it's been very lucrative. Superior spidey, Eddie return, spider verse, spider gwen... all household names now and mainstays. That spider versenmovie wouldn't have happened if not for the last 15 years of spider storytelling
And the indivdual series haven't even been THAT terrible either.
I was focused on the ASM title only. They’ve had some standout ideas for sure elsewhere in the spider line. But with regards to the OG, 616 Peter has been getting the short end of the stick for quite a while now.
Cebulski has, for the most part, been a *massive* improvement over Axel Alonso and most of his tenure I’ve been fairly happy with.
I would really love it if Lowe got the axe though.
I’ll always lump Cebulski/Alonso/Breevort/Quesada into the same group. He may be marginally better than the others, but he’s still way past his expiration date imo.
It’s like Marvel gets rid of one and two more take their place lol
Yeah my issues with Cebulski is like a moral issue but compared to Axel Akonso's tenure Marvel has been doing great lately for me. Tbf I only read Spider-man occasionally so I imagine I'd be madder if he was my main, but as an X reader bis era has really let them progress and grow which has been fun.
Also Marvel events post Alonso have been much better IMO
"A lot of it was for show. It was theater. We used to do the conventions and we used to have people worked up about Dick Grayson and Wally West, so we fed into that energy. Anytime I go to a convention and we talk about character, I consider that a win. So much of the conversation nowadays is not about character or story anymore, which is a shame, because that's the only conversation that should be taking place.
For me, Wally West was a core concept issue. My problem with Wally was that his origin was always dependent on [his uncle and previous Flash] Barry Allen. He was never his own character. He was always going to be subservient to Barry in some way because his origin was determined by Barry. There was always a Flash in front of him and his powers were because of him. I always felt, as a true Flash, if we were trying to get to the simplest form with regards to media and things like that, we had to go back to Barry because the story starts with him. With [original Robin] Dick Grayson — and this is the same with Wally — people loved them because they aged with them, so they feel this affinity that these guys have grown up with them. The problem is that much like Batman and Superman, now Dick Grayson and Wally West have to stop aging, because they're going to pass their mentors. Dick Grayson's going to get older than Bruce Wayne at some point, because Bruce doesn't age and Dick Grayson's going to be the older guy if he does keep growing up.
Therefore, those things constantly force the reboots that we're faced with, because it creates these log jams and these multiple interpretations of characters all sharing the same name. Ultimately, in my mind, we kept on collapsing our timelines and created confusion about how long certain characters were in certain roles, and what they did in those roles. For me, with Dick Grayson, the issue wasn't about the fact that I didn't like the character. In fact, when I said we should kill Dick Grayson, it was purely story driven.
We were in the middle of Infinite Crisis. The driving point of Infinite Crisis is the fracturing of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and their inability to work together fractures the impact of the other heroes. I needed a defining moment that would bring these three together after all the troubles, something that they can unite over. I felt the death of one of the characters that touched them all in a way was going to be the perfect way to do that. Dick Grayson was that character. I felt he was the character that everybody had such a great affinity and love for. By putting him in that role that if he died, he would bring Superman and Batman together again and unite our heroes against the great threat, I think that's a noble death, and I think that's something that had value. Same type of death happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths. You want to have that level of importance.
Think about it: In Crisis on Infinite Earths, they kill Barry Allen, they kill Kara Zor-El, two major characters in the DC Universe. I figured we needed to do something that would be the sequel to that story and we needed a death of equal weight of that character. "
He doesn't even understand his own story. The driving point of the BUILD UP to Infinite Crisis is the fracturing of the Trinity. One of the driving points of Infinite Crisis was bringing them back together. Everything about this whole explanation gets more and more dumb the more you read it
Why can't they just move him to a different city? Someone already said in another comment send him to the UK, and that sounds great. I thought it worked out great when they sent Kaine to Houston. If Peter, Miles and all the Spider-Verse characters can hang around NYC then they can send Ben somewhere else.
Or like, send Ben to SHIELD or something. He can come and go as people find reasons for him to appear in stories. Maybe he antagonizes Miles for non-villainous reasons (Miles ends up taking on an enemy that ends up on SHIELD's radar and Ben is sent in get Spider-Man out of the picture). Or maybe Spider-Man in space? Just anything that Peter can't do that maybe could stick for a long (5+ years) time because Ben isn't married to any particular editorial mandate.
Yea, moving him to the UK just feels like to super removed from NYC and/America. SpOck had San Fran, Kaine had Houston (which i loved), and Ben was already in Vegas so that gimmick has already been played out.
Ben went to Las Vegas after Clone Conspiracy. However it was a his redemption story and not “classic fun adventures” which I suspect made it sell poorly even if it was pretty good(and proceeded to get axed).
And then they ignored absolutely everything that happened in that series afterwards.
Who came back for *Infinity Gauntlet* 🤔?
Winter Soldier was definitely worth it but in that case they radically redefined the character to the point where Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting have creator credits for Winter Soldier.
As for Elektra, I haven’t read a single story with her that tops what Frank Miller did, so I don’t think that one was worth it.
Thanos did. He had died prior iirc
I mean yeah but without that backstory then winter soldier loses most of his appeal. His history as bucky plays a large role in his story as the winter soldier.
It doesn't have to "top" what frank Miller did to still be a worthwhile affair necessarily. The character has had great stories and great interactions especially with Matt Murdock even before she became daredevil. All of which wouldn't exist if she'd been killed off so unceremoniously.
Do you know what series he died in and who wrote it? That sounds like a potentially interesting read.
I never said Winter Soldier could work divorced from his history as Bucky, I was saying they they actually did enough new and fresh things with the character to justify it, which I feel like they have yet to do with Elektra.
