A curse upon the US comic book industry?

The US mainstream comic book industry is facing an ongoing crisis in terms of both corporate leadership and dwindling readership; meanwhile, Japanese mangas, graphic novels, and comic books targeted at a younger demographic enjoy an unprecedented success (Medina 2019; Barnett 2019; Kemner and Trinos 2024). This turbulent shift in readership preferences comes on top of a disturbing sequence of sexual misconduct and/or assault accusations against celebrated mainstream authors (to name just a few, Warren Ellis, Jason Latour, and, lately, Neil Gaiman) (McMillan, Drury and Couch 2020; Shapiro 2025), the dire aftermath of the systemic disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic (Thielman 2020), the financial exploitation and cannibalisation of artists and writers by the corporate Hollywood system (Thielman 2021), the double whammy of machine learning and AI art generated through copyright infringement (Nam 2024), the baffling public disappearance of industry-wide comparative sales chart (MacDonald 2023; MacDonald 2025a), new prohibitive tariffs on paper import affecting print costs that will exacerbate ever-increasing prices (Myrick 2024; Gagliano 2025), and the bankruptcy of giant comic book distributor Diamond (MacDonald 2025b). Although this situation has been normalised or even conveniently ignored by corporate owners and corporate-friendly media, this is far from being business as usual. If one was inclined to believe in such things, it could be argued that the satirical curse – or accursed satire – that Alan Moore placed on the comic book industry as a whole via his novel-size novella “What We Can Know About Thunderman” has finally start to work its magic (see Ambasciano 2023a on Moore 2023) [1].

If we focus for one moment on the current publishing crisis alone, with some remarkable exceptions, editorial stewardship concerning most historic flagship titles of the Big Two (i.e., Marvel Comics and DC Comics) seems stuck in a self-defeating loop according to which plots are mainly designed to replicate both the archetypal narrative beats of old and the now so-passé postmodern subversion of expectations, resulting in the promotion of what have become stale and uncreative storytelling tropes. Basically, the industry version of Tancredi Falconeri’s nihilistic and opportunistic motto “if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”, immortalised, only slightly rephrased, by French thespian Alain Delon in the movie version of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard (1958), and recently retold by Italian actor Saul Nanni in Netflix’s “steamy, sumptuous” adaptation (Aroesti 2025). Consequently, new titles struggle and are continually cancelled while any ongoing ‘legacy’ title has to periodically revert to the status quo ante. On the other hand, a significant portion of good contemporary storylines can rarely grow to express the full potentialities that are unique to sequential storytelling, because they exist mostly as first drafts, rough outlines, or ashcans for the media conglomerates that own the Big Two [2]. Reportedly, the situation is worse for Marvel Comics. In the surprisingly sincere words of current X-Men Group Editor Tom Brevoort,

“[…] the purpose of Marvel Publishing is to be out in front, the tip of the spear, generating new ideas and new stories that can serve as creative fodder for eventual film and animation development. So trying to revert things to 1992 or whenever would seem to be defeating the purpose in a major way. Better, I think, to try to develop new status quos that future X-Men projects in film and television can draw from” (Brevoort 2025a; my emphasis).

It is true that the X-Men comics recently tried very hard to escape the frustrating stasis dictated by mainstream superhero narratives by establishing a radical new status quo, but after a while the bold (and equally divisive) storyline originally masterminded by Jonathan Hickman seemingly suffered a lack of editorial guidance and then reverted nonetheless to old, uninspired tropes (Johnston 2021; Meenan 2024). As a blatant example of both the illusion of narrative change and the domestication of the once liberating postmodern approach into a standardised m.o. that rewards creative mediocrity and short-term gains, on February 18th, Marvel announced, to public befuddlement, the resurrection of Earth 616-Gwen Stacy as an assassin, of all things (Anonymous 2025). Stacy is an important character not just for the Spider-Man lore but for the entire medium as well: she was Peter Parker’s first true love and her death was so groundbreaking when it was originally published in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 (June 1973) that historians of the medium argue that it contributed to mark the end of the naïve, optimistic Silver Age of Comics and the start of the relatively more realistic Bronze Age (Blumberg 2003). Apparently, Stacy’s upcoming version will be a narrative mix & match of different multidimensional and unrelated variants of the character.

Death in mainstream comics has long become a meaningless and transient inconvenience, but today the problem is compounded by the absence of any real stake within the current explosion of multiversal narratives (Kain 2023). In this particular case, the announcement felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back. The news was so baffling that even mainstream industry-friendly outlets had to vent their anger via self-explanatory articles like “There Are Things We Want for Spider-Man, But Gwen Stacy’s Return Is Not One of Them” (Myrick 2025) or “Marvel Comics Is Doing The Unthinkable”, the latter sporting an unambiguous “What the f***?!” subtitle (Wilding 2025). Besides, Marvel’s announcement came after years of readers’ frustration at the editorially confusing (mis)management of Spider-Man and awkward, if not outright confrontational, interactions with the readers (fjmac 2023; Angeles 2024).

Infinite crisis in the Spider-Verse

The roots of these problems run deep. The main titles that feature Spider-Man, arguably the most famous Marvel character and one of the most iconic characters in contemporary pop culture, have arguably been in a state of narrative disarray since the controversial storyline entitled One More Day hit the spinner racks. Elaborated by then Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada with the collaboration of screenwriter, novelist, and former The Amazing Spider-Man writer J. M. Straczynski, One More Day was a 2007 crossover limited to the three Spider-Man-related titles published by Marvel at that time and specifically designed to kickstart a hard reboot of the company’s flagship character (Ginocchio 2017: 233-238). This goal was achieved by undoing Peter Parker’s marriage with Mary Jane Watson by way of a deal with Mephisto, the literal devil of the Marvel universe, to save the life of Parker’s old aunt May. As an added bonus, Mephisto would also erase from everybody’s memory Spider-Man’s secret identity, previously revealed during the Civil War limited series. The result ended up being almost universally disliked by readers because of its messy plot and out-of-character decisions, making it even more despised than the Second Clone Saga of the 1990s (a glance at the “Reception” section of the Wikipedia entry for the storyline should suffice; cf. Reaves 2025). If you were there at that time, you know what I’m talking about (cf. Lennen 2023).

By contrast, the passing of time has been particularly kind to the Second Clone Saga (Behbakht 2023; Lennen 2024). The revelations concerning the behind-the-scenes corporate drama (which helped contextualise the whys and hows of certain misguided decisions) (Goletz n.d.), the subsequent publication of many lackluster storylines, failed reboots (Ginocchio 2015), and controversial retcons (Ginocchio 2012), along with the equally exhausting and narratively bankrupt decades-long teasing of a dissolution of the One More Day status quo (e.g., Isaak 2021; Mendoza 2024), made many readers re-evaluate what were once considered unforgivable missteps (cf. Singer 2019: 74-94). In hindsight, the Second Clone Saga, which run from 1994 to 1996 and saw the unexpected return of the main protagonist’s clone from a half-forgotten 1970s story (i.e., the original Clone Saga), had its sincere and emotional moments of true wonder, sadness, and joy (e.g., Mary Jane announcing she was expecting a child to a jubilant but sick Peter in The Amazing Spider-Man #398), it was organically tied to the previous continuity while propelling the main cast forward in their adult lives, it boasted a solid start and a coherent first act, and had at the very least a couple of issues that may well rank among the greatest in the history of the character (with J. M. DeMatteis’ and Mark Bagley’s The Amazing Spider-Man #400 probably taking the crown). In sum, as Douglas Wolk wrote, it was “a solid idea” that would have marked “a concrete and timely end to the third Spider-Man cycle”, whose defining feature was Peter Parker’s identity struggle against his various “shadow sel[ves]” and “nightmare id[s]” while trying, mostly in vain, to overcome the loss of his parents (Wolk 2021: 93, 91; my emphasis). Unfortunately, given that the bold story arc proved to be extremely popular and profitable in a time of financial distress for the entire company, the Clone Saga was derailed by the marketing department at Marvel, that kept imposing an unreasonable extension of the original storyline, and plagued by some editorial indecision and infighing between different publishing divisions. After almost two years of stalling, disaffected readers left the titles in droves, and in the end the books lost almost half of their initial audience (Howe 2012: 365-366, 370, 372, 381-382). Ultimately, the Second Clone Saga failed only insofar as it was a victim of its own initial spectacular success.

Conversely, One More Day, with its brazen erasure of decades of the main character’s continuity, stands out as a jarring and disconnected narrative U-turn marred by plot holes that “nobody, including its creators, likes” (Wolk 2021: 95). Even more damningly, from the perspective of virtue ethics, the storyline doubled as a profound and unexplainable betrayal of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson’s character traits and moral integrity, which understandably resulted in a general loss of faith in the editorial stewardship of the books:

“absent a life-altering event or a mind-blowing epiphany, we don’t expect ﬁctional characters – or real people – to alter their deep-seated behavior abruptly and for no reason. Given the fantastical circumstances Peter Parker has faced throughout his career as Spider-Man, even the impending death of his aunt and a surprise offer from Mephisto don’t seem enough to trigger and justify such an about-face” (White 2012).

