Follow TV Tropes

Following

Trivia / The Clone Saga

Go To

  • Author's Saving Throw:
    • In the case of the First Clone Saga, Gerry Conway, who was worried that his over-the-top story about clones and Jackal was a little too quirky for Spider-Man, later wrote in The Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #8 during the crossover event "The Evolutionary War" that Miles Warren never actually cloned anyone. What the Jackal did was create a drug and experimented on a woman who had some of Gwen Stacy's attributes, with his cocktail altering her to genetically resemble Gwen. In other words, Jackal never actually cloned anyone, what he did was mutate subjects into clones. Conway saw this as a way to handwave how exactly the Jackal, a lowly college professor at ESU, was able to make a breakthrough in human cloning (he didn't), clarify and explain away the fate of the missing Gwen clone, and once and for all put to rest the idea of Spider-Man being any kind of clone. note  Glenn Greenberg, who wrote the "Life of Reilly", expressed frustration at Conway for, as he put it, going "to great lengths to undo his own stories", plainly ignoring the memo that Conway felt that clones and the Jackal were both bad ideas beyond one-and-done stories.
    • A few were built into the story, but they were never used properly as the collection of writers and editors battled for turf. A lot of ideas were bandied around and it's debatable if any of this would have truly worked in any capacity:
      1. Seward Trainer, the geneticist who claims that Peter is the clone, was mentioned as having past history with the Jackal; therefore, everything he says is unreliable. (Incredibly, Editorial vetoed this seemingly obvious exit route.)
      2. Ben Reilly is revealed to be the clone and melts away. Mary Jane also disintegrates, revealing that the Jackal had replaced her with a clone long ago, and that Peter was never married to begin with. (The idea that Peter had married a clone of Mary Jane was used to undo his marriage in Spider-Man: The Animated Series)
      3. Ben and Peter get caught in an explosion; one of them dies; the surviving one has amnesia and can't be certain if he's the fake or not. Repeating what they thought was the situation in 1974, except without the larger thematic point that ultimately won out there.
      4. Predestination Paradox: Peter is sent back in time five years, loses his memory, and is led to believe that he's a clone, thus becoming Ben Reilly. Judas Traveler and Scrier (actually Mephisto) are revealed to be responsible for the loop, as part of a Cosmic Chess Game to see whether good or evil win out.
      5. Peter and Ben are both clones. The real Peter Parker has been held in cryogenic captivity by the Jackal since the first Clone Saga ended.
      6. Ben dies saving Peter's life at the hands of the Big Bad. Back in Portland, Mary Jane miscarries, blames Peter, files for divorce.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • A lot of people involved weren't happy with how the story was going, and this resulted in quite a few changes in direction.
    • Tom DeFalco, the editor-in-chief at the time the Clone Saga was pitched, thought it sounded like a bad idea right from the start, especially the idea of replacing Peter Parker with Ben Reilly, which he thought readers would never accept. But the Spidey writing team were enthusiastic about it and he, reluctantly, agreed to it on the proviso that a backdoor be inserted to undo the whole thing if, and when, audiences revolted at the story. He ended up losing his authority when sales and marketing were given say over him and that extended the saga interminably.
  • Creator's Favorite:
    • It's pretty clear that Kaine was intended to be a Breakout Character, with the writers taking every opportunity to show how powerful and take-no-prisoners he is. Readers instead dismissed him as a cookie-cutter '90s Anti-Hero who had little in the way of actual personality and was needlessly-violent even by the standards of the '90s. That he managed to kill fan-favorite villain Dr. Octopus with minimal effort doesn't help.
    • The writers admit to being personally fond of Jack, whom they regarded as Plucky Comic Relief that was much needed for such a grim and gritty storyline. Unfortunately, readers who already had a hard time taking the storyline seriously instead saw Jack as a pointless distraction. Writers' attempts to make readers sympathize with Jack (such as his grim realization that he'll soon undergo Clone Degeneration, or his genuine mourning over another clone that was apparently his friend even though they never really interacted before that clone's death) did little to alleviate it.
  • Creator's Pest: According to Glenn Greenberg on Life of Reilly, the writers didn't care much for Judas Traveller, due to the fact very few on the writing crew knew what to do with him, and more or less having to make it up as they went along.
    "No one — not the writers, not the editors — seemed to know who or what the hell Judas Traveller was."
  • Executive Meddling:
