In the Beginning...

Spider-Man has been to the edge and back. It would take too long to review his whole life so here's the very short version.

Peter was bitten by a radioactive spider at a science convention.From then on he has had the spider powers. He created the costume and web spinners for show on TV and wrestling. After he let a crook run loose when he could easilyhave stopped him, it came back in the worst way. The same crook murdered Pete's UncleBen. From then on, Spider-Man has been a crimefighter, for he learned that from great power, there must also come great responsibility.

Peter lived with his Aunt May in the New York suburb of Forest Hills, where he attended Empire State University,and worked as a photographer for the Daily Bugle. As Spidey, he fought foes suchas the Lizard, Dr. Octopus, and the Vulture. He fell in love with Gwen Stacy only to lose her, prey to the Green Goblin, and then all hell broke loose.

This is where it started. A certain Professor Miles Warren from ESU also loved Gwen Stacy, and he blamed Spidey for her death. Warren first tried to kill Spidey by assuming the identity of the Jackal and duping the Punisher into thinking Spider-Man a villain! Though this plot failed to produce results, Warren had a better way of getting them.He was a brillaint biochemist and geneticist who, at one time studied under the High Evolutionary.

He got DNA samples of the wall crawler and Gwen when she was a student and proceeded to produce clones of both. That was when Warren learned the identity of Spider-Man.

The Professor tried a number of times to produce a perfect clone (they tend to degenerate). The first attempt created the misguided Kain, a slowly degenerating"waste of hair and cellular composition". Kain escaped the lab to torment the real deal in the future. Warren finally succeeded, and the clone appeared, fought the real Spidey, and was thought killed in action along with the Jackal. The Spidey left, disposed of the clone's corpse down a smokestack and got on with his life.

He married Mary Jane Watson, battled Venom and Carnage, and thought everything was cool. But of course, the clone wasn't really dead at all, and the dead Jackal was only a clone. The true Jackal returned to rescue the corpse, and the knock out punch-the Spider clone was the real Peter Parker!

The Jackal then went into hibernation, not to return for the next 5 years.

To Be Or Not To Be...

The "clone", having all of Peter's memories, went back toPeter's apartment, took some money, some costume parts, and a high school ring, and left town. He decided that even a clone had the right to live, and he adopted the name Ben Reilly.

Ben's travels eventually led him to Rachel, Vermont, where he became friends with geneticist Seward Trainer.

Ben left town after a while,and traveled the country (followed by Kain who knew the truth about Ben) to end up in Salt Lake City. There he and Kain fell in love with locals--Ben with a waitress who looked like Mary Jane and Kain with a police officer. The police officer was on the payroll of a local crimelord, and when Kain found out, he killed her, leaving the mark of Kain and his fingerprints on the gun. Since Kain and Ben share fingerprints,the crooked cop's partner (straight) went after Ben. Both Kain and Ben left town, the latter accompanied by his girlfriend. The relationship did not last though, and Ben believed her dead.

Through all of this, Ben had been keeping an anonymouse relationship with May Parker, and when he learned that she had had a stroke and was in a coma,he left for New York.

At this time, Peter's mental condition was shaky. Hehad just learned that his parents who were believed long dead, were actually alive and then learned that they weren't even human, but androids from a hoax created bythe Chameleon and the Green Goblin. After Peter witnessed his "parents" deaths, he became withdrawn, and uncertain of his own humanity. He hadn't fully recoveredwhen his Aunt May suffered a stroke and his clone returned.

Ben assured Peter that he didn't want a part of Peter's life, but it became clear that it was not feasible as they were forced into the games of Judas Traveler at the Ravencroft assylum. Ben, against his wishes, became the Scarlet Spider.

