Ben if brought back, really should team-up and probably even date Black Cat... that's pretty much a match made in heaven right now... and edgy less moral spider-man for her.
That would be interesting, but it would be a plot point that would benefit Felicia Hardy more than Ben Reilly. That also assumes that the best way to help a character without a niche or purpose to exist is to attach him or her to another character in a romance - a character who is a supporting character and thus also has some missing slots in terms of purpose. All Black Cat really is now is a hot, sexy thief who teams up with Spidey sometimes. I don't think it would fix the fundamental problem - merely distract from it.
But, such solutions are usually common, and often the best we can usually expect.
Was Reilly really "edgy" and "less moral" than Spider-Man? About the only major difference was that he seemed to genuinely enjoy combat a little more than Peter - and even THAT difference is not really innovative anymore now that Peter has learned martial arts from Shang Chi.
Ben was never edgy and less moral. He was just like Peter Parker, cut right down to the core except for one thing.....no wedding ring. That's why longtime fans despised him, he was the first (of many) lame attempts to jettison a married Spider-Man.
I don't care if he comes back at this point. The Clone Saga looks like The Dark Knight Returns compared to OMD. But Dread brings up the biggest point.....what do you do with him when it's all said and done? Give him his own solo series that sells around 18-20K per month, then cancel it after 8 issues? Then what.......just let him fade in the background?
Some people might argue that because Superman and Batman have no end of books for their spare characters, that Spider-Man may as well jump on the bandwagon. But that argument is flawed for a few reasons. One, DC and Marvel do have different priorities in many ways. Two, that strategy is not working for DC - many of their titles sold so poorly that they were barely making much profit on them, hence a major line wide reboot. Frankly, I think it is long past time comics started seriously gauging whether a spin off is justified.
VENOM is doing well and suddenly it may seem like the best idea to truck out more ASM spin off's. To do that would be to forget recent history. To forget that SPIDER-GIRL was DOA in terms of sales and will end with issue #8. That WEB OF SPIDER-MAN crawled to issue #12. That quite a few SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS mini series for Jackpot or Anti-Venom sold like bupkiss. Thus, the ratio of successful to failing ASM spin off's right now is at best, 1:3, and at worst, about 1:8. As it is, Marvel are taking some risks spamming on SPIDER-ISLAND as they will with all the extra mini's and one-shots.
Wolverine has two ongoing titles; but WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS is sliding down the sales charts. So are X-23 and DAKEN; sure, they'll last a year but they're both fading slowly and steadily. Wolverine's past his prime. Yet because of status, he gets spin off's. This is bad thinking.
I am not convinced there are enough Reilly fanboys to keep any spin off of his afloat long enough on sheer gimmick. Without any character purpose to exist, I don't see him appealing to anyone who isn't a devoted Reilly fan from 1995. Literally every sort of quirk or thing that Reilly may have offered has been rendered moot by either BRAND NEW DAY or BIG TIME. And offering the exact same guy, only in a new costume with a different title, doesn't work anymore. Frankly, I think DC would be wiser to not automatically ensure that Superman and Batman need a "family" of titles.
well the raptor issues seemed to depict Ben with a darker past... I always thought ben indeed was a bit edgier and darker compared to peter.. he was perter parker without all the loved one peter had in his life.
like all writing, if they choose to, they can make the situation interesting.. (people thought the same thing about the idea of bucky ever returning, and he's probably been one of the best and well handled returns in comic history
There is a key difference between Bucky and Reilly. Despite all of the bellyaching, Brubaker had a fair point; Bucky was never killed off on panel. It was a retcon; it had merely been grandfathered in as permanent canon because Stan Lee did it - which is probably why Franklin Richards has lasted so long. It was merely a retcon that had never been challenged, which Brubaker did. Reilly, on the other hand, clearly died on panel. Brubaker could explain Bucky's death away by claiming that it was all hinged to how Rogers remembered stuff, but as he was basically waking up from a coma, his memory was reasonably addled. Reilly died right there, in front of Peter, on panel. He turned to ash. You can't revive someone that obviously dead without some sort of magical ceremony. You can't just scoop up ashes and regrow them in a tube. That's ridiculous. Even when reviving Colossus, Joss Whedon wasn't fool enough to claim aliens could regrow someone from ash with a machine - the aliens merely took his corpse and made sure it wasn't cremated. Even the writer who gave the world such stupidly ridiculous things like "Puppet Angel" knew when to draw a line.