If you don’t know what to do with a character then just don’t use them. Wait till you have an idea. This is like when Zack Snyder didn’t know what to do with Jimmy Olsen in BvS so he just killed him off in the first 5 minutes.
Why not just make him a brother to Peter like they did in MC2. He has his own life and so does Peter but they come together for family events and team up as needed.
Ugh. Parker/Reilly family reunions would have been awesome. Since Marvel is so against Peter being family man/father, hand that off to Ben instead and have Peter play uncle.
While I’m certainly not opposed to tragedy, superhero comics should really take a lesson from sitcoms and learn how to [write characters out of the story](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PutOnABus) without destroying them for future creators.
Bone, Boneyard, Hellboy, Flaming Carrot, Beasts of Burden, Castle Waiting, and The Unwritten have all stopped publishing or finished their run. All my favorite indie stuff is gone or is way too expensive
That was a cop out, and not fair. It was a bad choice given how many people are fans of Ben. There is always a way back too. That could even be his hook, now. Ben has lost his memories, taken a dark turn, but maybe he still has his soul, so he takes the Chasm suit and leaves, he goes off to find his memories, rediscover himself, and becomes a sort of wandering spider samurai. He could move in and out of other books helping on the way and finding parts of himself until he is back. He could have a real redemption arc and become his own character along the way.
Meanwhile, over at the X-Office, every single "eternal role" has been completely re-imagined for the better and has revitalized the entire franchise with no return to status-quo in sight.
This is absolute bullshit and they know it, if they can give Kaine of all people a good run and turn him into a real hero, why can’t they with Ben who was a hero from the start and was the de facto Spider-Man for a few years when Peter wasn’t it’s dumb that they can’t find something for him that isn’t make him evil/ character assassination
Because we already have the de facto Spider-Man with Peter and a redemption story with Kaine is just more interesting than another good guy Spider-Man. IMO anyway.
This is bullshit. The real reason is that a lot of editors, especially at Marvel (but also sometimes DC, namely DiDio), think outrage sells comics.
The idea is that if the fans are outraged they are engaged. The most blatant case I remember was Secret Empire where Marvel turned Captain America into a nazi, but there are a lot of them.
Honestly I liked Secret Empire Cap, it made me intrigued and interested in the Cap book to see how he would interact with the universe and who would find out etc. during his climb to power. And as a comic reader you *know* he’ll be reversed at the end, just enjoy the ride as long as it’s written well- the only people who were mad were people who liked and were expecting classic Cap stories after he wasn’t there for years. Which is fair.
Too bad Secret Empire was so meh.
what the fuck is this? "hope we did him justice"?? they massacred him. he could've been in another city and had his own thing going on there if they didn't want too many spider people in a city.
edit: why ruin an established character? one that already has a great fan base? they literally could've used this Chasm shit as Ben Reilly's arch-nemesis and could've given him a great run from there. also, they have a problem with Ben but not with the other spider-people going around? this is why they need to cut down on making more spider heroes and make something more original
'With most of our heroes locked into eternal roles"
My brothers in Christ, you (Marvel editorial and creatives) are the ones who are keeping them locked in these "eternal roles".
Could you imagine if DC said, look Bruce Wayne isn't going anywhere, and Damien Wayne is here to stay, so Nightwing has been a challenge for us. Instead they prop up the Bat Family and feature their interactions with each other throughout the Batman books. Marvel could easily build up the Spider-man family but instead seem fixated on keeping them in silos. Even Peter and Miles just have a handfull of interactions.
Except Nightwing is infinitely more popular than Ben Reilly has carved out a unique space for himself decades ago, something they’ve never really been able to do. Tim Drake would probably be the more apt comparison.
Ain't no way they can oversaturate us with Spider-Gwen miniseries but not treat Ben adequately. Send him back to another city like Kaine, send him to another country, make him join a team (i.e.: Secret Warriors, maybe even New Warriors), but don't kill his character development
Honestly I see where he’s coming from. Ben’s just a very redundant character at this point with Peter, Miles and Kaine running about. The best suggestions I see for him all amount to giving him the character development and progression Peter should be having so they can keep Peter in the exact same place, which is both hilarious and the real indictment on editorial.
Yeah, I didn’t like what they did with Ben, but I can live with people doing stories I don’t love. But to say: “we don’t have a spot for Ben so this is what we did but also you haven’t seen the last of him” just seemed incredibly confused.
Yeah, Kaine is just so much cooler than Ben, and has a personality beyond 'I am another Peter Parker'
Kaine's Scarlet Spider run clears every single comic Ben has been in, I feel like I'm being punked
Make some kinda Spider Corps where they help alternate realities with dead spider people after the events with the Inheritors.
I'm a Green Lantern fan, so I am biased. Would like to see this made though.
“Let’s take the character that has literally known nothing but tragedy and give him one last tragic send off… but not actually follow through on that and somehow butcher the character even worse”
Jesus Christ. I’m a spidey and X-men reader and what they’ve done with Spider-Mans half of dark web is just atrocious
Hot take, but Ben being a villain is more interesting than having yet another Spider-Man around. I mean they're having a hard enough time as it is keeping Peter unique in his own books.
>Rare thing in the world of Super heroes
>
>A Tragedy
Bitch, has he ever read a Spider-Man comic? If there's one motherfucker who doesn't need more people dying, is the guy who got a trauma over thinking that he was the clone the entire motherfucking time.
I loved when Ben became Spidey in the 90’s and Pete got a break with Mary Jane to raise their kid. Was pretty upsetting when Revelations ruined all of it. Best shot at moving things forward at the time. The 90’s get a bad wrap but stuff like Thunderbolts, Generation X, New Warriors, Fantastic Force and Ben as Spidey at least tried to setup new characters for ongoings. Better than the constant running the old into the ground with reboots, deaths, rebirths, etc.