Ironically, the entire storyline was a hasty attempt to resolve the lingering issues that had been plaguing the Spider-Man-related titles since the top-down tampering that affected most of the 1990s Clone Saga. This time, the editorial powers that be doubled down by straightforwardly imposing their questionable preconceptions and personal biases against having the main character married, thus “allowing the villain to get a permanent win over Spider-Man for no real reason aside from a business-oriented dislike of Peter's growth” (Reaves 2025; cf. Sanderson 2008 and White 2012; see the Joe Quesada interview in CBR Staff 2008). Running the same experiment in the same conditions delivered the same results, and One More Day arguably damaged the titular character and its casts of supporting characters from both an emic and an etic perspective. Perhaps most crucially, One More Day also hurt Spider-Man financially: after an initial spike of interest due to the controversy surrounding this story, sales steadily declined for Brand New Day, the immediate follow-up storyline. With only rare exceptions, sales never actually recovered to the previous highs of the Clone Saga (see the data from Comichron presented in Sartheking 2023).

Some post-mortem gaslighting in the wake of the post-Clone Saga slump tried to pin the blame on the readership itself. The “simple truth of comic book readers” would be that, according to former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief and writer Tom DeFalco, they “don’t like change. They claim they like change but they always [want] everything back to the way it was when they were kids” (DeFalco in Singer 2019: 94). Now, this is not intended as a critique against DeFalco himself (who relinquished his editorship in 1994 because of irreconcilable disagreements with Marvel management), but the real problem seems to lie with editors like Quesada, who behave like children immaturely fixated on deconstructing something that needn’t be dismantled in the absence of solid in-universe justifications while listing all the etically wrong reasons for doing it nonetheless (an incredible sequence of fallacies and biases concerning One More Day, along with Quesada’s Baby Boomer justifications to undo Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage regardless of the implications for the history of both the characters involved and the books themselves, are available in Sanderson 2008; see also White 2012). While it can be argued that a few great stories were indeed published after One More Day, the stubborn editorial refusal to undo the Mephisto-sanctioned status quo is quite puzzling:

“[i]t’s the strangest thing that Marvel has ever done: the publisher took a character who seemed to have unstoppable momentum and simply removed all of his progress and trapped him in a static state for no benefit at all. There haven’t been any amazing groundbreaking stories told because Peter and Mary Jane aren’t together. It didn’t push his character further in any way; it didn’t teach him a lesson about responsibility, because he doesn’t even remember having been married to Mary Jane to begin with” (Reaves 2025).

Additionally, the overwhelming success of inter- and multigenerational narratives in decades-long manga and anime demonstrates that readers are eager to embrace long-term narrative evolution, character growth, and definitive conclusions. This, in turn, leads to best-selling collected editions long after the series have ended, cementing their status as ‘classics,’ particularly when their quality is exceptional (see Lippi in Tosti 2016: 779, 781-782). On the contrary, change is rejected when it is poorly conceived, cheaply developed, badly executed, subjected to interference, and then – following the inevitable backlash from the target readership – reverted to the wrong status quo ante due to corporate incompetence or editorial unwillingness to pinpoint why such a flawed change was rejected in the first place. This is precisely what happened with the ongoing post-Clone Saga and post-One More Day sales slump – incomprehensibly hailed as an unparalleled business triumph. As Brevoort has recently stated:

“I believe that we’ve concluded decisively that the best platonic ideal of Spider-Man is one that is unattached [i.e., unmarried], and that conclusion isn’t going to be changed by a particular alternate interpretation momentarily performing well […] [P]ointing to ULTIMATE [Ultimate Spider-Man is the current alternative-universe title by Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto in which Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are married with kids. My note] and concluding that the one and only factor contributing to its success is coincidentally the one factor that those fans would like changed about ASM [i.e., flagship title The Amazing Spider-Man. My note] is working backwards from a desired conclusion” (Brevoort 2025b).

By now, it is abundantly clear that Marvel’s current editorial team has chosen the One More Day status quo as the narrative hill they are willing to die on. Conveniently enough, corporate sales chart have vanished while marketing shenanigans to maximise short-term profits at the expense of collectors and die-hard completionists have exploded (the worst offenders being variant covers and incentive covers; Avila 2019), so there is no way to properly assess Brevoort’s argument from authority. From a narrative perspective, and regardless of the more or less biased explanations that invested corporate insiders and editorial teams may come up with to defend their work and avoid acknowledging their missteps, Brevoort’s “desired conclusion” includes the immoral suggestion that an irresponsible, out-of-character deal with the devil is preferable to a divorce (“Sorry, divorce is out, but Faustian bargains are cool!”; White 2012: 238). Furthermore, it may alienate

“present and potential women readers by putting an end to Peter and MJ’s marriage, thereby arguably suggesting that the marriage wasn’t a positive development, that MJ was an inessential character, and even that the heroic male is better off alone” (Sanderson 2008).

I can hardly imagine a worse betrayal of a character whose entire arc was built on the credo: “With great power, there must also come – great responsibility!”.

Supertheologians

Last February, Rob Liefeld, ever-enthusiastic comic book artist and co-founder of Image Comics in 1992, said during an episode of his podcast Robservations that “Marvel is a broken company. That doesn’t mean they can’t be repaired, that they can’t be fixed”, and proceeded to offer his suggestions on how to fix the comic book publisher (Liefeld 2025) [3]. While both Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios are indeed having a hard time (see, resp., Chiu-Tabet 2025 and Siegel 2023), I don’t know if Liefeld’s prognosis is correct: it could well be the case, but I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what the future may hold for Marvel Comics under Disney (however, see the analysis of previous corporate mismanagements under Disney in Ambasciano 2021; cf. also “Reason #1: The Disney Comics System” in Rosa 2012). All I know is that every historian of religions worth their salt is a storyteller at heart… and what’s more mythologically relevant today than the true Great American Novel of the 20th century – The Amazing Spider-Man itself (Ambasciano 2023b)? So, here’s my two cents about the whole problem. Buckle up, because it’s going to be quite a ride.

Whether or not entertainment corporations really understand the sheer power of good storytelling, they don’t seem to fully grasp the fact that, until the copyright of the intellectual properties they own expires, they are merely the custodians of theologies and the caretakers of myths elaborated by exceptionally gifted artists and writers. In time, all intellectual products become public domain, but only those who were taken good care of during their corporate interregnum will survive and ascend to cultural, or even religious, mainstay status. Listen, I know it sounds weird, but trust me: although I wear many professional hats, first and foremost I’m a historian specialised in the study of religion(s) and I know what I’m talking about. Just bear with me for a moment.

Let's start by looking at a Spider-Man-related news story.

In 2019, an English father whose son had died from leukodystrophy was denied permission by The Walt Disney Company to reproduce Spider-Man’s likeness on his son’s tombstone (Disney owns the superhero’s copyright following its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009). The child’s uncle said in an interview that “Spider-Man was [his nephew’s] entire life. He loved it so much”, but the US corporation’s permissions department motivated their decision by puzzlingly appealing to an internal policy set to “preserve the same innocence and magic around our characters that brought [the child] such joy” (Kirby and Smith 2019). An English MP even pleaded the cause on behalf of the child’s family to no avail (Anonymous 2019). While this case highlights the growing tensions between corporate management and the public at large over the control of iconic intellectual properties, it also clearly illustrates just how blurred the boundaries between beliefs, rituals, and pop culture have become [4].

As fellow historian of religions Anders K. Petersen wrote, “the difference between fictional and religious narrative is a matter of degree only” (Petersen 2016: 518). As argued by Petersen on social, narratological, and cognitive grounds,

“no clear-cut division can be made between fictional and religious narrative […]. Religious narratives may be read as fiction, and fictional narratives, as we know from fiction-based religion, may be understood as religious texts. Ultimately, whether a text is conceived of as a fictional or religious narrative depends on the epistemological stance of the reader towards the text” (Petersen 2016: 517).

It does not matter whether stories are religious or fictional to have a deep impact on the readers’ lives, and in our current secularised world mythologies from pop culture can be as moral, personally meaningful, and artistically satisfying as those provided by any religion or folktale of old. Hence the need to respect and preserve good storytelling and the intellectual properties’ main features, internal coherence, and continuity. Big companies may have all the power, but they also have enormous responsibilities towards their artists, their storytellers, and their audience; eschewing or ignoring such responsibilities is ultimately counterproductive for their shareholders, since it may mean diminishing returns, financial failure, and eventual bankruptcy [5]. Additionally, careless corporate mismanagement of culturally-relevant intellectual properties jeopardises the long-term social and creative legacy of CEOs, a concern that apparently plays a huge part in their biographies (see Iger 2019). As I wrote some years ago in a peer-reviewed article about the situation at Lucasfilm after the Walt Disney Co. buyout,

“[t]he change in institutional authority at Lucasfilm and the alterations to the Star Wars canon, provided without compelling in-universe explanations, led to another fandom rebellion which rejected such modifications as heretical – the second after the one that followed the release of the prequel trilogy in the early 2000s (Lyden 2012). This new backlash showed, first, how the Star Wars mythos successfully penetrated Western society, and second, how ephemeral the demarcation between full-fledged fictional religion and general fandom can be insofar as non-negotiable dogmas from beloved cinematic franchises are concerned” (Ambasciano 2021: 256).

