The Clone Saga - where Marvel declared that Peter Parker was not the one true Spider-Man and was instead a clone of the original - has gone down as one of the worst moments in comics. What's amazing is that is never started out as the mess it became and that all involved had far different aspirations for the storyline... but marketing and ego and money turned it from a three month saga into an interminable train wreck. Life of Reilly goes into great detail about the individual episodic comics themselves, but I found myself scanning the synopses and jumping straight into the behind-the-scenes commentary.

The initial outline was that, yes, another Peter Parker would show up - Ben Reilly - and after the usual stunning revelations, Ben would be declared the original and Peter the clone. Then we'd have a month of Ben running around as Spider-Man, reclaiming his lost life, until the triumphant "Return of Peter Parker" storyline where we flip-flop back to Ben being the clone and Peter being the real deal.

This sort of thing happens all the time in comics. It's typically a fun little shake-up, somebody gets to design a new costume, and the fans get all sweaty with questions and anticipation. The most recent example - immediately prior to Spidey's Clone Saga anyway, was the Death of Superman story and Batman: Knightfall. Superman died, then replaced with four different guys all calling themselves Superman. And in Knightfall, Batman gets his back broken and is replaced by Azrael. Those were both massively popular events, so the idea was for Marvel to mimic that with their #1 guy, Spider-Man.

And yeah, the first wave of the Clone Saga was popular... so popular that Marvel's Marvelous Marketing department kept forcing the Spider-Man creative teams to extend the concept. So instead of the Saga wrapping up inside of a few months and returning Peter to his status quo, they kept having to find new ways to extend the plot, adding in new twists and characters. This worked for a time, and Ben Reilly - as the Scarlet Spider - became a fan-favorite character in his own right. So then the idea comes to stop pussyfooting around and install Ben as the real Spider-Man and send Peter Parker (and his pregnant wife Mary Jane) off into the sunset.

And that's where things went wrong.

If you read the article, you can watch everything explode out of control. Marvel - which was heading through one of its lean years - reorganizes the editorial staff several times. The final Clone Saga resolution gets forcibly delayed another six months because the new Marvel editor-in-chief doesn't want the Clone finale competing against the end of the X-Men's Onslaught story. The more months pass by, the more complications arise as the writers try futilely to keep things intriguing for the readers... all the while raising more continuity questions than they solve. And it all ends with the impossible notion that the long-dead Norman Osborn was behind the whole thing! Deus Ex Goblina.

I wasn't reading the Spidey books at the time, but I was aware of what was going on. The feeling I always had was that Marvel was desparately fishing for attention for Spider-Man in the face of DC's immense Superman and Batman mega-events... and even under the shadows of Marvel's own X-Men books. (Although we all know how Heroes Reborn ended up, don't we?) Since then, Marvel has clawed back out of that pit of clones and Liefeld and stunt covers... but back then, man, we didn't see any way for Marvel to get off the sinking ship. Thanks to the Ultimate universe and a bunch of successful movies, Marvel's bank accounts are no longer an industry joke.

I've found some other great comics sites lately, a bunch of weblogs that have made it into my weekly rotation:

The Comic Treadmill has done some great MSTifications on classic DC Silver Age stuff, including a ridiculous book where the superheroes and the supervillains all play a game of baseball. (Spoiler: the heroes win.) The Treadmill is also working through the big hardcover DC Encyclopedia with commentary.

The Absorbascon and Seven Hells also do a lot of funny stuff, including some hilarious bits where they examine which crappy characters in the DC Universe would fit better in the Marvel Universe. The basic requirements for a DC character getting shipped off to Marvel include having a pun-based name that completely describes the power, having undefined "energy blasts" as a power, and having unresolvable personal issues using the adjectives "tragic" and "tortured." In the post where they donate second-rate Bat-villain Killer Croc off to Marvel, they say "In a universe where killer clowns massacre innocents using poisoned fish, the DCU has little use for a super-powered pimp with a rash." Also this: "The cops of [Gotham Central] are the best [Gotham] has and being a Gotham cop is hard. They [operate] in a city where Killer Croc is not considered a major player and that is creepy. I love Marvel but honestly, if you set DC’s rogues loose in The Marvel Universe for just five minutes, they’ll come back to The DCU drinking Pimp Juice from Spider-Man’s jewel encrusted skull." That made me laugh hard.

The Shrew Review concentrates on reviewing current books, and she reviews them like you're reading a New York Times book review. It's that serious; it's that good. I have made it a rule never to visit the Shrew Review until I have bought the week's books, because I want to enjoy this site without spoiling anything.

Comics Should Be Good's coolest bloggy feature is an ongoing feature about comics urban legends revealed, tackling the true and the false in comic book rumors. Yes, in Armageddon 2001, it WAS supposed to be Captain Atom who had turned into Monarch!