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Clones!
Did you guys see this?
They're putting clones back into Spider-Man comics
Since when were clones ever a good idea?
Oh hey, I like your tie
[1,2,3] Thanks [4] I'm not wearing one
Do we have any topic for this week?
The video is already late
I just need to know what we're doing
[4] Deadpool!
No, bad Scott
Anyone else?
[3] Well I was thinking we could probably do something
[2] What if we instead revisit one of our older episodes
[Uncomprehensible]
Guys
Stop it, Guys!
Hey
Obviously
This clone thing was a bad idea
I mean sure
It was good at first
When there was just one of you helping me tell good stories
But now, it has gotten to complicated
There are too
[4] Deadpool!
Stop it!
Ok
All of you clones you gotta go
I'm sorry
It's one or two can stay
Sure
The just the ones that the audience attached to
We'll figure it out later
[1,2,3 Rolls eyes]
[4] Ah
[1,2,3] Shut up!
(Nerdsync theme song)
The clone saga
[Table Drumming]
Ugh, lets talk about it
there probably groaning at the mention of the words Clone Saga what you'd be
perfectly justified in doing it's not uncommon for fans to see and it's a
collection of everything wrong with marvel comics in the nineties or even
just comics in general and in hindsight sure it's clear to see how much of a
convoluted mess it was thing is don't really have a problem with it in the
beginning its first six months the Clone Saga was met with a great response the
stories were interesting and even beautifully sad shaping up to be one of
the best spider-man stories ever told
so what happened what went wrong and who is responsible for all of it i wish i
could tell you there's just one thing but it seems like the Clone Saga fell
victim to a perfect storm of terrible decisions incidents and happenstance
that turned in otherwise promising event into an enormous failure
let's take a look and see exactly how that happened not in the plot of the
story itself but behind the scenes at Marvel believe or not the story actually
starts way back in nineteen seventy-three during one of the most
famous spider-man stories ever told the night gwen stacy died during this time
Marvel's then editor-in-chief Roy Thomas along with writer gerry conway and inker
john romita senior we're trying to think of ways to shake things up in spider-man
comics a sentiment we will see repeated later and so they decided to kill
someone some big important character and Peter Parker's life that would leave the
readers shocked and they had their perfect targets Aunt May but ramita was
against the idea he explained quote if you kill Aunt May Peter Parker secret
identity is not a problem anymore since there's no one for him to protect and
you lose that whole teenage nerd factor it didn't matter how good looking he was
or how well he was doing if his aunt was still telling him to bring his umbrella
whenever he went out into the rain instead ramita pulled inspiration from
an old comic strip called Terry and the Pirates where readers were stunned after
seeing the girlfriend of one of the main characters die and so it was settled
they were gonna kill when but not without Stanley's permission
of course they asked him if it was alright to kill her off and Stan gave
them his blessing but once the story it's shelves fans everywhere were
outraged how could they kill Gwen Stacy how could stand let them see here's the
thing that you need to know about Stanley he's not always the best when it
comes to telling the truth
so even though conway and Thomas did get his permission Stan publicly rejected
the idea claiming that he would never have allowed them to do such a thing if
he knew about it in reality stand simply hates when fans are mad at him so he
deflects the blame in an attempt to promote his own innocence but we felt
that the fans were so outspoken that he actually went out of his way to try and
fix things he went back to gerry conway and demanded that he bringing when Stacy
back into the comics somehow she didn't have to stay for longer become a main
character again but she at least had to come back in some capacity so Conway
unwillingly created the first Clone Saga see the one from the nineties was
actually the second Clone Saga the first one back in the seventies help set it up
and introduced the character of the jackal the previously established
science professor named miles Warren who was infatuated with Gwen Stacy upset
over her death and in his grief resolved to clone her but that wasn't the only
clone jackal created oh no just to make the story interesting he also created a
clone of Peter Parker that you team up to take down the jackal until a bomb
detonates seemingly killing jackal and one of the spider-men the apparently
dead Spidey's reason to be the clone in the living one is the peat that we all
know and love but it was left ambiguous unintentionally so actually as Conway
recalls it was never his intention to imply that the surviving Spidey was the
clone and the real Pete is dead he never believed in a million years that Marvel
would tell that story
yeah so about that
flash forward to the mid-1990s when comics were getting a little darker are
happy and fun wall-crawler was thrown into the ring with much more intense and
traumatic events that we never seen before he just wasn't the same and
Marvel wanted to shake things up
again DC comics was selling record sales with events like Batman nightfall and
the death of superman Marvel decided they needed to fire back with their own
big event and no ideas were off the table
everyone just started shouting things out enter Terry Cavanagh who pitched a
pretty straightforward idea what if we bring back the spider-man clone from the
seventies the idea was quickly dismissed and everyone moved on but Cavanaugh was
adamant and further explain his pitch in a following writers meeting he wasn't
saying to just bring the clone back for another story he was saying what is this
whole time we had things backwards the clone that comes back is the real Peter
Parker and spider-man we've been following since the seventies that's the
clone that idea would actually be pretty brilliant Marvel could say that the dark
and brooding Spiderman was simply a clone while the fun and energetic one
readers longed-for from before was still out there in the marvel universe as
Cavanaugh said quote as the writers grew older and got married and had kids and
got mortgages we sort of wrote spider-man that way and wrote him away
from our audience
this was a way to get him back to his essence organically without divorcing
him which would just give him more baggage and quote that was the plan
clear up spider-man's history and bring him back to how he used to be the
writers at the meeting could hardly contain their excitement after they
realized all of the possibilities
it was a scary idea to take on sure but ultimately a thrilling experience for
the writers when editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco came in to shut the project down
he was so overwhelmed by the writers enthusiasm that it not only convinced
him to do the story but also to become the new writer of spectacular spider-man
but as editor mark bernardo stated quote ironically the whole storyline which was
supposed to simplify spider-man's Methos and ultimately bring him back to basics
ended up complicating everything beyond what anyone imagine the original concept
for the story was pretty straightforward Peters clone would come back going by
the name Ben Reilly forged by combining been from Uncle Ben and Riley which was
in maize maiden name over the next six months it would be revealed that Ben
Reilly was the real spider-man
Peter Parker was the clone meanwhile Mary Jane would become pregnant which
would give Peter incentive to retire as spider-man after all with great power
comes great responsibility and what greater responsibility is there than
raising a child and teaching him or heard be a good and decent human being .
