Ben Reilly

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 5:58 pm

Did he rock or was he a cock?

Hot Shot · Post by **Hot Shot** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:09 pm

Umm...Who's Ben Reilly?

Predabot · Post by **Predabot** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:48 pm

I suppose you mean the clone of Spider-man? Yeah, he was pretty cool at times. The Spidey-comics got a bit weird at the time tho.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:36 pm

Actually, Dave was referring to Peter Watson's late uncle from the alternate Earth where men took their wives' surnames upon marriage.

But anyway...

Haven't read much of him, but from what I have he seemed to get all the leftover story ideas from Spidey 2099. All those technovillains and cyberspace stuff.

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:45 pm

He was only cool when they made Peter into a wanker in order to showcase Ben and try to give the book to Ben.

MachanikalAnimal · Post by **MachanikalAnimal** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:22 pm

I'm a fan

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:12 am

sprunkner wrote:He was only cool when they made Peter into a wanker in order to showcase Ben and try to give the book to Ben.

Worst Idea Ever?

If they wanted to get back to the comic's roots they could've just had him split up with MJ or something.

I even prefer the early JMS era without MJ. Even if she is a lovely girl. Surely Pete's civilian life is meant to be a bit crap?

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 5:14 am

I'm an MJ kind of guy. Besides the excuse for redhead lingerie shots, I think that Peter would lose credibility if he didn't grow up a little after forty years.

But I'm married, so...

KingMob · Post by **KingMob** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 6:42 am

sprunkner wrote:He was only cool when they made Peter into a wanker in order to showcase Ben and try to give the book to Ben.

Pretty true, but he had a couple of good moments away from that, like when...um...

...hey, the Scarlet Spider costume was pretty badical!

Another MJ fan here. Back then, a serious split would probably have worked, though.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:56 am

How old is Peter meant to be now? Late twenties?

I think the Clone Saga would have been a good story in one small arc. Cliffhanger: Peter's the clone. Next issue: No he isn't, Ben is and Ben dies. Or something.

MJ's cool, but it was the Black Cat that made me tingly. MJ must be a saint to have stuck around this long.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:01 am

He's... uhm... old. Or something. I just finished The Pulse and Sue Richards mentioned some bobbins about being nearly 40. Or something. By "just finished" I mean about two weeks ago...

spiderfrommars wrote:MJ's cool, but it was the Black Cat that made me tingly.

FTW.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:09 am

Brendocon wrote: I just finished The Pulse and Sue Richards mentioned some bobbins about being nearly 40.

Interesting. Is that in continuity?

Considering the gap between clone sagas was 20 years, but in Marvel Universe terms it was 5 years, gives an idea of how slowly these folks are ageing.

Which is all well and good really. It's just the pop culture references which cock it up!

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:22 am

spiderfrommars wrote:Interesting. Is that in continuity?

Assume so... it's Bendis and (what I presume to be) a tie-in to New Avengers or whatever it's called this week.

It's just the pop culture references which cock it up!

God yeah. It's like the writers feel they need to make the refs in order to give Teh Kidz something to relate to (when the actual emotions and characters should be managing this), but all it really does is make things really weird when you pick it up ten years later.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:35 am

Well Stan started it!

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:37 am

Didn't Stan also have all the characters thought-bubble their entire life story every few pages?

... doesn't make it okay...

KingMob · Post by **KingMob** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:07 pm

Benids put a callback in the Secret Origin of Jessica Jones to Amazing Fantasy #15 that says '15 years ago'. So considering Pete was 15 then, he's now 30. Probably 31 in fact, considering that Jess and Luke's baby is a couple of months old now.
Which is higher than Marvel want to go, as I think after that issue T-Voort said Pete was late twenties. Which jibes in with something I read somewhere (oh how factually accurate) that time is worked out in the MU by always saying that the FF became fantastic '10 years ago', but the most recent reference to that allowed it to go up to '13 years ago'.

Doesn't fit the blatant Bendis making him 30 of course.

So, the FF got cosmic before Spidey, fix on an age you think/know Sue was when invisibised then add anywhere between 10 and 15 years onto that. The Bendis 15 thing would fit with his own nearly 40 thing then.

It kinda makes sense, I just kinda wish it didn't.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:28 pm

I'm sure Peter was originally 16 when he was bitten, but that's since been retconned to 15.

Not helping, I know.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:02 pm

And therein lies the problem with the characters having kids - the kids have to age... and therefore the whole deliberately indeterminable age concept starts to go askew.

Like we know for a fact that everything between Jess sleeping with Luke and giving birth happens in... uhm, however many months they decided it was (yay for research... at least I remembered it was premature). Which makes those events occur in a finite timeframe and not subject to the "well this eight years worth of stories only happened in a week" argument that defends why nobody ages...

The Last Autobot · Post by **The Last Autobot** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:15 pm

Or that some kids/people have grow older more than others.

Or that some events that looked to happen in years were only in one month but were stretched in many different series.

Or the "I havent seen/fought with you in ages" -but all the saga was in normal time made in a week.

Or when you notice that in the supposed year there were like 12 Xmas, 8 Independence Day, 7 thanksgiving days, etc.

If you try to put all things together what you get is a headache.

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:53 pm

I have to agree with Sprunk: Ben Reilly WAS a pretty good, well defined character. The idea of this clone of Peter coming back, and all the issues he deals with concerning his place in life, his journey after the original Clone Saga, and returning to NYC, was a great idea.

But there's a difference between great character and "let's replace Peter Parker with the clone so we can have a hip single blonde kid be Spider Man". And that's where it jumped the shark.