Questions of contested authority, canonicity, heresy, and, in the case of narratological mishandling, apatheism, are all the more relevant in our secular societies (Ambasciano 2021) [6]. Currently, the number of nonbelievers is rising across all continents (Kasselstrand, Zuckerman, and Cragun 2023; Gervais 2024). In the United States, the percentage of atheists and agnostics has doubled rapidly, increasing from 16% in 2017 to 30% in 2021. Meanwhile, in 2018, for the first time in history, 52% of the UK public identified as religiously unaffiliated (Sherwood 2019; Yang 2021). Culture abhors a vacuum, though, and in our contemporary WEIRD societies the arts have inherited the key to all mythologies [7]. Just to remain in Star Wars territory, “[George] Lucas’ sprawling space opera was explicitly engineered to include religious tropes and signal unmistakably its identity as a new myth for secular societies” (Ambasciano 2021: 253). The same could be said almost verbatim for many Jack Kirby’s creations, just to name one of the most important and innovative sequential artists in the comic book business (and whose works, incidentally, also influenced Lucas’ Star Wars; see Ambasciano 2021: 265). As a matter of fact, religions transform, splinter, and/or die all the time because of emic or etic mismanagement, hostile takeovers, and cultural or intergenerational changes, and history is full of their remains (Stausberg, Wright and Cusack 2020; Turpin and Lanman 2022; Kasselstrand, Zuckerman and Cragun 2023); why should the relationship between pop culture myths, the public, and corporate clergy be any different?

To get to the bottom of the current problems affecting the business we need to push the metaphor even further. When comicdom was in its effervescent days of yore, readers particularly invested in the overarching mythos of a specific title could write to the comic book bullpens and, in time, become writers or editors themselves; in other words, they were the supertheologians of their times – those who were knowledgeable with the eschatological, theodicic, and moral minutiae of their secular “supergods” (cf. Morrison 2011). Likewise, today’s most clever and engaged readers constitute a new generation of supertheologians who also double as the faithfully patient amanuenses and historiographical peer-reviewers able to record the canonical and non-canonical versions of the sacred events narrated in the titles they read and admire. They usually produce podcasts, YouTube video essays, and erudite blog posts either to discuss, review, and interpret storylines, or neutralise continuity-related controversies that result from corporate meddling or sub-optimal editorial intervention. No one but them – the real “true believers” in Stan Lee’s parlance – can do this. For all intents and purposes, their behaviour can be considered religious in the emic etymological senses of (re)legere, i.e., “to gather together, collect again” observations with studious care (Cic., Nat. D. II xxviii 72), (re)ligare, that is, “to tie, bind, bind together, bind up” human beings to a superhuman entity (Lact., Div. inst. IV 28), and relinquere, or “to leave behind, not take along, not stay with, leave, move away from, quit, abandon” the sacred spaces when required, thus rigorously separating something trivially mundane from something truly extraordinary (Gell., IV ix 8-9, in turn from Masurius Sabinus) (Hoyt 1912; see Borgeaud 2013: 20-21; transl. from Lewis and Short 1879). However, in stark contrast with the past, they are now actually prevented from directly participating in and officially contributing to their own religion. And this is the problem.

“I can write better than this [...] and so I did”

So, what if a supertheologian were to propose a bold solution to undo the mistakes that plagued both the Second Clone Saga and the controversial One More Day status quo? Alas, gone are the days in which readers could write to the editors and submit a cool idea or even a script, and expect a polite reply from the editorial offices. That process nurtured a lively intellectual relationship with the readership and prepared the most invested readers for the time when they themselves would become the new contributors to the ongoing mythos. Thanks to the average high quality of those exchanges (the professional and polite tone of most published letters from the Silver and the Bronze Age puts to shame contemporary tweets and posts), networks were formed, and at least a couple of generations of editors and writers were forged thanks to this epistolary back and forth. Suffice it to recall just one example. Former comic book writer and Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was just thirteen years old (!) when he started working for DC Comics. After perusing a pile of comic books while recuperating in hospital from minor surgery, Shooter studied the basic narrative formula en vogue at that time and wrote an entire script on spec, which he sent to DC:

“[Shooter's] first comic strip for the Legion of Super-Heroes was delivered at age thirteen, within months of Batman’s 1966 premiere. Reading their adventures, [Shooter] thought ‘I can write better than this [...] and so I did’.” (Dauber 2022: 179-180)

Shooter even dared to think “they sure needed the help” (Irving 2010)! Thanks to that script, “a mail correspondence followed, and within a matter of months, Shooter got a call from Mort Weisinger”, then DC Comics editor in charge of all Superman-related titles (Howe 2012: 174). And it was Shooter that, once editor-in-chief at Marvel decades later, bought the idea for the iconic Spider-Man black costume from a fan named Randy Schueller, replicating the positive editorship-readership loop of creative and interactive brainstorming (Singer 2019: 60) [8].

Unfortunately, the massive explosion of comic fandom and comic conventions between the late 1980s and the early 1990s weakened the link between engaged readership and editorship and contributed to the comic-book speculator bubble that eventually burst, crashing the market in the early-1990s. At that time, a vibrant indie scene managed to absorb a significant number of professionals while also serving as a relief valve for supertheologians. The simultaneous rise of social media and a new wave of successful comic book movies between the 2000s and 2010s led to an even greater surge in the medium’s popularity – whose effects are still felt today – while also ushering in an era where screenwriters were increasingly hired to script comic books, often at the expense of supertheologians. Paradoxically, while comic book movies became some of the highest-grossing films of all time, mainstream comic book sales stagnated, indicating that perhaps the market had already peaked. Social media also fostered bubbles of fake readership and echo chambers dominated by negativity and hate, with dire consequences for the industry (cf. Lanier 2018; see Elbein 2018 on Comicsgate). Additionally, the major players in the industry, by then acquired by increasingly larger corporate conglomerates (Dauber 2022: 266, 237, 305, 410), had already closed ranks and gradually transformed into an insular oligarchy that largely shut out external contributors, just as the democratisation of the World Wide Web was increasing accessibility and promoting interaction. Generally speaking, the cumulative effect of all these factors was twofold: on one hand, direct interaction with supertheologians no longer translated into meaningful engagement and cooperation; on the other, supertheologians found themselves like castaways adrift in a digital ocean of casual fans, tossed about by waves of toxic online discourse. In a vicious circle, as they progressively lost touch with both their core readership and supertheologians, many editors also felt less compelled to respect the growth of the characters and the histories of the intellectual properties they were supposed to manage and oversee. Combined with corporate greed, indifference to the creators’ rights, and an overreliance on abused postmodernist approaches and repetitive plot beats, this has led to the industry’s current crisis.

Today, per their official website,

“Marvel does not accept or consider any ideas, creative suggestions, artwork, designs, game proposals, scripts, manuscripts, or similar material unless we have specifically requested it from you. Marvel is continuously developing and creating its own ideas and materials, and we don’t have the resources to review or respond to unsolicited material. Unfortunately, any unsolicited material you send will not be read or shared. It will be destroyed, and it will not be returned.”

Anyone daring to contact them from the outside is rusticated to the Negative Zone (I’m exaggerating, of course, but you get the idea). Yes, it is also stated online that “Marvel is always looking for new comic book artists and writers”, but mainly those who have already accumulated enough online symbolic and cultural capital are allowed to play with the pop-culture godheads, as they are believed to be capable of promising a potential (yet often unfulfilled) return on investment. This situation is not exactly new, as several non-comic book authors have tried their hands at supergod-scripting in the past; however, since firm, overarching editorial supervision à la Mark Gruenwald is sorely lacking these days, this means that, with the exception of certain respected ‘legacy’ authors, supertheologians are rarely, if ever, involved in contemporary supergods storytelling. However, without (super)theologians there is no resilient institutional (super)religion, nor any thriving comic book company dealing with modern supergods’ myths. Not to mention that, mutatis mutandis, and even if there was such a possibility, someone clearly talented but so unexperienced, outspoken, and defiant to contact the editors like Shooter did wouldn’t be hired today.

The “essential quality of a legend”

Given that any non-profit plot, script, or storyline produced by readers based on an intellectual property owned by a company and made publicly available can be uncerimoniously “reappropriated” or taken down by said company (not to mention stolen by other writers or despicably exploited as rough material for AI content learning and regurgitation), publishing on the Internet anything like what I’m planning to do (see below) is intellectually self-defeating, creatively futile, and virtually worthless. However, like Shooter, I recently underwent surgery (major surgery, in my case), and after a horrible health scare and some soul searching, I decided that a pitch I come up with over the course of quite a considerable amount of time, and that I started writing in earnest during the pandemic, was too good to let it rot in a digital purgatory on my computer. When I was much younger, Peter Parker and Ben Reilly (the main protagonist of the Second Clone Saga) saved my life, each in his own way (that’s a religious story for another time). Now it’s time to repay my debt and save at least one of them by suggesting a way out of the toxic dichotomy between nostalgia and change, while being more respectful of the once-revered Earth-616 continuity.