The other difference has been brought up, too. Ben Reilly was Marvel editorial's first ham fisted attempt to get Spider-Man single again. Only instead of using a demonic ceremony, they thought fans would be happy to see Peter and MJ ride off into the sunset and retire. And maybe they would have - except Marvel had to go the extra mile and claim Peter was the clone, which pooched it. The kick in the nuts of being told your hero of 20+ years was a useless copy isn't the sort of thing that is easily forgotten or forgiven. Marvel used to get heaps of letters begging for Reilly's death. And eventually they did it, and ASM sales have NEVER recovered.
The audience is too small to divide over useless and desperate editorial stunts. The fact that ASM has survived doing it again with OMD is probably a testament to the writers who came in later. Dan Slott being Capt. Solo as of BIG TIME got me to finally crack after 2.5 years, after all.
Before Mephisto, Reilly was the symbol of everything Marvel disregarded and wanted to eliminate about Spider-Man's character development.
Brubaker also had the benefit of nobody really writing Bucky in, oh, about 50 years. He could basically make Bucky anyone he wanted, and he did. Ben Reilly doesn't have that benefit. He's barely been off the stage for 15 years. And because Marvel really wanted him to be the REAL Spider-Man, that hindered him because his differences to Peter had to be minute. This becomes a problem now because not even those differences to Peter make him distinct anymore.
In order to give Reilly a real character motivation and character niche, Slott or another writer would have to drastically alter his character to the point that he was no longer like Parker and all - and if one is doing that, why not just make a new character? Nobody is thrilled when someone obviously writes a new character in the body of an old one.
Clones are usually useless because their only character plot tends to be a version of, "I don't know if I am real and I angst about it." That has literally been X-23's plot for her entire character's existence. She has been appearing in Marvel comics for about 7 years, and she is STILL searching for even the vaguest hint of a personality. Her personality is lacking one. That's no good. There is a good reason why Mr. Sinister's Marauders are no longer treated like real characters, because they're not. The X-Men slaughter them without hesitation or mercy, because they know they'll be back. Quite how they claim to care about X-23 is a bit of hypocrisy, but whatever. All X-23 has is an interesting and complicated origin. She has a very good reason to be an emotionless husk. That doesn't change the fact that she is a husk. And the only reason she looks better now is because Daken is even lamer. T&A will keep her around for years longer than she deserves to. Reilly doesn't have that luxury.
(And no, Finesse from AVENGERS ACADEMY is not the same. She has a very clear personality - she's a *****. Everything she does, she does as a *****. It's her personality, and it works. Every time she gets kicked or knocked over, I feel a little better. And a female character who is an irredeemable ***** is a perfectly valid personality trait - Maria Hill and Agent Brand and rode that to the hilt. It beats having NO personality at all.)
In AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, the character of MVP (who was himself a sort of generic good guy hero) was cloned a few times. Three of them were made into new Scarlet Spiders. They all shared a personality, but that personality was being a generic soldier/hero. Thus, Slott and Gage saw fit to kill off two of them whenever a story needed a designated corpse. Now there's one left, and he has no personality. He is a literal blank slate and nobody knows what to do with him. He's shown up in FEAR ITSELF: YOUTH IN REVOLT and the best he could be is what he's dressed as - a third rate Spider-Man, right down to lame puns. Crossbones even criticized him about it. He's just there. And I don't see the point to characters who are just there to fill space in a background panel. They have to have SOMETHING going on.
As it is, I don't believe Slott will seriously resurrect Reilly, and if he does, I don't think it will be for longer than SPIDER-ISLAND. I assume this "perfect clone" is just one of the gazillion Jackal had in storage somewhere that got lost to time. Marvel spent so long all but denying they EVER did the Clone Saga after Joe Q took over that I am not convinced they really want to repeat it. Especially after Brian Bendis redid it in USM, and managed to do it even more poorly.
That's actually why I think SPIDER-ISLAND is an interesting plot for Jackal. Rather than just make more literal Spider-Clones, he is merely spreading his powers around to duplicate him in spirit. Rather than make literal copies, he is making metaphorical copies - could ANYONE with the same powers be Spider-Man? That's neat. Especially as Marvel seems to vaguely imply that by dismissing Peter's unique genius and morality and claim him an "everyman". So, SPIDER-ISLAND is a means to show that, no, it isn't the powers that make Spider-Man who he is, and that's terrific. I mean, Jackal's clones of HIMSELF are treated as comic relief. Nobody takes clones seriously.