Plus, the simple "Peter's old clone returns" story was clouded with too much mysticism/science/crappy villanry, ie Traveller, Scrier, Jackal, and even Kaine, although he was a half decent creation.

If it had been a simple "Clone returns, they hang out, maybe he gets a limited series, and then the Spider Clone gets put back on the shelf or killed off," (the exact same type of thing they should have done with Venom around #375 or so), then that's a good story.

At the best, Ben could have been a Beta Ray Bill type character: at worst Superman Red/Blue.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:43 pm

Shanti418 wrote:
Plus, the simple "Peter's old clone returns" story was clouded with too much mysticism/science/crappy villanry, ie Traveller, Scrier, Jackal, and even Kaine, although he was a half decent creation.

Probably didn't help that they were making it up as they went along.

Plus the fact that you had to buy EVERY SINGLE SPIDEY BOOK EVER to know what the hell was going on.

Aaron Hong · Post by **Aaron Hong** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 1:23 am

Y'know... I was wondering for some time how they'd get around to introducing Ben Reilly in movie continuity. It'd be something like this:

In SPider-Man 2, when Harry wanted Doc Ock to bring him Spider-Man in return for the tritium, then Doc Ock went after MJ and that train fight ends with Spider-Man being KOed - clearly Doc Ock has lots of time to unmask Peter on his own before hauling him off to Harry. This is where he sees Peter's face the first time, and the Dr Octavius within him suddenly remembers himself for a second (which explains why he could regain control so quickly later on, the tentacle AI had already been shaken loose once).

So Doc Ock decides to get in touch with some of his old scietist buddies, and they work out how to keep Peter alive - by feeding Harry with a Peter clone implanted with all his memories (and the Spider-powers as a side effect), while the real Peter is placed in some small town outside of NYC, and fed some bull about being a fugitive called Ben Reilly so he'll make an effort to stay in hiding. So in effect, we've been watching Peter's clone for one and a quarter movies thus far... and when Ben decides to use his Spider-powers to make up for whatever he thinks he did, he chooses the oddly-similar Spider-Man as a base model, and Scarlet Spider is born.

KingMob · Post by **KingMob** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 7:02 am

...

No.

---------
Yeah, in case I wasn't clear, I liked Ben Reilly too! Good point, if they hadn't confuzzled the whole thing up, they could have got a lot more legitimate mileage out of him by just leaving him as the Scarlet Spider. Sticking him on the New Warriors was a good idea, I thought.

re: the aging kids thing. Power Pack have been allowed to age, Julie Power is now 17 or 18 at least. Franklin Richards is like, 8. Meaning he's aged about 2 years to her 10. Have they done something weird to explain that, like his powers are making him stay young or whatever? I remember he was old for a while, but I can't remember if he was actually aged and then de-aged or it was some alternate future version of him that replaced him or summink.

Ozz · Post by **Ozz** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 7:18 am

KingMob wrote:I remember he was old for a while, but I can't remember if he was actually aged and then de-aged or it was some alternate future version of him that replaced him or summink.

If you're talking about the Psi-Lord, I think that was Franklin kidnapped by his grandfather, raised in alternate future/dimension and returned here.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:24 am

Aaron Hong wrote:Y'know... I was wondering for some time how they'd get around to introducing Ben Reilly in movie continuity. It'd be something like this:

In SPider-Man 2, when Harry wanted Doc Ock to bring him Spider-Man in return for the tritium, then Doc Ock went after MJ and that train fight ends with Spider-Man being KOed - clearly Doc Ock has lots of time to unmask Peter on his own before hauling him off to Harry. This is where he sees Peter's face the first time, and the Dr Octavius within him suddenly remembers himself for a second (which explains why he could regain control so quickly later on, the tentacle AI had already been shaken loose once).

So Doc Ock decides to get in touch with some of his old scietist buddies, and they work out how to keep Peter alive - by feeding Harry with a Peter clone implanted with all his memories (and the Spider-powers as a side effect), while the real Peter is placed in some small town outside of NYC, and fed some bull about being a fugitive called Ben Reilly so he'll make an effort to stay in hiding. So in effect, we've been watching Peter's clone for one and a quarter movies thus far... and when Ben decides to use his Spider-powers to make up for whatever he thinks he did, he chooses the oddly-similar Spider-Man as a base model, and Scarlet Spider is born.

Er, yeah, cause it was such a success first time round.

KingMob wrote: re: the aging kids thing. Power Pack have been allowed to age, Julie Power is now 17 or 18 at least. Franklin Richards is like, 8. Meaning he's aged about 2 years to her 10. Have they done something weird to explain that, like his powers are making him stay young or whatever? I remember he was old for a while, but I can't remember if he was actually aged and then de-aged or it was some alternate future version of him that replaced him or summink.

I think Dr Connor's kid's age has been less than consistent too.

Talking of drawn out anti-climactic storylines, what about when Peter's parents came back?

Or *shudder* the whole Aunt May death debacle.

There seems to have been about 100 consecutive issues of ASM that we really could've done without.

Good news tho. Essential 8 is out.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Spide ... 644&sr=1-1

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:42 am

This is why I stick to Ultimate Spidey. It's a bit more focussed and aware of the [composite word including 'f*ck'] that happened last time they tried telling the story.

Hell, I even understood the clone saga in USM. I've tried many times to find out what the original was all about, but I get about three minutes into my research before thinking "you know what, I don't really care that much".

Ben Reilly in the films? Why bother? I mean why? In general. At all. No need. And if so, just do the Curt Conners thing and have a nod to him as a background character, like they introduced him in USM. Have him responsible for the clones, rather than actually... y'know... being one.

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Ben Reilly

Hmmmm.... Ben Reilly...