I also wanted to provide some points of discussion to fellow readers starting from Alan Moore’s brilliantly controversial, and ultimately rejected, synopsis for the DC Comics crossover Twilight of the Superheroes, in which the English writer considered “how one of the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended. An essential quality of a legend is that the events in it are clearly defined in time” (Moore 1987; on myth and comics see Curtis 2019). In his pitch, Moore reasoned that because (post-)Bronze Age superheroes storylines were chained to the “commercial demands of a continuing series” in which nothing could ever change or evolve permanently, such stories

“can never have a resolution. Indeed, they find it difficult to embrace any of the changes in life that the passage of time brings about for these very same reasons, making them finally less than fully human as well as falling far short of true myth” (Moore 1987; my emphasis).

Interestingly, Twilight of the Superheroes was also meant to offer a meta-commentary on DC’s canonical continuity in the wake of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s epoch-making crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986). As recently noted by Jackson Ayres,

“[t]he broader point made in the Twilight proposal […] is that when established narrative histories are invalidated – an editorial move that also implicitly invalidates the creative labor responsible for producing that history – serialized comics lose the crucial ability to engage productively with their past” (Ayres 2021: 71).

Once seen through Moore’s lenses, One More Day managed in one fell swoop to both prevent the natural character progression of 1990s Peter Parker/Spider-Man towards his resolution as a character (along with his mythical twin Ben Reilly’s) and invalidate decades of “established narrative histories”. No wonder that the current Amazing Spider-Man’s storylines are met with widespread indignation: they have lost the “crucial ability to engage productively with their past”.

As if such insights were not enough, in 1983 Moore had already singled out the narratively crippling stasis suffered by Peter Parker/Spider-Man as an adolescent, immature character who “has a lot of trouble with his girlfriends” (and published it on a Marvel UK magazine, no less) to denounce the fact that sometimes in the mid-1970s Marvel’s storylines had “ground to a halt” and “stopped developing” (Moore 1983). Even though subsequent runs on The Amazing Spider-Man and The Spectacular Spider-Man invalidated Moore’s initial analysis (as they slowly and organically integrated more adult and mature themes, including Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson getting married and expecting a child, possibly even as a consequence of Moore’s own revolutionary approach), One More Day’s blank slate, which featured the uncalled-for return to a perpetually post-adolescent, immature Parker who “has a lot of trouble with his girlfriends”, proved Moore’s assessment eerily prescient [9]. Beware the magic of the Bard.

Mythology is mythology (is mythology)

There are a lot of professional discussions about the (il)legitimacy of religious advocacy in my academic corner, which remains a huge epistemological and methodological issue (Stausberg 2014; cf. Ambasciano 2019). Instead of pretending to be a guru of sorts doing covert advocacy for some preferred and exclusive religion or cult, as it was and still is the case in some academic quarters, I prefer to expand an existing mythology within an inclusive secular faith; therefore, i beleive it is time to try my hand at creating my own myths, which is an emic process that fascinates scholars in my field (see Lawson 2019). As a former managing editor and a historian of religions by trade, I think that Stan Lee’s own empowering words are crucial here:

“[m]ythology is mythology, and who’s to say that we can’t make up our own myths? Which is what we’re [scil., Lee and co-writer/plotter/artist Jack Kirby] doing, just basing them on the past ones, and having a heck of a good time doing it” (Lee in Thomas 2020: 88).

I am under no illusion that someone at Marvel may listen, and if they do listen, I’m afraid that history may repeat itself, with ideas being unceremoniously re-appropriated (should they opt to do so, they wouldn’t know how the story develops, because I have so much more here than just a tiny excerpt from a fully-fledged proposal… ). Their company’s punishing and anachronistic policy regarding external submissions doesn’t really help either. However, since Marvel has been keeping an eye on the discourse on social media, I can’t deny that I would take some pleasure from seeing this post going viral, if only to signal to the powers that be that another myth is possible, that another storyworld is within reach, one with new and exciting narrative possibilities for a hopefully substantial readership out there (just to give readers an idea, the YouTube video entitled The Spider-Man Who Deserved Better and dedicated to Ben Reilly has almost one million views at the time of writing; Lennen 2024; cf. Behbakht 2023). It would be nice to take the opportunity provided by either the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Second Clone Saga or the future landmark 1000th issue of The Amazing Spider-Man and start afresh with a bold storyline that’s also respectful of the IP’s past – not to mention that clones, twins, and doppelgängers seem to be currently all the rage in Hollywood (Wells 2025) – but I’ll content myself with my ideas being bought à la Shooter (and possibly shelved) [10]. (No, I won’t hold my breath; and yes, I know that the characters are theirs and it is within their right to exploit or silence ideas put forward by unwitting fans, but I do still believe in old-school good manners and human decency. Call me old-fashioned, but when I was really young, in 1992 or 1993, I read an article on one of my father’s computer magazines that software companies were hiring brilliant hackers, which they still do, and it stuck with me: mutatis mutandis, I don’t see any reason why the publishing market shouldn’t work in the same way since it would be a mutually beneficial work relationship).

A final caveat: what follows may sound very silly, especially to the unitiated. That would be an unfortunate misjudgment. As historian Jeremy Dauber wrote while commenting on Moore’s seminal Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, once properly contextualised the best comic book stories don’t “feel that way”, because when they are “buoyed by the pathos earned by decades of mythos-building stories” they truly are relevant cultural and literary events (in the case of the aforementioned story by Moore, it feels “more like a Götterdämmerung”; Dauber 2022: 293). Comic book literature is a distinct form of sequential art that embodies and develops an ancient and universal pictographic tradition of storytelling widespread across all human cultures (Eco 1978 [1964]; McCloud 1994 [1993]). Like all literature, and regardless of any subjective emotional or aesthetic investment in any specific story, readers have to contextualise the narrative within its larger socio-cultural matrix to fully appreciate its meaning; otherwise, even many classical works like the Apocolocyntosis, Aridaeus’ tour of hell in Plutarch’s De Sera Numinis Vindicta, Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, or even any ancient myth from religions long gone, may sound very silly. That doesn’t mean that they actually were, especially to the people who wrote, read, enjoyed, or believed in them. Therefore, be not hasty in your utterance and judgment.

There so much more to say, but for the time being that should be enough. Now it’s the time for the main course. And even if what you’re about to read is destined to remain fan-fiction, just remember that the best Graeco-Roman mythologies and the most celebrated and timeless works in Classical Literature were nothing more and nothing less than fan-fictions. And now, let’s have a heck of a good time!

#CloneSaga30thanniversary

#1995to2025

SPIDER-MAN 1995

Leonardo Ambasciano

version 5.1

May 16, 2024

Revised February 25, 2025

Elevator pitch

WHAT IF Peter Parker died during the clone saga and Ben Reilly became the one and only Spider-Man? In this limited series every single clone-related thread from the mid-1990s and beyond is connected to offer a Ben Reilly-focused “GRAND DESIGN” storyline just in time for the 30th anniversary of the end of the Second Clone Saga!

Presentation

Inspired by Chip Zdarksy & Pasqual Ferry’s SPIDER-MAN: SPIDER’S SHADOW five-issue mini-series, the new MARVEL limited series SPIDER-MAN 1995 (henceforward SM 1995) engages in an alternative retelling of the key events of the Second Clone Saga as a decompressed WHAT IF… ? [11]

Here, a completely new storyline diverges radically after AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (henceforth ASM) #400 and sets its own path by taking a leaf from what came after that milestone issue while bringing to the fore the mystical aspects that have always been present in the Spider-Man lore and in J. M. DeMatteis’ stories in particular (ever since SPIDER-MAN TEAM-UP vol. 1 #111, #115-116, #122, #127, etc…) [12].

Starting point

The event that kickstarts the entire plot is the arrest of Peter Parker right at the very end of ASM #400. This sets in motion an alternative reality – Earth-1215.

Background

As a result of Harry Osborn’s machinations, all the major antagonists of Spider-Man are now aware of his civilian identity as Peter Parker. Per the Earth-616 continuity up to ASM #400, Parker had also become too violent for his own good – see, for instance, the outbursts of impulsivity and violence that put several supervillains and goons in the hospital (the latest of which is depicted in SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN [SSM] #215 and #216; see refs. inserted in OMISSIS). In addition to this, during the first half of the Second Clone Saga Parker was also experiencing disturbing clone-like flashbacks and seizures. Editorially speaking, those status quo-altering changes were originally meant (A) to suggest that there was something wrong with Peter Parker; (B) to pave the way for Ben Reilly, Peter Parker’s clone from a well-known 1970s storyline, to take Peter’s place as the one and only Spider-Man (so that the books could be softly rebooted with a blank slate and a lighter continuity). As a result, Peter Parker was firmly set on a tragic path. Ultimately, on Earth-616, those changes didn’t bear any fruit and were later retconned as inconsequential, leaving behind far too many unanswered questions.

