Who Is Ben Reilly? Wasn't that the name of an issue of Spider-Girl? You remember Spider-Girl, right? The fan-friendly-yet-all-ages-friendly book that was well written and respectful, and therefore cancelled book?

While I enjoyed the Clone Saga (in a MST3K kinda way), this wouldn't be near as bad if Quesada and Co. wasn't always dropping bombs against the saga (and then topping the inane stupidity with crap like The Other and One More Day).

Who is Ben Reilly? They'll probably retcon it so that the Peter we've been following since the end of the Clone Saga has been Reilly all along...that or have him propose to Veronica.

I thought Scarlet Spider started off well - I even liked the costume - but having him be the real Spidey didn't work out so well. I applaud the writers for making a daring choice, but it was not one to win fans over with.

Oh wait. So this isn't the Fan Fiction Friday post? My mistake.

You remember Spider-Girl, right? The fan-friendly-yet-all-ages-friendly book that was well written and respectful, and therefore cancelled book.

And not a moment too soon, either. Take that, limp female ripoffs of popular male characters.

Not going to lie... I love Scarlet Spider as a character. It's odd because what Spider-Man is now reminds me a lot of how they tried to make Scarlet Spider, not tied down, free to do what he wants.

I think the whole Spider clones is one of those things that needs to be acknowledged more in the Marvel Universe.

While I love the Scarlet Spider, I hate Ben Reily.

@Templar: Yeah, I guess they only work in the DC Universe. Still, Spider-Girl was the better than (just about) any Spider-Woman, and at least made the most sense for having her powers.

"Who Is Ben Reilly? Wasn't that the name of an issue of Spider-Girl?"

IIRC the name of that storyline was "Who is Gwen Reilly"

WHOAH! I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING. If Spider-Man gave up his marriage with smokin' hot wife Mary Jane to save his decrepitly old Aunt May's life just so she could turn around and give a gumjob to his worst enemey's father and have him walk in on it... That means Mary Jane is up for grabs. Who better to "grab" her, that Ben Reily? THINK ABOUT IT: It'd be familiar territory for her, but also new. It's like Coke with Lime. This time: Peter can come back home to find his wife with his clone, instead of vice-versa, and have to go away and live in shame and seculsion.

So, when do the pants come off?

Sigh I'm being nerdy but maybe due to the whole marriage selling thing means that Ben has come back to life, after all Harry Osbourne's still alive why not Ben.
If so then (honestly) good. I grew up in the 90s and Ben Reilly was my Spider Man (that an 90s cartoon spider man). He may not be the best or even the most adequate character around but dammit he was my character.

Wow, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought The Scarlet Spider wasn't that bad! With his return, can Kaine be far behind?

@WM. You don't really want Kaine back do ya? He was a douche!
Also, Scarlet Spider has really fragile looking ankles in the pic up top. Is this some hitherto unknown side effect of being a clone? Some form of localised osteoporosis?

Ben Reilly was great.

FUCK YES. I loved the Scarlet Spider, and Ben Reilly wasn't too bad really, just a bit whiney at times. And I thought Kaine was a great character when he was still a mystery, once they unmasked him and made him all hairy he turned into a generic murderer/criminal which wasn't so good. I hope this isn't just going to be a one-shot of Reilly, it would be awsome to see him back again.

Oh, and @bruce: The twig-like ankles are a side effect of another 90's era epidemic: TRIANGULAR FEET SYNDROME. Seemed like every hero and villain of that period had feet that could puncture walls.

@Trism. Thanks for the info mate. I didn't notice the TFS before, I thought the bane of '90's comics was the teeny head/ huge boob affliction that every single female in comicdom suffered from. Another debilitating condition suffered by heroes of all genders was The Catalogue Model disease where even doing something as simple as telling another hero the time required bouncing acrobatically off 3 walls and pointing off panel.

Bruce - To my recollection, Kaine was probably the only full-on emo villain in Marvel (note his costume), in an decade where everybody was 'roided up and ridiculously armored. I would dare say that I really wouldn't mind seeing him pop up just to get some kind of closure with him. It doesn't seem right that he was just swept under the rug like he was.

I was a lifelong Spidey fan and I loyally collected the Amazing Spider-Man title. The mystery of the original Hobgoblin, the alien costume, Pete and MJ getting married, Todd McFarlane, the intro of Venom...all these things I witnessed first hand. I loved it all!

I finally lost interest in the never ending robot parents storyline, which was building up to the clone saga. I'm glad I stopped when I did!

The sad thing is, I have only read Spidey comics sporadically since then. How sad...

fuck you guys, scarlet spider is awesome.

Here's my guess:

All the stuff that JMS wrote? The "totem" stuff? The "reborn" stuff? The new powers? When Brand New Day started that stuff was gone, and Peter Parker was back to needing web shooters, not having new powers, and not having any connection to that whole "Spider totem" thing. It's unclear whether or not he ever even died at the hands of Morlun.