MJ would walk off into the sunset with their child will Ben Reilly regained the
mental of spider-man permanently clean and simple
no need to complicate things well here is where the first bit of confusion
comes in you remember how tom defalco was against the idea and told everyone
to shut it down when he finally agreed he had one condition
quote here's a secret when I finally ok the Clone Saga I told editor Danny
finger off to build a backdoor into it I said that I wanted to be able to bring
Peter back as the real deal i believe that both comic book creators and comic
book fans are cowardly and superstitious lot while the fans claim they want
change they tend to react negatively to it so the most creators with this in
mind we agreed that Peter was the real guy but that we wouldn't let the spider
team trying to convince the readers otherwise if the spider creators
succeeded
they would love the idea of the old switcheroo if they failed they be so
happy that they had a back door
either way the readers were guaranteed a great story with a lot of unexpected
twists and quote so essentially because they were already expecting fan outrage
they had to build in a loophole to basically undo everything to say that
Peter was the clone and Ben Reilly was the real deal but then to immediately
say now just kidding but even this idea was thrown out after Marvel saw some
radical editorial shifts if you recall from our previous video about the
comic-book crash in the nineties comic books crashed in the nineties
speculators we're seeing how much Golden Age comic books are being result for and
started buying loads of current comics hoping to sell them later to make a
profit problem was that Golden Age comics valuable because they were rare
comics from major publishers in the nineties were printed hundreds of
thousands of times
speculators realize this and the market fell out part
Marvel was in serious financial troubles and it wasn't helping that there was
hardly any cooperation between the sales team and the editorial staff the people
who kept the numbers wanted more control with the creatives didn't want to
relinquish any especially DiFalco who expressed an attitude of if we're making
good books i don't care if they sell poorly i'm not gonna let some marketing
and sales people tell us how to make comics hoping to get the company back on
track then president of Marvel teri Stewart put into action initiative that
would take power away from the editorial staff and give more power to the sales
and marketing team this restructuring of the company was called the Marvel Lucien
editor in chief DiFalco was effectively fired and in his place where not one not
two but five new editors-in-chief that would each handle their own corner of
the Marvel Universe and report directly to Stuart the five sectors were
spider-man x-men marvel classic which was mostly Avengers and fantastic for
Marvel edge all the gritty characters and marvel entertainment for all their
license properties in an attempt to unify the company all Marvel Lucien did
was split its further apart one editor said quote it would have been easier to
have spider-man team-up with Superman and spider-man team-up with the x-men
this big editorial shake-up happened right in the middle of the Clone Saga
this meant that the overall vision of the story was lost as new editors came
in with their own ideas and with the sales team more integrated with the
creative side they kept demanding for writers to drag out the story so that
they could sell more comics and make more money remember this whole ordeal
was only supposed to last six months at the most and come to a conclusion an
amazing spider-man 400 but as sales demanded extensions to the story the
plot for this issue was changed instead of ending the Clone Saga ASM 400
featured a wonderfully moving story by JM de Matisse where an Aunt May revealed
that she had known Peter for spider-man for quite some time
one moment later and mates help finally gave out and she died
it's a beautiful comment that serves as a reminder that not everything that
amount of the Clone Saga was awful fun fact they also got Stanley's permission
to kill Aunt May which he gave only to once again tonight when he saw the fan
reactions tho classic stand in addition to story extensions the sales department
also demanded more clones to classic case of higher up seeing good sales
numbers and wrongly attributed their success to one simple thing it's
probably not the gripping story or the beautiful character developmental
masterfully drawn artwork it's clones we need more clones all of the clones and
while we're at it let's get more already superhero movies in here because
Deadpool did so well rights
yeah this is when we got stories like maximum clones which featured more
spider-man clones in the world ever needed this was once again a proposed
ending for the Clone Saga that was supposed to tie up a bunch of loose ends
and establish Ben Reilly is the one-and-only spider-man but funny thing
happened Marvel Lucien had split up all the Marvel properties which created a
sense of competition between them
Bob Harris the editor-in-chief of the x-men corner of the MU saw how great
spider-man Clone Saga was doing initially and reacted
oh my god the spider-man books are gonna rock it past the x-men once we have to
have our own event like now
thus began the long and drawn-out Age of Apocalypse storyline throughout all of
the x-men titles when maximum cloning was being written the sales department
really loved her age of apocalypse was generating enormous numbers by making
their story overly long and spread out so the spider-man editor-in-chief body