Aim of the project

The aim of this project is to honour the original editorial intentions behind the Second Clone Saga by addressing and resolving, in a tight storyline, the many mystical and narrative threads that were left unresolved at that time. Why did so many deaths occur at that precise moment in time (Aunt May’s, Doc Ock’s, the Grim Reaper’s, etc.)? Why was Kaine originally presented as a mercenary killer? How could possibly Kaine know Scrier? Who is Scrier, anyway? What about the ragtag team of mercenaries and collaborators that helped Traveller? What role did the enigmatic Mr. Nacht have? Why did Judas Traveller become so obsessed with studying the nature of evil? Why was he so engaged with the study of dark magic? Why did he obsessively focus his almost clinical attention on Peter Parker and Ben Reilly? How could he be so powerful? Why did Peter experience those clone seizures? What about Ben Urich’s ongoing investigation on the feud between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin? What about poor May “Mayday” Parker? So many questions waiting for a proper answer!

True to the spirit of coeval Marvel continuity, the present limited series also ties the enigmatic characters of Traveller and Scrier to the bigger picture of that era, that is, respectively, to a fascinating character featured in DeMatteis’ run on X-FACTOR , Radha Dastoor (a.k.a. Haven -- who could be Dastoor’s never-revealed lover if not Traveller himself?!) [13], and Mephisto through his son Blackheart (exiled on Earth in Ann Nocenti’s run on DAREDEVIL and at that time last seen fighting his father in two one-shots written by Howard Mackie – see the refs. provided in OMISSIS) [14].

The finale of this new WHAT IF… ? limited series features Ben – revealed to be the one and only Spider-Man –symbolically rising to the occasion, accepting the ‘greatest responsibility’ (which was first denied to him in the FINAL ADVENTURE limited series by Fabian Nicieza & Darick Robertson [1995-1996]), and becoming the new uncle Ben, i.e., the father figure, and the teacher, to Peter and Mary Jane’s teenage daughter May, closing the circle of the Parker legacy and kickstrating a new beginning.

Rationale

The rationale for this narrative is threefold.

First, I want to simplify the original story arc of the Second Clone Saga (1994-1996), respect and strengthen the original mystical aspects of that storyline [15], and honour what started as arguably the greatest saga of the 90s in mainstream comics and the most daring contribution to the Spider-Man mythos in decades.

Second, the Peter Parker of the mid-90s is a tragic hero – always on the edge, lost, disgraced, vanquished, fallen. He’s a mature, fully realized, adult character who has grown with his readers from the early days of Lee, Ditko, and Romita Sr., and who has constantly fought hard to remain the kind-hearted and compassionate hero he was in spite of all the pain, the suffering, and the regrets. In the end, he collapsed under the unbearable weight of his past. At the same time, Ben Reilly was conceived as Peter Parker's better angel, the embodied manifestation of his higher ideals, sent to remind us of what Peter once stood for and ready to follow in his footsteps. Now, it’s time to give that version of Peter Parker the closure he deserves. In this limited series, I wish to address the aftermath of all the challenging events and the undiagnosed depression and PTSD from which Peter Parker suffered as a result of events narrated in the David Michelinie’s run on ASM (the return of Peter’s parents and the Chameleon’s revenge scheme), J. M. DeMatteis’ run on SSM (culminating in the death of Peter Parker’s best friend and the activation of Harry Osborn’s post-mortem machinations), and DeMatteis’ management of ASM (i.e., the enduring trauma of Kraven’s Last Hunt, the Spider persona taking over Peter’s psyche resulting in Mary Jane temporarily leaving Peter, etc.).

Third, I want to put Mary Jane in the spotlight, her choices, her emotions. The Second Clone Saga was not very kind to her (cue a very infamous scene depicted in SSM #226) – it’s time to do right by her and empower her in this story arc as much as possible while staying true to her character.

I also think there is quite a relevant storytelling option left unpicked through all those years, and today the time has finally come to explore this delicate topic – meaning, Miles Warren’s/the Jackal’s stalking and psychological, physical, and potentially sexual abuse of Gwen Stacy and the various clones he created (including Ben Reilly). [OMISSIS] I always thought that this was something sorely missing from the original Clone Saga, something that needed to be addressed: good comic book literature – like all good literature – has the power to help readers cope with traumas by providing them with context and meaning. This approach is also consistent with DeMatteis’ production (cf., for instance, BROOKLYN DREAMS, SEEKERS INTO MYSTERY, or, more relevant to the present project, the CHILD WITHIN story arc on SSM #178-184, and the wonderful, if overlooked, exploration of Ben Reilly’s past in THE PARKER LEGACY, ASM #400, SM #57, and SSM #223), and I can’t think of a better way to honour his seminal contribution to the Spider-Man mythos.

With that in mind, I also intend to reset and reboot the roles of three of the saga’s main antagonists – Judas Traveller, Scrier, and Norman Osborn – by reworking and including some elements from the so-called “Greenberg Gambit” featured in SPIDER-MAN: 101 WAYS TO END THE CLONE SAGA (1997) by Mark Bernardo & Ben Herrera and some other suggestions played out in the John Byrne/Howard Mackie/Todd DeZago’s The Gathering of Five event.

With the benefit of hindsight, my intention is to establish – if only for a WHAT IF… ? – a new status quo, iron out most of the continuity mistakes and discrepancies accumulated across the years, re-evaluate and incorporate elements from all the reboots that followed in the wake of the Clone Saga (including some nods to both Nick Spencer’s and Zeb Wells’ ASM runs, respectively, 2018-2021 and 2021-2024), and streamline the original 1990s Spider-Man continuity, so that we can forge a new mythology – and hopefully spawn a new book or another limited series in the process, one dedicated to Ben Reilly in a title somewhat reminiscent of Kurt Busiek & Pat Olliffe’s UNTOLD STORIES OF SPIDER-MAN and DeFalco & Ron Frenz’s SPIDER-GIRL (a character who debuted in What If vol. 2 #10) – should the audience show interest in the project [16].

The right time to tell this story is now: Earth-616 Ben Reilly has officially come back as the villain Chasm after a stint as a corporate superhero in the culmination of the BEYOND storyline featured in ASM (5) #93 (2022) [17]. Also, J. M. DeMatteis’ flashback five-issue miniseries BEN REILLY: SPIDER-MAN – THE HUMANITY AGENDA (2022), set during the Second Clone Saga, provided us with a clear, clever, and successful template for this sort of editorial initiatives – recently developed to include more forays into key moments of Peter Parker’s life: SM: THE LOST HUNT (2023) and SM: SHADOW OF THE GREEN GOBLIN (2024).

Last but not least, pop-culture nostalgia for the mid-1990s has reached an all-time high. A single cross-media example would suffice: the animated revival of the classic X-MEN animated show originally aired on Fox Kids Network between 1992 and 1997, now re-branded X-MEN ’97, has been released on Disney+ to incredible success. Unfortunately, Tom Lyle passed away, but the anticipation for the Second Clone Saga roster of artists and inkers to come back (Bagley & Mahlstedt, Buscema & Sienkiewicz, Jurgens & Janson, Butler & Emberlin, JR Jr & Rubinstein, Sharp & Riggs, Hanna, Lim, etc.), at the very least for a “LEGACY” series of perhaps interlocking variant covers, would be off the charts. In this sense, it would also be interesting to have other great artists who created some key works in the 1990s involved in some capacity in this project – again covers, perhaps? (For instance, Chris Sprouse, who collaborated on ASM: FULL CIRCLE in 2019, Travis Charest, or J. H. Williams III). Alternatively, a retro-metamodernist approach like that of Elsa Charretier, Marcos Martin, and Javier Rodríguez (the latter’s Clone Saga panel for Mark Waid’s HISTORY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE #4 was truly something to behold) would also fits the bill.

Finally, if you want to try something fresh and new but still respectful of the classic superhero style & canon, I would also suggest the great team of artist behind the Italian graphic novel DOCTOR NEWTRON (Feltrinelli Comics, Milan 2023): Luca Bertelè, Andrea Giannini, Giuseppe Gho, Biagio Leone, Stefano Landini, David Messina, and, last but not least, the Kyrbian Maurizio Rosenzweig. They can deliver a fantastic range of styles from the Golden Age to the modern era with gusto and panache (which might come in really handy for the flashback sequences featured in the story).