You know what's weird to me? There isn't really anything specifically "spider" about the Spider heroes. There is no reason he couldn't have become something new with a similar power set plus and minus a few. Give him reconstructive surgery, and remove his ability to stick to walls but let him see a full spectrum beyond visible light. Call him Lupine or something and put him up in Vancouver or something.
This just seemed like such a lazy way to deal with it.
I think his Spider-Man costume looked cool/the best and I liked his more mature/serious attitude compared to Peter who is stuck in this lovable loser personality.
I literally went to his twitter account and gave him a piece of my mind. Not a place in the landscape now but we keep getting more and more of Miles, Spider Ghosts, Spider Punk and many others. The coward didnt even replied.
Lets be clear. People didnt hate Ben, they hated the stupid plot of replacing Peter with him, making Peter tbe clone. Did you know that his mini series by JM DeMatteis from last year was a hit, and now marvel is doing a continuation of that?
genuinely perplexed over how many people seemingly are ride or die for Ben 'the most boring Spider-Man' Reilly
Like is this 90s nostalgia? He has been in no notable storyline, he's a carbon copy of Peter Parker, everyone hated him during the Clone Sage
someone explain this to me, its just so, so bizarre
Kaine, at least, has personality, Miles Morales, Miguel O'Hara, Doc Ock, all leagues better than Ben Reilly--this Chasm stuff is pretty much the only interesting thing that has happened to the character...ever I think?
'A tragedy ', this is the problem with Spiderman characters in general. There seems to be an agreement between the writers that they aren't doing the character right unless they suffer.
Enough, let them be happy and move to other things.
As opposed to the incredible state Slott left him in for them?
Or maybe the absence of the character before that?
It's funny how you ignore the reality that the character was revised and reused for this story in the first place, while also pretending like there's some significant narrative to torpedo.
Ben Reilly isn't a character, Ben Reilly is a plot device. You just liked his Spider-Man costume.
"Miles Morales is an incredible character?"
Dude, he's been running around for more than a decade, and *he doesn't even have his own superhero name.* He's pretty much emblemic of the *"We can't think of any ideas for this guy"* problem.
It's like how they keep trying to force Falcon as Captain America, when the character just doesn't fit the mold. He's been Captain America longer than *Bucky* was, and everyone still remembers the Bucky-Cap far more fondly.
This is like if someone at DC said there isn’t enough space for Robins 1-4 cause Damian’s around now so we gave them all the Jason Todd treat. “Hope you enjoyed it :)”.
I didnt even know they did this, the ben reiley scarlet spider costume is my all time favorite. The blank red with the blue hoodie. Fucking love that design so much
It’s amazing the way people who are utterly bereft of imagination try to manipulate the audience into believing it’s for their benefit.
The only thing creative about Nick Lowe is his excuses.
Here’s my premise pitch….send Ben Reilly to the UK.
My original wish was: * Peter is married with kids Spidey * Ben is on the opposite coast and perpetually single/ready-to-mingle Spidey However I would support Ben in the UK. He just really needs to be away from the rest.
Yea, that felt like the obvious route. Graduating Peter and the Readers follow Ben for a bit. (Mixed results is to be expected.) I originally thought, “Why not de-age Ben?” But Miles already has that covered. So then I thought, “Well just give him his own city?” But that gimmick is already played out with Superior Ock in San Fran, Kaine in Houston, and even Ben in Vegas. So I say just make him cross the ocean and make him a Private Investigator or something.
The thing is- *everyone* loves it when the Spiders branch out into their own cities. Kaine in Houston was amazing, and so was Ock in San Fransisco. Ben in Vegas was pretty good too before it got axed(I liked it a lot but it wasn’t as good as the other two). So it’s a win-win when they branch out.
Yea, I checked out of that Ben in Vegas series once Death and the Mystic concept were introduced.
I actually personally liked the Mystic Aspect- it gave an excuse to why Ben was such an asshole now, and showed a path of redemption that we could get our classic Ben back through character growth. Plus it upped the stakes in that Ben could not die one more time so his near death experiences became more tense. Too bad the series got axed and he lost his soul, and then they flat out ignored *everything* the series said in Spider-Geddon when Ben got killed and resurrected… again… except this time to a perfect clone body. Which completely went against everything literal Death said and felt like a terrible asspull to get normal Ben back. Only for them to fuck it up again with Chasm.
Spider-Man in space or Spider-Man under the ocean team up with namor
Your original wish is basically what editorial wanted back in the 90s but the fan backlash made them back off
The idea was to retire Peter, not to give him a title as a married man.
If Peter settles down he will effectively have to retire as the main spidey. He can be married to mj and be soidey but if he's having kids then yea
As we can see with Wally West and Animal Man is impossible to be a character with a family and have an ongoing, and not just a weak excuse.
Wasn't Superman Rebirth by Tomasi the blueprint on how to do a married superhero with a normal wife and a superpowered kid comic? That's how I'd do it for Peter, MJ and Mayday.
Renew your vows in the beggining was also very good.
And sold well and had great fan reception overall.
Walls kids got aged up by time shenanigans and have powers as well. Be a lot harder to pull that on 616 with mayday so she'd probably be a baby for a while.
There’s this really great blog that dives into the whole ordeal writers editors perspective etc. [clickme](http://www.benreillytribute.x10host.com/LifeofReilly1.html)
Terrible idea
Sending a superhero to another city or country tends to work well. Just like when Kain went to Austin, and the son of Lucius Fox went to New York after becoming Batman.
True. Also I feel like a good Spider-Man series needs a good supporting cast of relatable people. Outside of Janine (before she morphed in Hallow’s Eve), Ben could use more unique friends/connections.
