What Happened To Everyone Who Became Spider-Man?

6. Ben Reilly

Marvel Comics/Mark Bagley

First Appearance As Spider-Man: The Sensational Spider-Man #0

The Clone Saga might be reviled by Spider-Man fans the world over, but to those who grew up in the nineties, Ben Reilly was a star.

Debuting first as the Scarlet Spider, a side character with an instantly recognisable get-up thanks to a blue hoodie, Ben slowly but surely began to take up a greater role in Spidey's stories. The original plan during the Clone Saga was for Ben to replace Peter as Spider-Man, with Pete then set to retire with Mary Jane and his yet-to-be-born child. The crux behind this twist was that Peter would be revealed as the actual clone of Ben Reilly, when Ben had previously been positioned as the clone originally.

The rest is history though; Marvel chickened out, Ben was killed, and so too was Peter and MJ's child. Peter took up the mantle of Spider-Man again, while Ben himself would be resurrected as another Scarlet Spider years later - a role he most recently fulfilled in Las Vegas, of all places.

However, while Reilly's stint as Spidey was brief, it was by no means forgettable. Mark Bagley's redesign of the classic Spider-Man costume was spot-on (it later informed the design for the suit seen in Insomniac's Spider-Man game), and Ben himself got up to some memorable adventures too. If only Marvel had stuck to their guns. Who knows how things could've changed?

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.