This Week In Spider-Man – 1/31/2018: Clown Town Curly Fries

In this week’s three Spider books, we’ll be visiting three different realities. There’s the original recipe reality, Earth-616, which is the one you’re probably familiar with. Then there’s Earth-18199, which is where Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows takes place, and lastly Earth-65, where Miles Morales’ totally real girlfriend Gwen Stacy lives. Seeing as the last two of these realities were created well after I became lax in my Spider-reading, I know even less about them than the current Earth-616 continuity. So, let’s dive in and try to figure it out together!

Ben Really: The Scarlet Spider #13 was written by Peter David with art by Will Sliney and Rachelle Rosenberg.

When I’d last left Ben Reilly, he’d dissolved into a puddle o’ goo after sacrificing himself to save Peter Parker and finally, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BABY JESUS FINALLY bringing an end to the Clone Saga.

He didn’t appear to be in any shape to star in his own ongoing series again, but the good and terrible thing about clones is that you can always just make another one. After the end of the Clone Saga The Jackal actually cloned Ben Reilly again a total of 26 times, killing him 25 times with each new clone having all of the same memories, even memories of their previous deaths. When Ben Reilly #26 eventually overpowered the Jackal and took over his lab…let’s just say the experience had made him a little nutty. He took over the Jackal’s identity and improved on his cloning technology, even finding a way to stop the cellular degeneration that had been so much of a clone problem in the past. His ultimate plan, explained in a very reductive way, was to make the world a better place by cloning everybody. But thankfully Spidey talked him out of that and into trying to be a hero again.

This issue sees Ben, as the Scarlet Spider, teaming up with Kaine, the other Scarlet Spider who’s also a clone of Peter Parker. They’re helping out The Slingers, who were a team of young heroes so inspired by Spider-Man that the took up the four fake identities ( L to R below: Ricochet, Prodigy, Dusk, and Hornet) he’d created for himself while he was on the run from the law.

When they first started out, they were mentored by a Golden Age hero known as the Black Marvel who it turned out had made a deal with Mephisto to get these four costumes and train these kids. Because Spider-Man related characters making deals with Mephisto is always great, as is nicely summed up in this video:

Wait…sorry…that was the wrong video. Actually…wait…that was the right one. Anyhoo, the Slingers eventually freed Black Marvel’s soul and let the old man die in peace. The team ultimately went their separate ways and the most notable thing that happened to any of them after that was when Hornet was killed by Wolverine while he was a brainwashed assassin of the Hand.

So, if you’re keeping score at home, Black Marvel and Hornet are both supposed to be dead, which makes it especially strange when they show up in Las Vegas, which is where Ben Reilly’s currently hanging out. It’s established that Black Marvel is actually a demon taking his form, and he’s dispatched by having a a priest bless a fountain and drowning him in it. I’m not kidding.

It also turns out that the new Hornet is a somehow demonically resurrected lower tier Wolverine villain named Cyber who’s previously died, been brought back, and died again before this story. He manages to escape the fight to be lame another day.

Overall, as someone who didn’t entirely hate the Clone Saga, I think I like the Spider-clones off doing their own things. The Slingers, on the other hand, along with all the symbiotes running around lately, feels a little HEY! REMEMBER THE 90s?!! to me, but I remain cautiously optimistic.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #15 was written by Jody Houser with art by Nick Roche and Ruth Redmond.

Renew Your Vows takes place in an alternate reality where Peter Parker and Mary Jane are still married and they have a teenage daughter named Annie May after her two aunts, Anna Watson and May Parker. In this universe, Civil War never happened, so Peter never publicly revealed his secret identity, which means Aunt May never got shot, which means nobody ever had to make a deal with Mephisto to save her life. See the video posted above for my thoughts on that.

This is really the Spider family book, as teenage Annie May is the focus of the book while her parents assist her in her adventures. Annie was born with her powers and goes by the name Spiderling. Mary Jane goes by Spinneret. At first, she had a suit that could siphon off Peter’s powers and give the same to her. When that began to take too much of a toll on Peter, she gave it up for a new suit that turned out to be a symbiote. Don’t worry, she has full control of it. And if you claim to need an explanation of who Spider-Man is, they you need to do me a favor please and get outta here.

The whole crew is out at Coney Island for Parker Family Fun Day when all of a sudden the Lizard shows up. They subdue him, but then he asks for help. Annie May is all, “Screw that! He’s a bad guy! Let’s punch him in the face until he stops moving!” But Peter deduces that there’s probably something else going on here, so they let him go to find out what he wants help with. Along the way, Annie learns a valuable lesson:

He leads them to an underground lair that he’d just escaped from where a guy who calls himself Dr. Krikos has all sorts of strange creatures held prisoner. The Parker family fights to free all the prisoners but not before Krikos gives Spiderling a pretty serious slash on the arm with his knife. But it’s okay, you guys…she has another arm.

Krikos escapes, but the most important part of this whole deal is that there never really was a real Dr. Krikos at all. It was just an alias for a shape shifting, manipulative geneticist that you might be familiar with if you’re an X-Men fan.

It’s Mr. Sinister, and now he has a sample of Annie’s DNA. I wonder what he’ll do with that? Probably only good stuff, I imagine.

Spider-Gwen #28 was written by Jason Latour with art by  Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi.

My first thoughts upon seeing the cover for this issue were, “Is that Matt Murdock? What does he have to do with Spider-Gwen?” It turns out that that is Matt Murdock and he, at least in this universe, has a lot to do with Spider-Gwen. The book treats us to a Matt Murdock origin story, only in this universe he never became Daredevil. His mentor Stick was killed by the Hand when Matt was still young, allowing him to be taken in and trained by them. As a result Murdock is the leader of the Hand and basically the kingpin of crime in New York. He didn’t think he had anything left in the world to conquer and was about to off himself until Spider-Gwen came along and now he’s obsessed with her.

Meanwhile, Spider-Gwen (who is currently wearing this universe’s Venom symbiote, if you couldn’t tell by the black costume & super cutesy “Gwenom” on the cover) has just revealed her secret identity to her entire supporting cast which includes Mary Jane Watson and May & Ben Parker. Remember, in this universe Gwen was the one bitten by the radioactive spider and Peter was the one who died tragically. Ben, by the way, has a serious case of droopy face.

Gwen has finally come clean with her friends & family because she feels like Gwen Stacy has to die before Spider-Woman can achieve her full effectiveness or something, which leads to one of her friends making this exclamation:

Don’t do that, Gwen! It’s crazytown banana pants! Meanwhile, Matt Murdock seems to have somebody else gunning for him at the same time, and that’s Frank Castle with what looks like Hellboy’s fist, so he’d better watch his ass.

That’s all for this week. Check back next week when I cover:

Amazing Spider-Man #795

Spider-Man #237

Spider-Man vs. Deadpool #27

and Venom #161