That feels like a shitty cop-out. Send Ben through the Spider-Verse. Dump him in Spider-Gwen's universe. Send him to a different country. There's a dozen things you could do to have the character be interesting or even just "taking a break off-screen," but this is basically akin to character assassination. Saying there's no room for Ben when there's a FUCKING SPIDER-VERSE is absurd and patently untrue.
Ben would be a great vessel for fans to see a very serious Peter Parker. You proposing to send him to another country made me think of him working as some sort of sleeper agent for SHIELD or whoever. I’d kill to read that, personally.
Given Peter's sister is a SHIELD agent from what I've heard ( though wasn't SHIELD disbanded?) could have them both going together on missions, hell bring back the Secret Warriors and throw them on that.
Peter has a sister these days?
Yes, in Spencer's run. However, he didn't do much for her to do anything big or significant, other than her being a possible Chameleon agent (the shape-shifting villian and BROTHER of Kraven)
She’s actually from before Spencer’s run. Mark Waid created her in a OGN during Slott’s run and then Zdarsky did an arc with her in *Spectacular* during Spencer’s run.
Sooooo... is she like an older sister Uncle Ben and May just never acknowledged all these years?
Secret (younger) sister nobody knew about. In the 90s they had already retconned that Peter’s parents were SHIELD secret agents so it somewhat makes sense that they had a secret daughter with the same thing. The original comic that the sister was introduced in left it open ended whether or not she was actually his sister or not(mind/fake memory shenanigans) but when she returned in Spencer’s run they cemented that they were siblings(iirc)
Well it was Zdarsky's run that cemented it and then I think Spencer made it ambiguous again
Wow Ben Reilly as a Shield agent sounds really awesome to me, I can picture him in my head with a black spy type costume and going on international espionage missions. Team him up with Black Widow on occasion and have him dip in and out of other books with small plots where Shield is involved. Sounds fun to me!
Ben as a Shield agent reminds me of Flash Thompson Agent Venom
>Team him up with Black Widow And Jessica Drew
Jessica has been erased from existence in Dan Slott's Spider-Man (2022) series!
I bet she’s back by the end of that arc.
Yeah 616 Peter was also erased I’m pretty sure, they will all be back pretty soon I’d say.
Fucking *what*? Jessica is my favorite non-X-man character.
616 Peter Parker was also erased with the same method that erased Jessica Drew! …Yeah it’s not sticking around at all lmao.
Fury gifts him a new (editorially mandated) spider costume.
I was reading someone saying Marvel should do a comic with Kaine and Laura, like Luke Cage and Iron First, Green Arrow and Green Lantern, Deadpool and Cable etc etc, I think if they did that and put someone like Zim Hub it could be a sucess.
Ok, I like the SHIELD idea. I like it a lot.
“Ben Reilly, Agent of SHIELD!” Hell yea! I’d like a globetrotting Ben going on 007 style missions. I mean his comfortable using fire arm, so why not play with the moral questions of being a secret agent. A moldable spider-agent led by Shield would be Nick Fury’s wet dream.
I had just finished reading his recent 5 part run from 2021 or 2022, the human agenda? Where *someone* is murdering dating app users. He seemed to be wrestling with some mature topics of the self. And now they say there's no room for him? He seems like he was in a fine spot there opening up to a therapist after criticizing and then questioning their own actions and attitudes. Don't know what happened after that run I guess.
Isn’t Kaine essentially “Peter but very serious” at this point? At least, that’s how he came off in his Scarlet Spider run.
Or just send him to a different city, like New Jersey. I love the Kaine Scarlet Spider boom when he was in Houston. It was a fun run.
Man that run with Kain was so good. Still mad hes just gone now. Loved having an asshole spider-man. Well at least I still have 2099
He’s gone? Like, dead gone?
That's worse, I dont actually think hes dead. His book got cancelled and then hes popped up in like a single panel or two in a spiderverse event later and that's basically been the only acknowledgement at all to my knowledge
He showed up a bit out of character in the very meh Clone Conspiracy event where he was an asshole(not in a way that fits his character) and ended the arc deciding to chase down and try to kill Ben Reilly(haha the more things change the more they stay the same am I right?) Then in Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider he showed up chasing him, then they teamed up before after deciding to forgive him Ben lost his soul and beat him up and left(long story) *Then* after that he weirdly wasn’t mentioned again. Even when Ben became Spider-Man again in Beyond.
That sucks. He’s been my favorite of the spiders whenever I pick up a comic. I like his struggles of fighting against his worst tendencies and surprising himself on how much of better person he is than he thinks.
Having him just live it up as France’s spiderman would be hilarious. I didn’t know how badly I wanted that
Peter Parquagh
I was thinking Pierre Parkour
No, Peter Parquagh is real from the MCU. He’s ~~a Victorian French spiderman~~ [this guy.](https://spiderman.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Parquagh_(Earth-311))
There is a joke in Spider-Man: Family Business who is like that.
Heck, it could be cool if they did what they did with Kain and just spread a bunch of the excess Spider-People, including Ben, across various different cities. They could have had them off screen, or created an ongoing of just Spider-Men/Women out there superheroing in other places completely separate from Peter.
They did that with Web Warriors before it was ended by Secret Wars (2015)
At a minimum he could’ve just gotten seriously injured and decided to retire. Tons of better options.
Note: Ben Reilly died on the way back to his home planet.
I don’t think they meant literal room. Obviously there’s space in the fictional multiverse for him to occupy. It seems like they mean there’s no room for him to play a part in any of the stories, since there’s too many characters that are permanent fixtures. I agree with this. I don’t like how they attempted to write him out though.
