The Life of Reilly

The other night on the Cinegeek podcast (which you can download at www.cinegeek.com) we talked a bit about the Clone Saga that ran in the Spider-Man comics in the mid-90s. I have been doing a little investigating these last couple days and found this: http://lifeofreillyarchives.blogspot.com

I won't go into all the gory detail on how this storyline nearly destroyed the Spider-Man mythos or how it has become the poster child for what was wrong with the 90's comic industry. Instead I want to focus a bit on the Scarlet Spider.



Ben Reilly came out of bad situation. Being a clone of Peter Parker can't be easy. I mean the pressure of being a superhero, not to mention being married to a super model, has to be hard on a man. But I liked Ben. He was a freer version of Peter. No wife, no elderly Aunt to take care of, no financial issues. really he did have the best of both worlds. I liked it even more once we doned the Scarlet Spider outfit. I mean, c'mon, that sleeveless hoodie screams 90's. And I love the 90's. Plus he eventually joined the New Warriors who were one of my favorite super groups of the 90's. Hell, the first issue of their comic said it all:



So, this new "Spider-Man" joins an up-and-coming superhero group and what happens? Not much really. The editorial staff at Marvel tried to replace Peter with Ben and the fans lost their shit. So Marvel back peddled and brought the original Peter Parker back into the role of Spider-Man and killed Ben Reilly. But we all know how this goes in the comic book world. rumor has it that Ben Reilly is coming back to the Spider-Man universe. for the first time since the "One More Day" debacle I am looking forward to a Spider-Man comic. If only Marvel would have the foresight to give the Scarlet Spider his own series and let Matt Fraction write it. A boy can dream....