Not quite so recently I got an e-mail saying (and I quote), "So what happened to Peter Parker?? I don't keep up with all this Spider-Man news but I thinks he's cool!! So who's the clone, Peter or Ben?? Can you tell me the whole story about this Ben guy??" Having absolutely nothing better to do with my time (that was a long time ago), I typed out a summary of what I know concerning the clone saga. Then I thought, "Hey, I've been promising the good people of the Internet a clone FAQ, but I'm too lazy to make one. Why don't I just paste this into an HTML page? So I did. Here you go. Read, learn, enjoy.
Last updated on January 20, 1998
After the death of Gwen Stacy at the hands of Green Goblin, Miles Warren, a brilliant scientist and professor at ESU who happened to nurse a secret crush on Gwen blamed Spider-Man for her death. Adopting the persona and costume of the Jackal, he first tried to have Spider-Man killed by sending the Punisher after him. This did not work, so he tried cloning Peter and Gwen, whose tissue samples he had from a class experiment in the past. The cloning did not always work. The first Parker clone that lasted for any length of time looked like he would be the one the Jackal would use to get revenge on Spider-Man. Unfortunately, he started to degenerate on a cellular level. Jackal stopped the degeneration, but not before it scarred and deformed the clone. This clone was cast aside by the Jackal, and began a nightmarish, lonely existance in which he called himself Kaine.
The Jackal continued to try to clone Spidey, eventually succeeding. He managed to render Spider-Man unconscious as well as his clone. When the two Spider-Men woke up simultaneously, each one thought that he was the original, and they began to fight. As they fought, they realised that Warren had kidnapped Ned Leeds, and attached him to a bomb. They stopped fighting and tried to save Ned, but in the end it was Warren himself, persuaded by a Gwen Stacy clone, who sacrificed himself to save Ned from the explosion. In addition to cloning Peter and Gwen, however, the Jackal had cloned himself. Whether it was the original Warren or a clone which died in the explosion is unknown. Also presumed dead after the explosion was one of the Spider-Men. The survivor dropped the "corpse" down an industrial smokestack and went home, convinced he was the real Peter Parker.
The dumped Spider-Man eventually woke up in the smokestack. He went home, only to find the other Peter Parker with Mary Jane Watson. Heartbroken, the outsider left New York on a quest to find himself. He came to call himself Ben Reilly, he met Seward Trainer, and he was constantly followed by Kaine, who knew that Ben was, in fact, the original Peter Parker. Kaine was determined to let Peter, his fellow clone, live in the happiness which Kaine was never destined to have, and Kaine tormented Ben, whose life as Spider-Man had brought about his own tormented existance.
Peter Parker went through ab it of a rough ride before the clone saga officially began. His parents, long thought dead, had "returned" from overseas, only to be revealed to be simulcra created by the Chameleon. Peter hunted down the Chameleon and nearly killed him, finding out mere minutes later that the Chameleon had been manipulated all along by the Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin. Peter's Aunt May has recently had a stroke, and now she lay comatose in the hospital. At this critical time in his life, his clone returned.
Ben kept in touch with Aunt May, continually pretending he had merely dialed a wrong number. When he learned of his beloved aunt's condition, he hurried back to New Yourk to face at last the life he left behind. In a tense encounter on the rooftops, Ben met Peter face to face. Shortly after, Peter arrives at Ravencroft Institute, where many of his insane foes are being treated. Judas Traveller had taken over the institute, and only Spider-Man could save the inmates. Ben, meanwhile, is visiting Anut May when he learns of Peter's trouble. He dons a crude, homemade costume and headed to Ravencroft, where the two Spider-Man overcame their mistrust of each other to defeat Traveller, who sought to understand evil by understanding Spider-Man, on whom so many evil minds are focussed.
Ben and Peter went on their separate quests. Ben found, fought, and finally defeated Venom, using his modified "impact" webbing to syparate the alien symbiote from Eddie Brock. Dressed in his new costume, he is dubbed the "Scarlet Spider" by hotshot updtart Ken Ellis. Peter, meanwhile, fought his own darkness as he battled the Vulture, who managed to infect him with a deadly virus. With a little help from none other than Doctor Octopus himself, Peter beat the virus and resolved to face life again, especially when his wife Mary Jane told him that she was expecting a baby. Soon after, Kaine, who had followed Ben Reilly to New York, killed Doc Ock, convinced that he could protect Peter's life by killing all of Spider-Man's foes. Peter and Ben were again reunited as they both received a telepathic "call" to a secret lab in the Catskill Mountains. Here, a genetically enhanced clone of the Jackal emerged from a clone regeneration tank. He brought into question for the first time the possibility that Ben was, in fact, the original Spider-Man, and Peter the clone The two escaped at last from the Jackal's lab, but not before a third clone is released from a cloning pod. This clone later displayed the ability to control his body on the molecular level, meaning that he could change shape easily. This clone eventually became convinced that he was the real Peter Parker, and he joined the Jackal, who named him Spidercide.