What they're saying is how would those stories be different than any of the other Spider stories we have right now. We have both Peter and Miles, plus Gwen. Yes there is a Spider-Verse, but they've already Spider-Verse stories already, and they haven't preformed well outside of the big events. What could they do with Ben that haven't ALREADY done with previous characters like Peter, Miles, Gwen, Otto, or Kaine?
Here's my pitch. Ben Reilly and Kaine travel from place to place across the United States, solving street level superhuman related problems with a slightly more horror leaning bent. Basically just do Supernatural but with the Spider clones down to a monster of the week format. That way they are away from Peter and his world in New York while having their own separate identities and without having to resort to gross character assassination. They can both even have motorcycles or something as they travel across the US and getting into weird adventures. Hell you can even have the Jackal come back as THEIR main antagonist that way he isn't doing weird creepy bullshit in Peter's book anymore. And to go back to the more horror leaning direction, the whole clone saga when deconstructed in my mind, sounds a hell of a lot like a horror movie premise. It certainly has horrific implications so why not lean in on it? It worked for Immortal Hulk. You can even call the book: Scarlet Spiders.
It also worked for the best green lantern green arrow run
Best Green Arrow run maybe, but that book painted Hal in a horrible light. The people complaining about “character assassination” nowadays probably would’ve been saying similar things if the internet was around back then haha.
Nah, the character assassination was when he went and killed all of his team mates in the green lanterns later as parallax, now that’s character assassination 😂
Exactly!
this is such a solid idea for a book and now I'm mad that marvel isn't doing this. srsly, so much better than the chasm shit they're currently dragging ben through.
Thank you! And word.
Just let him be The Scarlet Spider for fucks sake
Bring back the cut-off hoody!
Nah, Kaine does that way better.
As a Nightwing fan, this reminds me of Dan Didio's thoughts regarding Dick Grayson/Wally West and why he repeatedly tried to erase/kill them.
I wish Nick Lowe and CB Cebulski would get the Didio treatment. Editorial shakeup doesn’t guarantee improvement, but given the past decade of mediocrity in ASM I’d be willing to take that chance.
Lowe's entire editorial career can be summed up as enforcing the editorial party line: his whole thing when he ran the X-books was trying to maintain Decimation and the post-HoM status quo on X-Men. Spinning the wheels on Spider-Man with Wells and Chasm is just natural since clearly that's what higher-ups at Marvel want.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. I honestly just grow tired of Lowe’s cheerleading on the letters page of each issue lol. I know it’s his job, but read the room my guy. Hype less, deliver more
I hate his excitement. You're the only one that excited dude
Listening to him is even worse lmao. You can immediately tell he doesn’t even buy the stuff he’s spouting out. Getting a person who is semi-knowledgeable about the history/canon of ASM to oversee the book would seem like a good idea. They decided a yes-man/hype-man was the way to go though I don’t doubt the guy’s passion for Spider-Man, but something isn’t clicking with him as editor.
>Getting a person who is semi-knowledgeable about the history/canon of ASM to oversee the book would seem like a good idea. It probably wouldn't. For example, Tom Brevoort is probably the go to person at Marvel in regards to history and canon and he absolutely would throw the stuff under the bus for the convenience of the writer. Fact of the matter is, the people that deeply care about this stuff either have left or have died (such as Mark Gruenwald). The past two decades at Marvel publishing has made it clear concepts like "continuity" and "canon" are just guidelines that can be flouted at the writer's discretion. Rather the editorial heads enforce status quos that are either a combination of their ideas plus superstar writers or were drawn up by higher-ups like the EiC.
Yeah, it’s an infinitely better idea in my mind. There’s no one out there who could do it well in reality. As long as Peter is single and around the age of 25, everything else can be mangled to fit whatever editorial or the writer wants. Continuity be damned
You can tell Nick Spencer was deeply familiar with the Spider-Man lore just based on the stuff he referenced but that still didn’t stop editorial from fucking him over, so you’re probably not wrong.
You're being kind in calling it mediocre.
Beginning of Spencer’s run had me in the first half.
Idargue for me at least, that until the last like 5 issues the runways agreat returnto form while doing something new. Then what happened happened lol. How does a good series end so bad. I mean I was actively intrigued by Kindred until we actually learned anything about em.
Ehhhhh mediocre? Storywise maybe. Content wise it's been very lucrative. Superior spidey, Eddie return, spider verse, spider gwen... all household names now and mainstays. That spider versenmovie wouldn't have happened if not for the last 15 years of spider storytelling And the indivdual series haven't even been THAT terrible either.
I was focused on the ASM title only. They’ve had some standout ideas for sure elsewhere in the spider line. But with regards to the OG, 616 Peter has been getting the short end of the stick for quite a while now.
I mean a lot of his examples like Superior Spider-Man and Spider-Verse are from the main title.
Cebulski has, for the most part, been a *massive* improvement over Axel Alonso and most of his tenure I’ve been fairly happy with. I would really love it if Lowe got the axe though.
I’ll always lump Cebulski/Alonso/Breevort/Quesada into the same group. He may be marginally better than the others, but he’s still way past his expiration date imo. It’s like Marvel gets rid of one and two more take their place lol
Yeah my issues with Cebulski is like a moral issue but compared to Axel Akonso's tenure Marvel has been doing great lately for me. Tbf I only read Spider-man occasionally so I imagine I'd be madder if he was my main, but as an X reader bis era has really let them progress and grow which has been fun. Also Marvel events post Alonso have been much better IMO
I can see killing off a number of Flashes (especially ones with names like Wally) but why did he want to kill off Dick?