    • The series was prolonged due to sales, causing the quality to take a dive. The Clone Saga had the misfortune of debuting during a regime change in Marvel's editorial staff; the high-earners (Editor-in-chiefs who managed to boost sales during the comics recession) were kept on; losers found themselves demoted or downsized. This Glengarry Glen Ross approach put extra pressure on editors to prolong the Clone Saga event, even if it meant dropping meaningless hints and clues to tantalize readers. Consequently, several "back door" escape routes were proposed and rejected (see below). The end result was that the Clone Saga, intended to dispel the dark, brooding tone of the '90s Spidey books and go "back to basics", ended up becoming the darkest and most impenetrable story yet.
    • Not to mention that, like One More Day, it was an attempt to return to the days when Spider-Man was single.
    • The famous Life of Reilly details what went on behind the scenes, but long story short, what prolonged it was greed (despite the criticisms and mocking it gets, it was making Marvel money), attempts to recreate the success of another storyline from the same time (hence the "Maximum Clonage: Alpha and Omega" one-shots and the Scarlet Spider titles for a few months), trouble behind the scenes over where to go with the story, and not wanting the finale to compete with the Onslaught storyline.
  • Executive Veto: This happened enough times that it almost belongs under Executive Meddling. Among the story threads that were shot down: Ben adopting Peter's identity after the latter passed away (leaving the Spider-canon more or less the same), one Spider-Man dying in an explosion while the surviving one loses his memory, and (wait for it...) having Mephisto erase the whole thing via a Cosmic Retcon.
  • Follow the Leader: The return of the clone and debut of Kaine follow the wave of "replace-the-hero" comics started by The Death of Superman. Additionally, the "Maximum Clonage: Alpha and Omega" one-shots and Scarlet Spider titles were inspired by similar gimmicks in Age of Apocalypse.
  • Lying Creator: Some fans think this of the "director's cut" miniseries. It's hard to write a story as "originally intended" or having a single director's cut when you had multiple creators and writers with separate ideas and plot thread going in different contradictory ways. J. M. DeMatteis one of the collaborators for it, for his part sees it as faithful to how he and others saw it (namely allowing an older Peter an ending with Ben Reilly as his Legacy Character and successor), while others such as Gleen Greenberg point out that a plan was to have Peter return to single status at the end with Mary Jane leaving Peter over the trauma of their miscarriage (which writers nixed because divorce compromised Spider-Man's optimistic image).
  • Milestone Celebration: The saga was originally planned to end at Amazing Spider-Man #400, with Peter Put on a Bus and Ben becoming the new Spider-Man. Thanks to Executive Meddling, however, the story arc ended up going on for far longer due to its popularity. That said, ASM #400 was notable for Aunt May's heart-rending passing and many still consider it, on its own merits, a classic story.
  • Old Shame: Quite a few people involved aren't fond of the saga themselves, though others feel it had some good ideas, and many point out that people did like Ben Reilly and Kaine.
  • Referenced by...: As the first episode was a review of the "Smoke and Mirrors" arc, Atop the Fourth Wall had a storyline that did its own spin on this for its tenth anniversary, though it's also a case of Never Trust a Title as the "clone" is really Mechakara Came Back Wrong and the true villain is Mirrorkara; the latter having killed the real clone to test an Agony Beam.
  • Science Marches On: A very odd example occurred during this story—in the '80s and '90s, some scientists started to believe that cloning was impossible, and for some bizarre reason the writers of an outlandish superhero comic decided that this "fact" undermined the entire clone saga and needed to be addressed, so Miles Warren was retconnednote  into actually creating a weird sort of virus that rewrote the DNA of captured individuals so that they became copies of the original and then wiped and somehow rewrote their memories so they were not actually clones... which got very awkward a few years later when scientists successfully cloned sheep and other animals, thus disproving the idea that cloning was impossible. To make it more awkward still, neither any virus nor actual human cloning would have the precise effects that the Jackal's cloning efforts are portrayed as having (real-life clones are more like glorified identical twins, for instance), so both explanations were always pure science fiction anyway.
  • Troubled Production: Very much so, as documented in Life of Reilly. It's part of the reason the storyline dragged on so long and ended up as such a convoluted mess.
    • Shortly after the arc began, Marvel's financial problems began to bite: editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco, who had greenlit the whole thing, was fired, and Marvel's comics division was divided up and restructured. This meant that a lot of key personnel involved in setting up the Saga in the first place were no longer there to help steer things in the intended direction.