Issues and solicitations

The limited series will unfold through six deluxe, extra-size chapters (30 pages each would be great) :

[OMISSIS]: WHAT IF BEN REILLY AND MARY JANE TEAMED UP DURING THE SECOND CLONE SAGA? Two detectives knock at the Parkers’ door just hours after Aunt May’s funeral – and Spidey’s entire world comes crumbling down in an instant! Peter Parker once dodged unscathed the many perils of the Clone Saga, but this time he might not be so lucky after all! Let’s follow Ben Reilly and Mary Jane teaming up to get to the bottom of the clone conundrum in this brand-new alternate retelling of the Second Clone Saga that takes place right after the last page of celebrated landmark issue AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #400!
[OMISSIS]: DO THE WOUNDS AND THE SCARS OF THE PAST EVER HEAL? As the inscrutable figure of the Traveller watches over our heroes, Scrier visits Prof. Miles Warren in his prison cell to exact retribution for the Jackal’s horrendous crimes and his cloning frenzy – funded by none other than the deceased Harry Osborn! Meanwhile, Ben Reilly and Mary Jane get some much-needed help from Dr. Curt Connors – and confront the vicious Lizard! At the police precinct, Peter Parker is not feeling very well – will someone help him? Also, the return of Kaine! ’Nuff said!
[OMISSIS]: WHAT IF BEN URICH’S INVESTIGATIONS LED HIM TO DISCOVER SPIDER-MAN’S AND THE GREEN GOBLIN’S IDENTITIES? Jolly J. Jonah Jameson is in shock: tough-as-nails investigative reporter Ben Urich has made a breakthrough in his investigation on Spider-Man – but Jameson doesn’t want to hear about it! At the Osborn Industries headquarters, Ben Reilly and Mary Jane meet their fate at the hands of Traveller and Kaine finally comes face to face with… his father?! Bonus: enter Peter Parker’s mind, where he meets… Uncle Ben? What is going on here?!
[OMISSIS]: WHAT IF TRAVELLER’S MYSTERIOUS PLAN CAME TO FRUITION? It all comes down to this: all the deaths, all the suffering, all the machinations, all the drama. Welcome to the GATHERING OF SOULS – a dark magic ritual where the souls of the living are exchanged for the souls of the damned! What does Traveller have to gain from all this? Who will pay the price for this supernatural act of hybris? And why is Ben Reilly falling down a dark hole of hellfire and demonic presences? We won’t tell you: you’ve got to read this issue to discover it yourself!
[OMISSIS]: THE STUNNING CLIMAX OF SPIDER-MAN 1995! 30 years ago Ben Reilly paid the ultimate price – now, it’s Peter Parker’s turn to face his fate! As Ben Reilly goes through a mind-bending trip across time and space to save past, present, and future, the real nature of Scrier is finally revealed! Also, the tragedy of the Traveller unravels before our very eyes as he struggles against the demon legions of Hell – unleashed upon Earth by his own reckless folly! If you’re a True Believer, you can’t miss this one!
[OMISSIS]: IT’S THE ENDGAME! 90s nostalgia reaches its culmination in the final issue of the groundbreaking series of 2026! Chains, hellfire, flash forwards, demons, and… CLONES?! Yes, CLONES… but not the ones you may think of! Traveller’s failure is now complete as Ben Reilly struggles to fight back against the hellish hordes led by a connving and, dare we say it?, mephistophelian brute! Also featuring May “Mayday” Parker! Did we mention the presence of the greatest blockbuster action scenes of the year!? Face front, True Believers, for the end is just the beginning! ’Nuff said!

The plot: A synopsis

At the very beginning of this new WHAT IF… ? limited series, Peter Parker finds himself taken into custody as a murder suspect by detectives Jacob Raven and Connor Trevane right after Aunt May’s funeral – as previously told in ASM #400. The investigation led by Raven and Trevane unmistakably ties some gruesome murders occurred in Salt Lake City to Peter Parker. As explained in OMISSIS, I’m not going to refer to Peter and Ben’s fingerprints being identical: rather, while the real killer is later revealed to be Kaine [18], the detectives came into possession of undeniable visual proofs of Ben Reilly (Parker’s clone) using his spider powers in Salt Lake City. As those murders were being investigated in Salt Lake City, the NYPD was already looking into several incidents and outbursts of extreme violence perpetrated by Spider-Man. The revelations about Parker’s double identity by some of the villains he had recently beaten to a pulp (e.g., Rhino and the Scorpion, who cracked under the pressure of the police interrogations) sealed the deal insofar as Peter Parker’s accountability is concerned. The result of the convergence between the two police investigations is undeniable: Parker’s going to be jailed for life and his double identity set to be revealed to the entire world (remember: this takes place ages before CIVIL WAR #2 from 2006!).

READERS BEWARE!

HEAVY SPOILERS from now on!

FINAL WARNING!

During the stressful interrogation at the police precinct, Parker finds it increasingly difficult to focus. He’s visibly unwell and he’s reliving through dramatic flashbacks his recent feud with his frenemy Harry Osborn, responsible for many of his recent woes. The stress proves too much to bear and Parker ultimately suffers a most severe, stress-induced clone seizure. Parker enters in a coma and is transported to the Mount Sinai Hospital, where, under the surveillance of Traveller’s ragtag team of mercenaries and collaborators called The Host, he experiences first a nightmare which recaps his recent misadventures and then goes through a long oneiric discussion with Uncle Ben (which proves to be essential to Parker’s character arc in this storyline). Thanks to their knowledge of the mystic arts, Traveller and Scrier observe the scenes unfolding inside Parker’s comatose mind safe from a distance.

Meanwhile, Ben Reilly teams up with Mary Jane Watson-Parker after having smoothed out their differences (a euphemism for a lot of melodramatic crying and some slapping in Ben’s face by Mary Jane). The unlikely duo must come to terms with the awkwardness of the situation they’re involved in as they rush to get to the bottom of the whole clone conundrum. They get some much-needed help in the process, first from Dr. Curt Connors (originally involved in the First Clone Saga and the character responsible for the shocking revelation that Ben Reilly is the real Spider-Man in this storyline), then from Reilly’s acquaintance/friend with a dark past and Oscorp geneticist, Seward Trainer.

At the Daily Bugle, investigative journalist Ben Urich explains to ever-grumpy-but-lovable chief editor J. Jonah Jameson the results of his year-long investigation about Spider-Man and his archenemy the Green Goblin (a sequence inspired by Kurt Busiek & Mark Texeira’s LEGACY OF EVIL, 1996). Urich has nailed the identities of both hero and villain and carefully reconstructed the family feud between Parker as Spider-Man and the Osborns. Jameson initially rejects Urich’s reconstruction as pure speculation. Robbie Robertson and Betty Brant abruptly interrupt the meeting and tell Jameson to come and watch the breaking news on TV. As the Daily Bugle crew gathers around a TV screen, CNBC television news reporter Trish Tilby breaks the news that photo reporter Peter Parker has been taken into custody as he’s been accused of multiple murders. Jameson is in shock.

At the same time, the third Parker clone that was prematurely released from a pod in the Jackal’s lab (and featured on the cover of SSM #222) is here revealed to be none other than the bioandroid version of Peter Parker’s father, Richard Parker, last seen in the LIFETHEFT storyline (ASM # 381-393) – which, in my opinion, makes more sense than setting up a third Parker clone storyline that goes nowhere. The bioandroid is revealed to be the creation of Miles Warren (a.k.a. the Jackal) with the financial and logistic support of both Harry Osborn and the Chameleon. Kaine is instructed by Scrier to bring the wandering Richard Parker bioandroid back to him for purposes still unknown. Kaine apparently complies, but he has his own agenda: he wants to find his “father” and rescue him as his last shot at redemption. Unfortunately, the bioandroid’s lethal program is reactivated upon Kaine’s revelation that he is Peter Parker’s clone and Kaine and his “father” kill each other. Scrier appears on the scene to steal both their souls – tiny columns of fire held in Scrier’s open palm. The plot thickens.

Scrier then meets Miles Warren in his prison cell after the latter’s psychological and medical assessment with Dr. Ashley Kafka. Warren has a dark triad personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) and is a serial (sexual) abuser (details implied/suggested ever since the original Clone Saga, here only alluded to) who used his cutting-edge knowledge of genetics to create an mRNA version of key proteins from Peter Parker’s mutated blood that could be injected as a sort of vaccine every six months or so to get superhuman powers. During the conversation between Warren and Scrier it is revealed that they once made a devilish deal, but since Warren went on a cloning frenzy for his own heinous purposes (as well as to keep doing research to make his superpowers permanent), and later reneged on that deal to secretly work for Harry Osborn on “Project Kindred” to clone Harry’s father and improve the Goblin serum (foreshadowing and adapting a key plot point from Nick Spencer’s more recent ASM run), Scrier has to take his life: Warren’s uncontrolled cloning and unnecessary deaths have drawn attention from elsewhere. Scrier releases Warren’s soul to Hell, even though that could be detrimental to his own plans, and he’s suggested for the first time to be Blackheart, Mephisto’s son exiled on Earth for his budding sentimental penchant for humanity.

Meanwhile, Jameson reaches out to his police informants and learns that Peter Parker has been hospitalised at the Mt. Sinai Hospital. He decides on the spot to go there with Urich. Unfortunately, they get stuck in the New York rush hour traffic, which leads to some interesting confessions and lively discussions between the two of them while waiting in their taxi to reach their destination.