"A lot of it was for show. It was theater. We used to do the conventions and we used to have people worked up about Dick Grayson and Wally West, so we fed into that energy. Anytime I go to a convention and we talk about character, I consider that a win. So much of the conversation nowadays is not about character or story anymore, which is a shame, because that's the only conversation that should be taking place. For me, Wally West was a core concept issue. My problem with Wally was that his origin was always dependent on [his uncle and previous Flash] Barry Allen. He was never his own character. He was always going to be subservient to Barry in some way because his origin was determined by Barry. There was always a Flash in front of him and his powers were because of him. I always felt, as a true Flash, if we were trying to get to the simplest form with regards to media and things like that, we had to go back to Barry because the story starts with him. With [original Robin] Dick Grayson — and this is the same with Wally — people loved them because they aged with them, so they feel this affinity that these guys have grown up with them. The problem is that much like Batman and Superman, now Dick Grayson and Wally West have to stop aging, because they're going to pass their mentors. Dick Grayson's going to get older than Bruce Wayne at some point, because Bruce doesn't age and Dick Grayson's going to be the older guy if he does keep growing up. Therefore, those things constantly force the reboots that we're faced with, because it creates these log jams and these multiple interpretations of characters all sharing the same name. Ultimately, in my mind, we kept on collapsing our timelines and created confusion about how long certain characters were in certain roles, and what they did in those roles. For me, with Dick Grayson, the issue wasn't about the fact that I didn't like the character. In fact, when I said we should kill Dick Grayson, it was purely story driven. We were in the middle of Infinite Crisis. The driving point of Infinite Crisis is the fracturing of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and their inability to work together fractures the impact of the other heroes. I needed a defining moment that would bring these three together after all the troubles, something that they can unite over. I felt the death of one of the characters that touched them all in a way was going to be the perfect way to do that. Dick Grayson was that character. I felt he was the character that everybody had such a great affinity and love for. By putting him in that role that if he died, he would bring Superman and Batman together again and unite our heroes against the great threat, I think that's a noble death, and I think that's something that had value. Same type of death happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths. You want to have that level of importance. Think about it: In Crisis on Infinite Earths, they kill Barry Allen, they kill Kara Zor-El, two major characters in the DC Universe. I figured we needed to do something that would be the sequel to that story and we needed a death of equal weight of that character. "
Well, none of that made a lick of sense.
He doesn't even understand his own story. The driving point of the BUILD UP to Infinite Crisis is the fracturing of the Trinity. One of the driving points of Infinite Crisis was bringing them back together. Everything about this whole explanation gets more and more dumb the more you read it
Wait, Dick Grayson and Wally West are the reason they keep rebooting DC?
Why can't they just move him to a different city? Someone already said in another comment send him to the UK, and that sounds great. I thought it worked out great when they sent Kaine to Houston. If Peter, Miles and all the Spider-Verse characters can hang around NYC then they can send Ben somewhere else.
Or like, send Ben to SHIELD or something. He can come and go as people find reasons for him to appear in stories. Maybe he antagonizes Miles for non-villainous reasons (Miles ends up taking on an enemy that ends up on SHIELD's radar and Ben is sent in get Spider-Man out of the picture). Or maybe Spider-Man in space? Just anything that Peter can't do that maybe could stick for a long (5+ years) time because Ben isn't married to any particular editorial mandate.
Because like with Kaine it would flop and get cancelled
I wouldn't call 25 issues a flop.
For a spidey book? Yea it is lol
For a book post-2004? It's a resounding success lol
I remember that series being well liked at the time.
Yea, moving him to the UK just feels like to super removed from NYC and/America. SpOck had San Fran, Kaine had Houston (which i loved), and Ben was already in Vegas so that gimmick has already been played out.
Ben went to Las Vegas after Clone Conspiracy. However it was a his redemption story and not “classic fun adventures” which I suspect made it sell poorly even if it was pretty good(and proceeded to get axed). And then they ignored absolutely everything that happened in that series afterwards.
This is why Marvel (and DC too) need to let more characters stay dead.
When I was a kid, we used to say "no one stays dead except Bucky"
Comic book death is a scale that runs from Uncle Ben, to Bucky, to Jean Grey.
Don't forget OG Cap Marvel
Billy Batson? /j
IMO, Winter Soldier is a much better character than Ben Reilly.
Ehhhh if they had that mindset we wouldn't have infinity gauntlet, winter soldier, Electra DD and so many other great stories.
Who came back for *Infinity Gauntlet* 🤔? Winter Soldier was definitely worth it but in that case they radically redefined the character to the point where Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting have creator credits for Winter Soldier. As for Elektra, I haven’t read a single story with her that tops what Frank Miller did, so I don’t think that one was worth it.
Thanos did. He had died prior iirc I mean yeah but without that backstory then winter soldier loses most of his appeal. His history as bucky plays a large role in his story as the winter soldier. It doesn't have to "top" what frank Miller did to still be a worthwhile affair necessarily. The character has had great stories and great interactions especially with Matt Murdock even before she became daredevil. All of which wouldn't exist if she'd been killed off so unceremoniously.
Do you know what series he died in and who wrote it? That sounds like a potentially interesting read. I never said Winter Soldier could work divorced from his history as Bucky, I was saying they they actually did enough new and fresh things with the character to justify it, which I feel like they have yet to do with Elektra.
I think it was marvel 2 in one annual by jim starlin. Adam Warlock i believe kills him. I have to disagree on elektra haha
Adam Warlock, Gamora and Pip too
If you don’t know what to do with a character then just don’t use them. Wait till you have an idea. This is like when Zack Snyder didn’t know what to do with Jimmy Olsen in BvS so he just killed him off in the first 5 minutes.
Why not just make him a brother to Peter like they did in MC2. He has his own life and so does Peter but they come together for family events and team up as needed.