    • Executive Meddling forced the writers to keep stretching the storyline out which, combined with the aforementioned lack of direction, led to writers throwing plot threads at the story seemingly at random, just to pad things out and try and keep readers engaged. JM DeMatteis, one of the lead writers for the Saga, soon resigned after suffering from creative burnout and running out of ideas.
    • DeFalco's replacement, Bob Budiansky, was eventually convinced by DeMatteis' replacement, Dan Jurgens, to reverse course and reinstate Peter Parker as the real Spider-Man... except that nobody had any idea how to actually do that without it looking like a blatant cop-out. While various ideas were proposed (see What Could Have Been below), the writers and editors couldn't agree on an approach, and the resultant stalemate meant the arc dragged on even longer. Finally Jurgens came up with a proposal that Budiansky seemed to like, stating in a memo, "This is my last shot. After this, I give up." Before work could begin on it, however, Marvel underwent another restructure and Budiansky was replaced by Bob Harras, who ordered another delay so the conclusion wouldn't clash with the planned "Onslaught" story arc. True to his word, Jurgens quit.
  • What Could Have Been: A lot. They can all be read on the Life Of Reilly article. A few notable ones, some of which were uses in the 2009–2010 "director's cut":
    • At one point no-one was the clone, and in fact Peter and Ben were the same person caught in a Stable Time Loop. When this went against Marvel time travel rules, it was decided that someone was needed who could plausibly ignore said rules. So Scrier was going to be Mephisto, and he was going to trick Peter Parker into going back in time and becoming Ben Reilly in order to gain the soul of Judas Traveller, who was going to be a Fallen Angel. This was nixed for many of the same complaints against One More Day.
    • Another was that the character Gaunt would be the mastermind, with the idea being that the real mastermind was coming back from the dead inside Gaunt's costume, although they weren't initially sure who Gaunt would be. Eventually they decided Gaunt's identity would've been Harry Osborn, but this was felt to be too much like a previous story where Harry posthumously made robotic duplicates of Peter's parents. This led to them going back to the drawing board and making the mastermind not be Gaunt, which drew out the story even more. The mastermind became Norman Osborn, while Gaunt eventually turned out to be Mendel Stromm.
      • The "director's cut" mini-series used the idea of Harry as the mastermind, albeit having Harry faked his death rather than actually dying and coming back.
    • The Final Adventure mini was supposed to retire Peter as a superhero and MJ give birth to their daughter. Before the final issue was completed, everyone involved knew Peter would resume being Spider-Man, so Marvel wanted the mini to end with MJ having a miscarriage instead. Editor Tom Brevoort refused, the Life Of Reilly even quoting him as saying, "There's no way in hell that I'm going down in history as the man who killed Spider-Man's baby."
    • And yet another one was that Eddie Brock was going to replace Peter as Spider-Man using this as a way to bury the hatchet on their rivalry and Ben would've kept being the Scarlet Spider. The reasons for not doing this was because they were scared of making Eddie not Venom.
  • Word of God: The Life Of Reilly article features commentary from people involved in the Clone Saga, including revealing bits that didn't make it into the story such as Kaine's costume featuring a Life-support system and as a result of the defects in him, his Psychic Powers and Mark of Kaine were just amped up versions of Spidey's Spider-Sense and wall-clinging abilities.
  • Writer Revolt: Veteran Spider-Man writer Tom DeFalco was often said to be particularly displeased with killing off Doc Ock, and he unfortunately wound up being required to write that issue. First chance he got after the saga, however, he brought Ock back. He also didn't like Gaunt and seemed to try to kill him off as quickly as possible. Similarly, regarding both of them, when doing the alternate universe miniseries, he just opted to have Ock survive his encounter with Kaine and have Harry come back without the idea of him being Gaunt.
  • Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: There wasn't really a single writer or writer-artist team behind the project (unlike the original clone saga by Gerry Conway which had a clarity of intent and purposenote ), instead there was a story by committee, where each group and individual had no idea where to take it. EIC Tom DeFalco tried to give it direction and ensure there was a way to undo what he saw was a short-term gimmick and project at best, but once marketing and sales took over and he stepped down, the entire project went out of control. According to legend, at one point when considering how to end the project, ideas were pitched not only to the Spidey team, but all of Marvel, and even the janitors, office clerks, and non-creatives were asked for their opinion.

Top