Various cues lead Mary Jane and Reilly to the Osborn Industries headquarters where they find, hidden in plain sight, the third Jackal’s lab – this is where “Project Kindred” was being researched and implemented in secrecy. As the private security guards arrive to prevent Reilly and Mary Jane from breaking into the lab (thanks to the lab keys Reilly stole from his former friend Trainer), a majestic and most hieratic Traveller magically appears on the scene with a baroque Soulsword and the Eye of Agamotto stolen from alternative realities. Traveller freezes time and gets rid of Mary Jane by teleporting her to the Mount Sinai Hospital where Peter Parker is fighting for his own life. Then, Traveller focuses his attention on Reilly: his plan is to convince Reilly to help him during a dark ritual able to open a portal to Hell, but Reilly is – unsurprisingly – uncooperative. Scrier materializes on the scene with the corpses of both Richard Parker and Kaine. The “Gathering of Souls”, as Traveller calls it, can now begin: six souls are needed as sacrificial tokens to open the portal. The souls are then offered in exchange for the souls of both Traveller’s lover -- Radha Dastoor from DeMatteis’ run on X-FACTOR -- and his daughter’s, trapped in Hell because of Dastoor’s reckless gambling with demonic and diabolical powers [19]. All the collected souls had to be connected to the purest heart of a true champion [20] – that is why Traveller and Scrier have been engaged in a non-stop testing of Reilly & Parker’s psychological, moral, and physical strength and stamina (i.e., Scrier is here retconned to be the Dickensian Ghost of Christmas to Come Yet featured in DeMatteis, Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod’s SOUL OF THE HUNTER, 1992).

As Traveller opens the portal thanks to the black magic spells featured in the Darkhold as well as Chakra’s telekinetic help (who’s revealed to be Traveller’s other daughter), Reilly is being transported beyond multiversal space and time by Scrier himself, who seizes the opportunity to reveal his own agenda: he wants to stop Traveller simply because the risks are too high. Thanks to Scrier’s magic, Reilly lives or relives key moments from his own life and Parker’s as well: he witnesses as a disembodied ghost the DEATH of Peter Parker at the Mt. Sinai Hospital in real time (Mary Jane, Jameson, Urich, and Connors are all there too); relives a tearful memory with his love Joyce/Gwen’s clone in Salt Lake City and her brutal killing at the hands of Kaine; and watches powerless the future event that will bring to an end ALL realities (i.e., Parker’s pact with the devil from ONE MORE DAY [2007]). This dreadful event, in particular, is the reason why Scrier didn’t initially object to Traveller’s plan to seize Parker’s soul: they judged Parker as too far gone and compromised to be saved. Now, Scrier/Blackheart is engaged in a race against time to prevent his father Mephisto’s invasion of the terrestrial plane because of Traveller’s recklessness. Courtesy of Scrier’s magic, Reilly is also blessed with a formal “power and responsibility” handover from Uncle Ben and young Peter Parker from within Peter’s comatose mind.

After his supernatural journey accompanied by a Dickensian and Vergilian Scrier, Reilly watches aghast Traveller successfully opening a portal to Hell. Chakra unexpectedly betrays Traveller as she’s revealed to be in cahoots with Scrier: she thinks that his father has underestimated the risks involved in summoning the devil himself and tries to close the portal. Traveller tries to stop her but Scrier comes to her rescue – Traveller and Scrier engage in a fight to the death during which Scrier’s arm is cut off by Traveller. Unfortunately, Chakra fails in her attempt to prevent the portal from opening further, causing an outburst and the breakout of legions of demons in our reality. Scrier is hit in the face by the mystical explosion and his white face is suggested to be just a mask, now cracked and letting a black ooze dripping on the ground as he becomes unconscious. Some demons cross the mystical threshold to capture and bring Chakra to Hell, others invade the Oscorp lab to possess and animate the Osborn clones present in the underground lab and stored there since the inception of “Project Kindred”, thus creating an entire army of Norman Osborn/Goblin-like cloned demogoblins armed with oh-so-90s hellfire and chains!

Reilly is caught in the middle of the fight and is uncertain as to whether he should help Traveller or Scrier; nonetheless he fights the devils and demons as if he was in a rerun of the original X-MEN: INFERNO until Traveller has a change of heart and decides to perform a probably hopeless Hail Mary by entering the portal to try and remedy the damage he has caused. After just a brief moment of respite, Mephisto suddenly crashes on the scene delighted by the fracas, an unconscious Traveller held firmly in his enormous hand. Mephisto proceeds to remove Scrier’s shattered mask and reshapes the dissolving black goo as a fully formed Blackheart. Mephisto commends his son’s plan to fight him and offers Blackheart the role of commander in his apocalyptic army at the end of times, but Scrier/Blackheart has learned to love humans and refuses! An enraged Mephisto gives his demonic legions orders to conquer the entire Earth in an INFERNO-style invasion. Mephisto, now towering gigantic above everyone else, easily catches and swallows in his Hellmouth both Traveller and Ben Reilly… who wakes up in a sweat in Mary Jane’s house!

It was all a nightmare AND a faithful, PTSD-like recollection of what had already happened roughly 12-15 years prior to this very moment (thanks to his radioactive arachnid-enhanced superpowers, Reilly does not age like any normal human being would do). Peter Parker has been dead for years at this point; Mary Jane lives alone with her daughter May, Ben is a close friend who crashes on Mary Jane’s sofa once in a while after his superheroics. Then, we are treated to Reilly’s daily routine, with him (most tired) having breakfast with Mary Jane. They are both having the same recurring nightmare, they both share the same devastating memories. A slightly older Mary Jane is now an accomplished theatre teacher and she’s about to make her debut as director. Young May, Peter and Mary Jane’s daughter, arrives from upstairs and reminds a delighted Ben that he promised to be her personal guide to the recently renovated dinosaur hall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York (which took place in the mid-1990s in the real world!). As young May gets back to her room to get ready, Ben and Mary Jane finish their breakfast while listening to the news on the TV. Breaking News! Trish Tilby informs the readers (and the characters) that some members of the SINISTER SEVEN are fighting the police incognito while inciting/riling up a mob to storm the New York State Capitol for purposes unknown. Ben knows immediately what he has to do. Mary Jane is upset and disappointed. They fight for a while (and May hears them fighting from upstairs) – but in the end Ben’s call for responsibility gets the better of him. Ben promises that he’ll be fine and that he’ll take May to the AMNH the next day; then he leaves. Mary Jane is furious and regrets her life choices as she climbs the stairs to tell young May that her beloved uncle won’t be able to take her to the AMNH today. A worried voice message by Mary Jane’s friend Felicia Hardy echoes in the now empty living room and asks whether Ben has passed the night on Mary Jane’s sofa again. Final scene: Ben Reilly riding his motorcycle as we see above him his costumed alter ego swinging in his Sensational Spider-Man costume – as the one and only Spider-Man.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Notes

This post was expanded, corrected, and updated on 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 March 2025.

[1] “If a bard were to place not a curse upon you, but a satire, that could destroy you. If it was a clever satire, it might not just destroy you in the eyes of your associates, it would destroy you in the eyes of your family. It would destroy you in your own eyes. And if it was an extremely finely worded and clever satire, that might survive and be remembered for decades, even centuries. Then years after you were dead, people still might be reading it, and laughing at you, your wretchedness, and absurdity” (Moore in The Mindscape of Alan Moore, 2003).

[2] I’ve recently come across a post by a comic book shop owner that aptly summarises other relevant issues here: “price, decompression, constant events, oversaturation, and writers not staying on books for more than a year makes it harder to want to buy single issues. [Comic books are] [e]xpensive, [there are] too many events, too many entangled stories, [and] not enough actual stories per issue” [Anonymous 2024]. Another contributing factor affecting the quality of the stories itself might be the diffusion of storytelling handbooks and the proliferation of courses and classes about creative writing over the course of the last decades, which standardised and popularised certain narrative techniques to the detriment of other approaches and choked the unorganised, but lively, creative effervescence of the second half of the 20th century (for an analysis of the widespread diffusion of the hero’s journey in Hollywood see Ambasciano 2021; on the creative explosion that characterised mainstream US comic books in the 1970s see Mazur & Danner 2014: 45-60).

[3] Liefeld also stated that in order to fend off the current crisis affecting the American mainstream comic book industr, Marvel should strive to hire and keep the most talented pros in the business. I don’t think that’s really the problem here, quite the opposite actually: the average page rate is far too low to attract and retain the top-rated writers and artists, provided they’d even want to work with the Big Two, as editorial control and the ever-lingering postmodern inclination to dispense stale subversions of expectations for the umpteenth short-lived relaunch of any given book remain two major issues. Also, Liefeld’s suggestion seems counterproductive in terms of generational change and fresh ideas, and I think he would agree with me on this point. In my humble opinion, provided that Marvel Comics is not sold to another company in the foreseeable future, the company should/could: (a) fully license their properties to foreign companies, like Disney did with Egmont, Glénat, or Panini Comics, which would be eager to incentivise creativity, variety, and competition (I might be biased here, but the Italian Disney production has always been absolutely phenomenal and unrivalled in terms of both quality and quantity); this move would effortlessly maximise the mother company’s passive profits, boost international production, and create new pools of local talents; (b) hire new creators from different generations by focussing exclusively on their creative long-term proposals regardless of their curricula or social media followers; (c) adequately remunerate artists and writers according to contemporary living standard and inflation rates, including royalties from reprints, international sales, and cross-media exploitation of ideas first generated within the comic book storylines; (d) eliminate crossovers and drastically reduce the number of monthly comic books to strictly focus on quality and rewarding long-term storytelling (even if this means coming back to newsprint to balance the books); (e) engage in at least a couple of creatively bold experiments concerning both medium and format (e.g., an anthology to showcase new talents, test new authors, and offer a space for creator-owned contents); (f) open new channels of direct communication with engaged readers, avoiding social media noise and online discourse which rarely translates into factual engagement. It’s the House of Ideas; let’s put ideas back into the old mansion.