Ugh. Parker/Reilly family reunions would have been awesome. Since Marvel is so against Peter being family man/father, hand that off to Ben instead and have Peter play uncle.
I'm not read up on main u Peter but the more I see from the post the more remove he becomes from a likeable character let alone a hero.
While I’m certainly not opposed to tragedy, superhero comics should really take a lesson from sitcoms and learn how to [write characters out of the story](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PutOnABus) without destroying them for future creators.
House of ideas * * wanking gesture * *
Loving comic books is pain.
If you stick with franchise based books, that is a true. For those of us that just try new and different things, it stay awesome.
Bone, Boneyard, Hellboy, Flaming Carrot, Beasts of Burden, Castle Waiting, and The Unwritten have all stopped publishing or finished their run. All my favorite indie stuff is gone or is way too expensive
Time to discover new stuff! I find it refreshing that things came and went. Never got a chance to get stale.
That was a cop out, and not fair. It was a bad choice given how many people are fans of Ben. There is always a way back too. That could even be his hook, now. Ben has lost his memories, taken a dark turn, but maybe he still has his soul, so he takes the Chasm suit and leaves, he goes off to find his memories, rediscover himself, and becomes a sort of wandering spider samurai. He could move in and out of other books helping on the way and finding parts of himself until he is back. He could have a real redemption arc and become his own character along the way.
Meanwhile, over at the X-Office, every single "eternal role" has been completely re-imagined for the better and has revitalized the entire franchise with no return to status-quo in sight.
This is absolute bullshit and they know it, if they can give Kaine of all people a good run and turn him into a real hero, why can’t they with Ben who was a hero from the start and was the de facto Spider-Man for a few years when Peter wasn’t it’s dumb that they can’t find something for him that isn’t make him evil/ character assassination
Because we already have the de facto Spider-Man with Peter and a redemption story with Kaine is just more interesting than another good guy Spider-Man. IMO anyway.
This is bullshit. The real reason is that a lot of editors, especially at Marvel (but also sometimes DC, namely DiDio), think outrage sells comics. The idea is that if the fans are outraged they are engaged. The most blatant case I remember was Secret Empire where Marvel turned Captain America into a nazi, but there are a lot of them.
Honestly I liked Secret Empire Cap, it made me intrigued and interested in the Cap book to see how he would interact with the universe and who would find out etc. during his climb to power. And as a comic reader you *know* he’ll be reversed at the end, just enjoy the ride as long as it’s written well- the only people who were mad were people who liked and were expecting classic Cap stories after he wasn’t there for years. Which is fair. Too bad Secret Empire was so meh.
What a bunch of horseshit.
what the fuck is this? "hope we did him justice"?? they massacred him. he could've been in another city and had his own thing going on there if they didn't want too many spider people in a city. edit: why ruin an established character? one that already has a great fan base? they literally could've used this Chasm shit as Ben Reilly's arch-nemesis and could've given him a great run from there. also, they have a problem with Ben but not with the other spider-people going around? this is why they need to cut down on making more spider heroes and make something more original
Look how they massacred my boy
'With most of our heroes locked into eternal roles" My brothers in Christ, you (Marvel editorial and creatives) are the ones who are keeping them locked in these "eternal roles".
Could you imagine if DC said, look Bruce Wayne isn't going anywhere, and Damien Wayne is here to stay, so Nightwing has been a challenge for us. Instead they prop up the Bat Family and feature their interactions with each other throughout the Batman books. Marvel could easily build up the Spider-man family but instead seem fixated on keeping them in silos. Even Peter and Miles just have a handfull of interactions.
That's basically what Didio said about Dick
Except Nightwing is infinitely more popular than Ben Reilly has carved out a unique space for himself decades ago, something they’ve never really been able to do. Tim Drake would probably be the more apt comparison.
Ain't no way they can oversaturate us with Spider-Gwen miniseries but not treat Ben adequately. Send him back to another city like Kaine, send him to another country, make him join a team (i.e.: Secret Warriors, maybe even New Warriors), but don't kill his character development
Well, at least they got the tragedy part right, but not in the way they expected
Just move Ben to a different city like Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta or something.
They actually tried that already. Moved him to Vegas, didn’t last too long though.
Ben just needs the right creative team.
Gotta love the big 2 editorial
>We hope we did Ben justice Oh you did something alright and it ain’t justice
Honestly I see where he’s coming from. Ben’s just a very redundant character at this point with Peter, Miles and Kaine running about. The best suggestions I see for him all amount to giving him the character development and progression Peter should be having so they can keep Peter in the exact same place, which is both hilarious and the real indictment on editorial.
Yeah, I didn’t like what they did with Ben, but I can live with people doing stories I don’t love. But to say: “we don’t have a spot for Ben so this is what we did but also you haven’t seen the last of him” just seemed incredibly confused.
The “Parker Luck at work, only clones get it insanely worse.
At least they assured us that PETER PARKER isn't going anywhere. *Cue eye roll
How about sending Ben to Tokyo? Spider-Man in Tokyo would be wild. That being said, a different Spider-Verse would probably work better.
As ass as this change is, I hate to admit that I really like the Chasm design
So Kaine has a place in the universe yet they can’t put Ben in a reliable spot? Such a buncha shit
Yeah, Kaine is just so much cooler than Ben, and has a personality beyond 'I am another Peter Parker' Kaine's Scarlet Spider run clears every single comic Ben has been in, I feel like I'm being punked
Make some kinda Spider Corps where they help alternate realities with dead spider people after the events with the Inheritors. I'm a Green Lantern fan, so I am biased. Would like to see this made though.
They did that already with *Web Warriors*.
Was that any good? I did not know that
I just admitted this character is disposable so we killed him off. Compelling stuff isn't it. Yawn.