Shortly after the escape in the Catskills, disaster struck. Aunt May awoke from her coma to tell Peter that she knew his secret all along; that she knew he was Spider-Man, and she was proud of him. After this, she suffered a relapse and died. Immediately following the funeral, Peter is arrested for the murder of a police officer in Salt Lake City which was, in fact, committed by Kaine. Since Peter's fingerprints were identical to his clones', he was charged for the murder of Det. Louise Kennedy. Peter was freed from prison by Judas Traveller for a short time, and Ben went back to pose as Peter while Pete searched for the truth, dressed in Ben's Scarlet Spider costume. Kaine revealed that we was an early, failed clone, and, at the threat of Peter revealing his identity and endangering his family and friends to clear his name and save Ben's life, Kaine confessed his guilt instead of allowing Peter to give up all that he's worked so hard to achieve. Ben returns with Spidey and MJ to Seward Trainer's lab, where it is found that Peter is, in fact, the clone of Ben Reilly.
Peter fled from the lab in blind rage, questioning his own humanity, and was still digesting the truth when the Jackal came along. The Jackal assured Peter that he was the clone, and convinced him to help in a plot to clone the entire human race, filtering out disease and imperfections along the line. Confused by all that had happened to him, Peter reluctantly agreed to go with the Jackal and Spidercide. Ben eventually found Peter and dozens of other Spider-Clones in the Jackal's lab. Ben fought through the rapidly degenerating clones and managed to bring Peter around; to show him what he had learned during five years of believing himself a clone: It's not what he is that's important, it's who he is. Even as a genetic copy of another man, but he was still Peter Parker, and deserved life as much as any one else. Together, the Spider-Men stopped the Jackal's scheme. Spidercide and the Jackal fell off of the roof of the Daily Bugle building.
After this, Peter's focus turned to Mary Jane and the baby. He pondered the effects of his life as Spider-Man would have on the child in his or her early years. While fighting the new, female Doctor Octopus, Peter decided that Spider-Man's life was too dangerous for a father to live, and he gave up the tights, relocating to Portland, Oregon. Ben, the Scarlet Spider, took over and defeated Doctor Octopus, but not before she released a Scarlet Spider duplicate which ran amok in New York, ruining the Scarlet Spider's reputation. Ben decided that it was time at last to become Spider-Man again.
Ben created a new costume for himself, got a job at the Daily Grind (a coffee house near Centennial University), and found himself an apartment. Life was finally looking up for the new Spider-Man, even though he continually found himself in uncomfortable situations. For example, he tussled with the now reformed Sandman, was briefly overtaken by the Carnage Symbiote, fought Kaine repeatedly, founds himself "shrunken" in a toddler's room, etc. etc. Very disturbing was the finding of a skeleton in the smokestack into which Ben was all those years ago. The skeleton, presumably a clone of Ben, was sporting a ragged Spider-Man costume. (Honestly, how many of those clone things did Warren make?!)
Called in from Portland by the Daily Bugle to investigate the new turn of events came none other than our pal Peter Parker. Although he had mysteriously lost his powers in Portland, he continually used his vast experience to help Ben in the chore of being Spider-Man. Even after coming to accept that he was a clone, Peter didn't trust Ben's close friend and employer, Seward Trainer, who ran the tests. When he investigated Trainer, however, he was targeted by Hobgoblin and some cybernetically enhanced thugs. These bad boys operated under the employment of a mystery man named Gaunt, who, in turn, had his own mysterious employer. Interesting to note was the fact that these shady characters had hired Seward Trainer for unknown deeds.
Peter had a brush with death as his health began to mysteriously deteriorate until he collapsed on his apartment floor. He was rushed to the hospital, but the doctors were unable to save him. Mere moments after he was announced officially dead, his spider powers began to return, bringing him back to life. And so, we find another advantage of having spider-powers.
In the "Revelations" crossover, certain secrets were shared with all of Spider-fandom. The motives of Judas Traveller and Scrier, Seward Trainer, Gaunt, and their mysterious employer came to light. Judas Traveller was, in fact, a mutant with the ability to control people's perceptions of reality. The real power behind the Host was Scrier, who turned out to be a group of people in a mystic cult, financed and controlled by Gaunt's boss. Spider-Man and Traveller worked together to defeat the Scriers. The mastermind who planned the clone business turned out to be none other than the original Green Goblin - Norman Osborn! Shortly after "dying" even before Miles Warren created the first Spider-Man clone, Norman had awoken in the morgue, revived by an increased healing factor resulting from the Goblin formula which granted him his super strength. Since that time, he has been overseas, manipulating Peter, driven by hatred for Spider-Man's inconquerable spirit. He had been funding Warren's research even before the death of Gwen Stacy. Norman hired Seward Trainer and Mendel Stromm - formerly known as the Robot Master, and now called Gaunt - to assist him in tearing apart Peter's life. Finally, Osborn revealed himself to Peter, kidnapped his newborn daughter and convinced Mary Jane that the baby was stillborn, and killed Ben Reilly. His greatest effort to destroy the life of Peter Parker brought Peter to his knees, but Spider-Man rose up to reclaim his life. The Spider-skeleton was revealed to be another long-dead clone. A month (in Marvel time) passed between this catastrophic event and the next Spider-Man issue, during which time Pete and MJ mourned their losses, before Peter officially sprang back into action as the one and only Spider-Man.
Not a whole lot of significant action has gone on since the official end of the Clone Saga - just typical Spider-Man hijinx. Norman Osborn, however, has taken a prominent position in Peter's life, as he has bought out the Daily Bugle, and is using it to subtly torment Spider-Man while slowly destroying Jonah Jameson. A few new characters in the Spiderverse, like Billy Walters,
So there you have it. Peter is again Spider-Man, the baby is presumed dead, and Ben Reilly has not yet returned. And that, my friend, is the whole story.