and ski essentially told his team to copy that recipe so in effect the clone
socket took inspiration from age of apocalypse which took inspiration from
the Clone Saga is apparently the Marvel HQ is housed in an echo chamber instead
of tying up loose ends and bringing the Clone Saga to a close maximum clone is
just complicated things and continue to prolong the resolution story that was
supposed to last few months that ended up lasting over two years and the
writers still had no idea how they were gonna end it
one idea was that neither Peter Parker or Ben Reilly was a clone they were both
the original spider-man simply stuck in a time loop
Spidey would go back in time become Ben Reilly progress forward in time until he
met up with Peter Parker again would then
go back in time become Ben Reilly and the cycle continues this way all the
spider-man tail since the beginning still happened to Peter not some clone
and it would also establish peter is the one-and-only spider-man once again and
the villainous mastermind behind this whole scheme none other than my fist oh
yes Fisto as the solution to a convoluted spider-man story
funny how that works at ultimately while the editorial staff was on board for
this time loop idea the writers were adamantly against it
writer Dan Jurgens from hated Ben Reilly put an ultimatum in place Peter Parker
had to remain the real spider-man just been Riley is the true spider-man
business had to go Ben would die heroically of course Peter would become
Spidey again and let's just resolve this now and quickly and if not Jergens would
quit even this simple solution was made sloppy with how complicated the story
had become MJ was still pregnant with Peters child
originally they were supposed to go settle down well then became spider-man
again but with Peter cementing himself as the true webhead the writers had to
well they had to deal deal with the baby and their eyes you couldn't have a
superhero with the kid obviously we know now that that's a bit of an overreaction
either way the decision was made that Mary Jane would have a miscarriage
solutions to the Clone Saga are being thrown around left and right no one was
on the same page and body and ski who was supposed to be in charge couldn't
decide on any one direction indecisive from crisis to crisis frustrating
everyone who was working on the story finally booty and ski and Jergens wrote
a story that would reveal who was behind this whole Clone Saga nonsense and end
this miserable journey once and for all
they introduced a new villain named gaunt would be revealed to be none other
than the presumed dead Harry Osborn he would be the new mastermind behind it
all
plans were laid out clues were in place but then wouldn't you know it
Marvel reorganize the company yet again did away with the five editors in
chief and named Bob Harris as the one and only DIC overall of Marvel Comics
remember Harris was previously in charge of the x-men section so when he oversaw
all of Marvel he still put x-men first right around the time when the
spider-man team was about to make the big reveal that Harry was the mastermind
behind the whole Clone Saga and finally bring this message to an end
Harris told the spider-man team to yet again postponed the finale because he
didn't want to overshadow a big x-men event presumably onslaught was happening
right around the same time so the Harry Osborn reveal was out this further delay
of the Clone Saga is resolution infuriated Jergens who made true on his
promise and quit
thanks to layoffs and Marvel booty and ski was on his way out as well but
before he left he wrote a memo he didn't know who would be made the true villain
of the Clone Saga but there was one character he was strongly against quote
Norman Osborn's death should never be undone in my opinion it's two classic
let him rest in peace
of course with booty and ski out of the picture Harris decided that the one
person who had the money resources the connections the knowledge and the
motivation to orchestrate the Clone Saga and disrupt Peter Parker's life to such
a profound extent was none other than or is Norman Osborn problem was as funny
ascii pointed out he was kind of dead at the time famously so during the night
gwen stacy died the comic that started this whole mess but Harris didn't care
Norman Osborn was the only character that made sense in this scenario even if
he's supposed to be dead so as what happened at this point i'm sure many
riders were happy just to end the Clone Saga once and for all and move on the
reveal was written up and in 1997 the Clone Saga was finally laid to rest
there's obviously a lot more to this story than we covered in this video i
highly recommend checking out the life of Riley 35 part blog series to find out
more that is linked down in the description below along with a bunch
more links and sources you should definitely check out what do you guys
think about all this was there any one person or one decision that made the
Clone Saga of failure or was it a barrage of
bad luck but could have saved it if anything
let's talk about it all in the comments and I'll address some of your thoughts
on monday during our show tales from the comments if you liked this video and
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one more spider-man click on this video to the left to see the crazy intricate
behind-the-scenes story of how venom was created or you can click on the video to
the right to learn how the nineties comic book market almost destroyed the
industry if you're new here make sure to hit that big sexy subscribe button until
next time my name is Scott reminding you to read between the panels and grow
smarter through comics so yeah