So maybe, somehow, all that totem stuff happened to Ben Reilly, and not to Peter Parker. I'm not sure how they'd work that, but it's clear that Peter doesn't remember EVER having those extra powers. He never mentions them, or his lack of them now. The current Peter Parker acts as if he never had the ability to produce webs organically, or sense spiders, or produce "stingers", or any of that other stuff. You'd think he'd miss it on those days he's out of web fluid... But the very first story in Brand New Day involved him losing one of his web shooters.

The retcon didn't make it so all that JMS stuff never happened-- According to the editors, everything that happened in Amazing Spider-Man *did* happen as we saw it, with the sole exception of Mary Jane and Peter not being legally married. Clone saga, Secret Wars, Civil War, New Avengers, Ezekial... it all happened.

But if it happened, then what of Spider-Man's hibernation and rebirth? What of his new powers?

The best choice here... Ben Reilly fought Morlun. He's the one who hibernated and came out as a new version of Spider-Man. Maybe Pete hibernated too, and came out the same? Maybe he never fought Morlun? Either way, I'm willing to bet we'll see a Ben Reilly that has all the powers Spider-Man had up until Brand New Day.

If you go back and look, you'll notice that during Civil War, when he was wearing the Iron Spider suit, Pete didn't use his new Totem powers. That's because THAT was Peter Parker.

I need to go back and read some of those issues from the "Totem powers" run, but I think they could seriously work it out so that all the far-out JMS ideas were actually done to Ben Reilly, and we were just being treated to dual storylines... We were reading Ben Reilly AND Peter Parker, but never knew they weren't the same guy.

As for the name "Scarlet Spider", it's been taken by the only remaining clone of MVP wearing Tony Stark's Iron Spider costume. The group of MVP clones were "Scarlet Spiders" since just after Civil War, and while the group has been whittled down to just one, it's pretty clear that he goes by that title.

@ Bill -- The last year of Spider-Man has been some of the best of the entire run (and I have read almost every issue of Amazing Spider-Man for the past 30 years, skipping only some of the clone saga and some of the McFarlane Venom-heavy issues). I'm not kidding; These guys know their stuff, and they've done a crack job of getting Spider-Man back into shape. You owe it to yourself to read everything after One More Day if you're a fan. It's clever, funny, and loyal to the spirit of Spider-Man.

lol 90's

Good to know that the other six people on planet earth who liked the Scarlet Spider storyline read TR.

The Clone saga was an abomination, but some of the writers-- J. M. Dematteis in particular-- did a very good job making Ben Reilly a likeable character. As horrible as the Clone Saga was, I was still sad to see Ben so casually disposed of, and subsequently swept under the rug. I think there's definitely a place for Ben in the Marvel Universe, just not as a replacement for Peter. I've been buying Brand New Day in trades, but I may have to check this issue out when it hits.

Ben Reily's one of the few good things to come out of the Clone Saga. It was a mistake to kill him off in the first place, anyway.

I also actually liked Ben, despite being buried in the crapfest of the clone saga. I don't know if he should be brought back, but if it's done right, it could work.

@ZeroCorpse I don't know if that would work too well. We'd have a similar situation that the clone saga presented us with in that the person we'd been reading about and thinking was Parker wasn't, so we'd feel betrayed all over again.

One proposal that might work is that somehow after OMD, Peter lost his connection to the Spider Totem, so the Totem brought back one which a similar connection to continue to serve basically as its avatar on Earth: Ben.

Absolutely loved Ben Reilly and The Scarlet Spider, I own most of the Clone Saga thanks to the first ever "Guys Night Out" with my Dad when I was a kid. My Dad went from being everyone's lackey since I was a baby to owning his business and thus he could finally afford to do stuff like take us to the movies and have family days. So suddenly I was old enough to pick out comics for myself and I bought the first appearance ofthe Scarlet Spider in of Web Spider-Man and washooked on the character.

So one day he decides to take me out to the matinee showings of The Professional and The Crow. Then afterwards we hit like 4 or 5 comic shops picking up Death of Superman issues and then suddenly we discovered a FUCK TON of all these new Clone Saga books and we literally spent of the rest of the evening buying as much of it as we could find. When we found out we owned up to the most current issue, we went home and stayed up until like 2am (which was Damn late!) and read asmuch as we could. The Death of Aunt May hit us both really hard. So for me The Scarlet Spider was PURE good memories for me.

Nowadays I reread those issues and I really felt for Ben and his struggles. Glad he's coming back.

The Scarlet Spider was an interesting idea, and at a point when there were four Spider Man titles it made perfect sense to dedicate two of the titles to him, the other two to Pete. Heck, I even liked the costume.

But of course it being the nineties, the odds of things getting messed up were pretty good and the Scarlet Spider had some lame bad guys (i.e. Ms. Octopus) and was made the "real" Peter Parker. Way to go, Marvel; take a neat idea and piss all over it.