3. Peter Parker's A Clone, Now He's Not, Now He Is
Maximum Clonage is the name of the game, and maximum disappointment is its aim. The nineties weren't kind to Marvel Comics, thanks in part to editor-in-chief Bob Harras' "throw everything at the wall and maybe something will stick oh god why doesn't anything stick can somebody do something about these FINAL WARNING letters cluttering up my desk" approach to commissioning storylines. In the hopes of stirring up some publicity and/or controversy, Harras oversaw the Clone Saga, an epic tale twenty years in the making which revealed that the Peter Parker readers had grown to love had in fact been a clone of the original since some point in the seventies. So, thanks to Harras, Terry Kavanagh, Howard Mackie, Gerry Conway and the rest of the Spidey editorial team, readers had two decades of their favourite stories rendered invalid - or at least cheapened somewhat - because they hadn't starred the "real" Peter Parker. That Peter promptly scarpered to start a family with Mary Jane, leaving the "original" - who went by the name of Ben Reilly - to take his place as New York's premiere wall crawler. Just when fans had managed to adjust to this major sea change and just about settled into Ben Reilly as Spider-Man, the rug got pulled out from under them again when it turned out that both Peters and the Jackal, who had cloned Spidey in the first place, had all actually been manipulated by Norman Osborn, who had come back from the dead somehow. And if that isn't idiotic enough, it was capped off with the final twist that Ben had been the clone all along, thus making the entire endeavour completely pointless and without consequence. Plus Peter and MJ's baby was never spoke of again.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
