It’s Time to Admit Spider-Man’s Clone Saga Wasn’t Actually That Bad

Spider-Man is the most beloved character that fans aren’t always happy about. It’s a strange paradox. The hero is definitely a favorite of many, but his printed adventures have gone through periods where the fans absolutely hate his comics. This has been a pretty common occurrence for several decades now, and it became most prevalent in the 1990s, starting with the Clone Saga. There have been many mistakes in Spider-Man comics, but for an entire generation of fans, the Clone Saga was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This story hearkened back to The Amazing Spider-Man #149, where the Jackal created clones of Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker, revealing that the Spider-Clone survived that issue and had returned. This kicked off a two-year, two-month story that ran out of steam about a year in.

While modern fans are more angry about “One More Day”, the Clone Saga is almost like the original sin of the Spider-Man comic for an entire generation of fans. It torpedoed the Spider-books for years, which is especially surprising because of how strong those books were selling in the first four years of the decade. I was reading the books back then, and I want to say something controversial: the Clone Saga actually isn’t that terrible. While there are definitely many problems with it, going back and reading the issues reveals something rather surprising: not only wasn’t it all that bad the whole time, it was honestly good more than once over its long, long, run.

The Clone Saga Was Mostly Standard Quality ’90s Comics

No one is denying that the Clone Saga was, overall, a mistake. The problem wasn’t that they brought back the Spider-Clone. It wasn’t that they said that the clone was the real deal. It wasn’t even the the Aunt May fake out. The problem was that they came up with the idea, never came up with an ending, and then got rid of most of the original creative teams who broke the story, who had been handing in some pretty great stories throughout their time on the four Spider books (we lost the J.M. DeMatteis/Sal Buscema Spectacular run, which is best of all time).

That’s honestly the main problem with the story in general. They never made an ending and the writers who picked up the idea also didn’t have a plan because the books were still selling very well and Marvel didn’t want to mess that up. Basically, it’s inept greed all the way down. Death of Superman mastermind Dan Jurgens was given the flagship Spider-Man book, and didn’t even know that he was writing the clone until after he signed the contract. The books were selling for a while; it wasn’t until the last year of the story that things got really bad saleswise, and they didn’t pick up until 2001.

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However, speaking as someone who was there and read a lot of it, it actually wasn’t all that bad. Early ’90s Marvel Comics had a pretty good standard of quality for the four main Spider-Man titles (basically, Amazing and Spectacular were the A books, Spider-Man was the B book, and Web was the C book, but they were mostly good), and had some tremendous talents on those books. The early days of the story were really good and the death of Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man #400 is honestly pretty great. The build-up to the reveal that the clone is Peter was excellent. Spider-Man The Lost Years was great, and Kaine was awesome.

The wheels did come off after the reveal that Ben Reilly was Peter, but even then, they were just kind of standard Spider-Man stories. Basically, Ben as Spider-Man was the “inept young single adult in New York City”-type character that Marvel is doing now in the Spider books, with Peter and Mary Jane nowhere to be seen, fans didn’t like that very much (shocker, I know). These stories were basically standard superhero stories; if you didn’t like Ben, you won’t like them regardless, but they aren’t terrible stories. The ending is better than it gets credit for; sure, nothing was ever done with the death of Peter and MJ’s kid, but bringing back Norman was the right choice and the final battle is epic.

The Clone Saga’s Problems Have Always Been Bigger Than the Story

There are plenty of bad parts of the Clone Saga. The Judas Traveler and Scrier reveals were massively disappointing. “Maximum Clonage” was just as bad as you imagine. The Aunt May fake-out was terrible and presaged “One More Day” in some ways. The story went on much too long, but if you go back and read the books as a Spider-Man reader, it’s honestly mostly standard quality Spider-Man stories. The art is pretty great, as we get legends like Mark Bagely, Tom Lyle, Sal Buscema, Bill Sienkiewicz, John Romita Jr., Dan Jurgens, and more on the titles, so they always looked good. They were rarely as terrible as people think.

The problems with the Clone Saga don’t have much to do with the actual stories, it’s more because of the behind the scenes situation that things went off the rails. If it was a year, year and a half tops, fans may have been better with it. The sales actually went up in the opening stages of the story. Marvel had a good idea on their hands, and mismanaged it to the extent that fans think it’s the worst thing ever, when it’s honestly just on the lower end of average.

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