[4] While I understand the corporate need to protect intellectual property, Disney’s decision was cruel, unempathetic, and completely unwarranted. But is denying a Catholic funeral to unbaptized children really any different? Whether intentionally or not, the massive multinational corporations that own the rights to Golden and Silver Age superheroes have embarked on the path of the ancient theologies, mirroring their gatekeeping of sacred symbols. Given the financial crisis currently affecting The Walt Disney Company – and considering that, under neoliberalism, money has become the main proxy to quantify devotion – I wouldn’t be surprised if they started charging people for the official use of their icons in similar situations (cf. Guest 2022).

[5] I never found the argument that the entertainment industry as a whole is just an exploitative capitalistic endeavour that merely provides cheap, quick, immature, and disposable entertainment particularly compelling given the wealth of exceptional and intelligent works produced for every demographic. From a historico-religious point of view, I also think it is profoundly questionable if not incorrect. This is not the place to develop a comparative history of effervescent and institutionalised forms of religious, mythological, secular, and corporate storytelling, but as research in the Cognitive Science, Worldview Studies, and Religious Studies can confirm, differences in such cases are merely a matter of degree, not of kind. Suffice it to report here the following opinion from an insider. According to novelist and comic book writer Grant Morrison, “in a secular, scientific rational culture lacking in any convincing spiritual leadership, superhero stories speak loudly and boldly to our greatest fears, deepest longings, and highest aspirations […] and the best superhero stories deal directly with mythic elements of human experience that we can all relate to, in ways that are imaginative, funny, and provocative. […] At their best, they help us to confront and resolve even the deepest existential crises. We should listen to what they have to tell us” (Morrison 2011: xvii). Is it that much different from, let’s say, a trickster myth, the Gospel of James, or the Homeric epics? Not to mention that, in the words of comic book author Don Rosa, “[w]hen you enjoy something when you’re 12 years old, you profoundly enjoy it on an almost cosmic level, especially if you’re a smart, perceptive kid. And it sticks with you forever” (Rosa in Dimitropoulos 2013; original emphasis). As I wrote elsewhere concerning Star Wars (but which equally applies to comic book literature), “[w]hile the corporate and commercial aspects of the cinema industry might seem incompatible with religious moral precepts at first – the toyetic nature of the Star Wars brand is too well known – it bears reminding that institutional religion is not alien to childhood indoctrination, platform branding, and the marketisation of moral goods (cf. McCleary 2011; Mitkidis and Levy 2015)” (from Ambasciano 2021: 253).

[6] The resulting socio-cognitive interruption of intergenerational transmission would also explain the discrepancy between the dwindling sales experienced by mainstream publishers, like Marvel Comics, and the soaring popularity of mangas, graphic novels, and comic books targeted at a younger audiences: due to the perceived corporate mismanagement of beloved IPs, disaffected and apatheistic older readers may no longer be passing down their reading rituals to their children or introducing them to their pop-culture myths. The situation is obviously more complex than this, but there’s a tantalising religious parallel at play here that is definitely worth exploring further (cf. Turpin and Lanman 2022; for the marketing strategies behind the early success of Japanese manga in the US see also Brienza 2009).

[7] I think that a pretty convincing case could be made for the correlation between the diffusion of pop culture media across the entire 20th century, and comic books in particular, and the so-called “vestigialisation of religion” (Talmont-Kaminski and LeRon Shults 2023), but that would take us too far away from the main topic (stay tuned).

[8] It might be objected that Shooter bought Schueller’s idea for cheap, without ever acknowledging the inclusion of the reader’s name in the credits of the comic books, as far as I can remember. It should also be kept in mind that Marvel is a company division within a giant corporation that, quite paradoxically, might not always have the economic wellbeing of the hired creators and collaborators from which it depends for its own survival to its best interest.

[9] In Moore’s own words: “[w]e were wild-eyed fanatics to rival the loopiest thugee cultist or member of the Manson family. We were True Believers. The worst thing was that everything had ground to a halt. The books had stopped developing. If you take a look at a current Spiderman [sic] comic, you’ll find that he’s maybe twenty years old, he worries a lot about what’s right and what’s wrong, and he has a lot of trouble with his girlfriends. Do you know what Spiderman [sic] was doing fifteen years ago? Well, he was about nineteen years old, he worried a lot about what was right and what was wrong, and he had a lot of trouble with his girlfriends” (Moore 1983: 47).

[10] Considering the huge impact of and the considerable problems deriving from interested religious philanthrocapitalism and financial support in my academic discipline (Ambasciano 2022a; Ambasciano 2022b), I’ll only half-jokingly add here that I’d be more than happy to have my current academic research concerning religion(s) and contemporary pop culture (partially) funded by any interested comic book company, book retailer, or publishing house. That would make for a nice change of pace. I know this is a tall order in today’s world, but it would be a mutually beneficial partnership (one that offers the third party involved a substantial return on their initial modest investment in terms of media exposure and academic currency) so, just in case, I’m going to quietly leave the Contact link for proposals here!

[11] Other potential titles --Ben Reilly: Life Story; Spider-Man: Grand Design; Ben Reilly, Spider-Man: 1995; Spider-Man: One and Only; Spider-Man: Elsewhen (a nod to John Byrne’s fan fiction continuation of the X-Men storyline after the Dark Phoenix saga); Spider-Man: 1996 (depending on the a quo date chosen for the anniversary).

[12] In the timeline explored in this WHAT IF… ?, everything that happened up to ASM #400 (including J. M. DeMatteis & Liam Sharpe’s THE DOUBLE and THE PARKER LEGACY by DeMatteis & John Romita Jr) is hereby considered canon (albeit with a few ex-post re-adjustments that will become clear as the story unfolds).

[13] It is also worth noting that, just prior to the Second Clone Saga, Spider-Man and X-Factor teamed up in the three-part miniseries SHADOWGAMES by Kurt Busiek & Pat Broderick (1994).

[14] Retcons published years after ASM #400 are not considered here (e.g., DeFalco’s explanation of the real nature of Traveller and Scrier in ASM #417, resp., a mutant gone insane and a brotherhood of devotees to an ancient cosmic being, or DeMatteis’ elaboration on the original Scrier as a cosmic being as powerful as Galactus in THE MIGHTY THOR ANNUAL #1 [2012]).

[15] Aspects ignored in DeFalco, Mackie & Nauck’s 2009 retelling of THE REAL CLONE SAGA, and basically everywhere else – e.g., Bendis & Bagley’s ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, Slott’s Dead No More storyline – and only slightly touched upon by Peter David in the cancelled third SCARLET SPIDER book, 2016-2018.

[16] Please note that in this storyline I will also include a sufficiently vague backdoor device, courtesy of none other than Mr. Nacht, to potentially bring back Peter Parker in some form with the help of Dr. Strange’s deep knowledge of the mystic arts… maybe even as Chasm himself (!).

[17] Ben Reilly was first resurrected by Dan Slott twenty years after the publication of the final chapter of the Second Clone Saga in DEAD NO MORE and THE CLONE CONSPIRACY (ASM [4] #16-24 and THE CLONE CONSPIRACY #1-5, 2016-2017).

[18] Two of the Salt Lake City victims killed by Kaine are detective Jacob Raven’s partner and Ben Reilly’s then girlfriend Joyce Delaney, a.k.a. Gwen Stacy’s original clone. The latter will be very important in this storyline.

[19] The souls requested for the ritual are: (1) Aunt May’s (passed away – naturally – in ASM #400); (2) Joyce Delaney’s (Gwen Stacy’s clone who replaces Janine Godbe/Elizabeth Tyne as Ben Reilly’s Salt Lake City lover in this limited series); (3) Kaine’s; (4) Richard Parker’s (the bioandroid version: clones do have a soul as explained in this limited series!); (5) at least one historical Spider-Man villain killed by Kaine (e.g., Doctor Octopus [killed in SSM #221] – that’s why Kaine was presented as a mercenary killer in his first appearance, and why he was hellbent on killing other more or less traditional SM antagonists, like the Grim Reaper: in this reality, he was instructed by Scrier to do so as Traveller was experimenting on his portal opening ritual by trial and error); and, of course – SPOILER ALERT! – (6) the soul of comatose Peter Parker.

[20] See ASM #274.

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