10 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Spider-Man For Everyone‏

9. The Clone Saga, In General

Thankfully things did go back to normal. Eventually. For a period of about three years, though, comic books fans had to suffer through the interminable Clone Saga, an epic that spread across all the Spider-Man titles and was totally inescapable, whilst also being bloody awful. The story was actually supposed to be done within 12 months, but we all bought so many copies they decided to carry it on for three times as long. That one's on us, we guess. But you can't blame us for anything else that happened in the Clone Saga; that responsibility - and the responsibility for nearly ruining Spider-Man as a character - lies with editors Tom DeFalco, Bob Budiansky, and Bob Harras. They were the ones who introduced not just Ben Reilly but also Kaine, an unsuccessful Spidey clone driven insane by his imperfections, and Spidercide, another clone who was evil for some reason. Eventually all of this didn't matter, because all the clones died and it turned out the Peter Parker who had starred in the Spider-Man comics for the previous twenty years had actually been the real one all along, and Ben Reilly another copy. Thus, Marvel washed their hands of the whole sorry mess. Their hands could have been permanently stained, however, if things had persisted. Messing up Spidey history so much was nearly irrevocable, and the whole thing took Peter Parker from a relatable character to somebody who had clones, a shift in tone and characterisation that is still in flux to this day.