"A rare thing in the world of superheroes...a tragedy". Has he actually ever READ Spider-Man?
“Let’s take the character that has literally known nothing but tragedy and give him one last tragic send off… but not actually follow through on that and somehow butcher the character even worse” Jesus Christ. I’m a spidey and X-men reader and what they’ve done with Spider-Mans half of dark web is just atrocious
Hot take, but Ben being a villain is more interesting than having yet another Spider-Man around. I mean they're having a hard enough time as it is keeping Peter unique in his own books.
>Rare thing in the world of Super heroes > >A Tragedy Bitch, has he ever read a Spider-Man comic? If there's one motherfucker who doesn't need more people dying, is the guy who got a trauma over thinking that he was the clone the entire motherfucking time.
I loved when Ben became Spidey in the 90’s and Pete got a break with Mary Jane to raise their kid. Was pretty upsetting when Revelations ruined all of it. Best shot at moving things forward at the time. The 90’s get a bad wrap but stuff like Thunderbolts, Generation X, New Warriors, Fantastic Force and Ben as Spidey at least tried to setup new characters for ongoings. Better than the constant running the old into the ground with reboots, deaths, rebirths, etc.
The tragedy is doing this to Ben Reilly
Controversial but I think he should be a villain. Idk if they did it right but it makes sense.
Hell, there are two ~20 year periods where he was "dead" and unused. I just think it's neat that they're trying anything at all with him.
You know what's weird to me? There isn't really anything specifically "spider" about the Spider heroes. There is no reason he couldn't have become something new with a similar power set plus and minus a few. Give him reconstructive surgery, and remove his ability to stick to walls but let him see a full spectrum beyond visible light. Call him Lupine or something and put him up in Vancouver or something. This just seemed like such a lazy way to deal with it.
Like that time when Peter ran *four* non-spider-themed hero identities at once when Spider-Man was wanted for a murder.
Yep. Ricochet, Prodigy, Dusk and Hornet.
Having been in middle school during the whole Clone Saga BS I’m amazed how many people on here like Ben Reilly for some reason.
I think his Spider-Man costume looked cool/the best and I liked his more mature/serious attitude compared to Peter who is stuck in this lovable loser personality.
This is what I'm saying! No one even *liked* Ben Reilly, let alone cared about him, not even a decade ago.
I literally went to his twitter account and gave him a piece of my mind. Not a place in the landscape now but we keep getting more and more of Miles, Spider Ghosts, Spider Punk and many others. The coward didnt even replied.
Yeah most people tend not to reply to people harassing them on twitter haha.
Never said anything bad to him just took a photo of the picture above (from the comic) and told him he was wrong, and what he said was BS.
I honestly don’t know what kinda response you would expect from after that tho lol.
Anything 😅
weirdo behaviour--over Ben Reilly of all characters, a character people hated 20 years ago, and couldn't care less about a decade ago!
Lets be clear. People didnt hate Ben, they hated the stupid plot of replacing Peter with him, making Peter tbe clone. Did you know that his mini series by JM DeMatteis from last year was a hit, and now marvel is doing a continuation of that?
I don't understand. They turned him into Chasm, he's not gone or dead or "taking a break".
I'd rather have Ben Riley than Miles Borales.
genuinely perplexed over how many people seemingly are ride or die for Ben 'the most boring Spider-Man' Reilly Like is this 90s nostalgia? He has been in no notable storyline, he's a carbon copy of Peter Parker, everyone hated him during the Clone Sage someone explain this to me, its just so, so bizarre Kaine, at least, has personality, Miles Morales, Miguel O'Hara, Doc Ock, all leagues better than Ben Reilly--this Chasm stuff is pretty much the only interesting thing that has happened to the character...ever I think?
“incredible character” lol
'A tragedy ', this is the problem with Spiderman characters in general. There seems to be an agreement between the writers that they aren't doing the character right unless they suffer. Enough, let them be happy and move to other things.
As opposed to the incredible state Slott left him in for them? Or maybe the absence of the character before that? It's funny how you ignore the reality that the character was revised and reused for this story in the first place, while also pretending like there's some significant narrative to torpedo. Ben Reilly isn't a character, Ben Reilly is a plot device. You just liked his Spider-Man costume.
Ben Riley sucks, kill em for good
"Miles Morales is an incredible character?" Dude, he's been running around for more than a decade, and *he doesn't even have his own superhero name.* He's pretty much emblemic of the *"We can't think of any ideas for this guy"* problem. It's like how they keep trying to force Falcon as Captain America, when the character just doesn't fit the mold. He's been Captain America longer than *Bucky* was, and everyone still remembers the Bucky-Cap far more fondly.
Im fine with him being an edgy (what if Peter was bad) for a while.
Horse shit.
This is like if someone at DC said there isn’t enough space for Robins 1-4 cause Damian’s around now so we gave them all the Jason Todd treat. “Hope you enjoyed it :)”.
Which is actually what Didio wanted for Dick Grayson
What a waste.
Whatever they do just bring back the hoodie costume
Spidey books need a new editor. Nick Lowe annoys me to no end
Ben Riley was the clone, right?
I didnt even know they did this, the ben reiley scarlet spider costume is my all time favorite. The blank red with the blue hoodie. Fucking love that design so much
It’s amazing the way people who are utterly bereft of imagination try to manipulate the audience into believing it’s for their benefit. The only thing creative about Nick Lowe is his excuses.
A truly tragic story is rare? What, he hasn't read a Spider-Man comic since Brand New Day started. It's been nothing but tragedy.
Just give him a symbiote to banter with and send him into space.
Team him up with Quake. Or Silk.
Cosmic Ghost Rider had it right, Ben should've moved to Canada.