Kain had apparently lost track of Ben somewhere down the line, and when he heard about the new spider in town, he deduced that it was Ben. Meanwhile, Peter was just regaining his right mind when the Owl infected him with a lethal virus. It was then that he found an unlikely ally in Doc Ock, and together they found a cure. As the Octopus was turning himself in, Kain killed him. Kain had just earlier killed Kraven's son, the Grim Hunter, leaving the mark on both victims. You see, Kain had had a vision, courtesy of his evolved spider sense, in which he saw the death of Mary Jane at the hands of an unknown assailant, so he went around killing Spider-Man's enemies on the chance that they might be the murderer.

Peter had also been having visions--of himself in the cloning tank. He was drawn to a secret underground facility in New York's Catskill Mountains, where he was soon joined by Ben. They entered the lab to find a genetically enhanced Jackal stronger and more crazed than before emerge from his tank. Mind games and fighting followed,as the Jackal taunted them with the question of which, if either, was the real deal, while Kain and Scrier watched in the shadows. Ben and Peter left, and the Jackal created another Peter clone and sent it to New York believing it was the real deal.

So May Parker awakens from her coma and demands to go home. Upon arrival, she notices that Mary Jane is pregnant, and she tells Peter that there is no greater responsibility than raising a child. In a scene atop the Empire State building, May tells Peter that she has known for years that he is Spider-Man and that she is proud of him. Soon afterward, May suffered a relapse, and died.

While Peter was still in mourning, he was arrested for the murder in Salt Lake City since his fingerprints matched those of the murder weapon. Ben revealed himself to Mary Jane and offered to help in traking down the real killer, Kain.

During the next instances, Ben takes Peter's place in jail, Kain turns himself in, the third clone was given power over his body on the molecular level, and after conducting some tests, Seward Trainer revealed that Ben was the true Peter Parker. Peter didn't take this news well, and in one moment, he lashed out on his pregnant wife, and ran away.

End Game

Peter, emotionaly distraught, was easily manipulated by the Jackal to help him in his plan to kill all non-clones with a deadly virus. Ben had to fight his way through a mass of clones, and Kain was killed by Spidercide (the third clone). Before he died, though, Kain had another vision. It is Peter who kills Mary Jane!

Peter recovered from his madness, and in a final battle on top ofthe Bugle, the Spider-Men foil the Jackal and Spidercide. But it wasn't over yet.The Jackal left Peter a preprogrammmed compulsion to kill Mary Jane. Only their love(and a little help from Ben and the New Warriors) helped Peter triumph over the programming.

In a fight with the new Doc Ock, Peter became aware of the risks his life as Spider-Manpresented to a father-to-be, and offered the job to Ben who declined, prefferingto remain the Scarlet Spider. That all changed, though, as a new Scarlet Spider emerged courtesy of high-tech virtual reality, and smeared the Spider's good name. Finally, Ben, the real Peter Parker, took on his role as the one true Spider-Man.

After the bad reaction from readers about the revelation of the clone actually being the real deal, the Spidey crew did a little revising in the intended plot.

The storyline caused many trials and tribulations, including Peter and Mary Jane leaving and later returning to New York, Peter losing and regaining his powers, and tests proving conclusively that Peter really the clone.

ENTER THE GREEN GOBLIN. Norman Osborn, the long believed dead original Goblin, returned to the Spider-verse. Turns out that Osborn had been building a criminal empire in Europe, and was behind all of the clone shenanigans in one way or another: the switched lab results, the new clones that kept popping up, and the "random" problemsPeter kept facing. Attempting to further ruin Peter's life, Osborn arranged a switch of the Parker baby with a stillborn child. Meanwhile, all of Peter's closest friendswere anonymously invited to the Daily Bugle for a Halloween party (by the GG, of course). It was a plot to kill them all, but Ben caught wind of it, and went on to intercept the lunatic. The Goblin was too much, though, and Ben was impaled by the Goblin's glider. Upon death, Ben suffered clone degeneration, proving Peter to be the real deal afterall. This didn't sit well with Peter one little bit. Peter attacked the Green Goblin, and after a fiery showdown, the Goblin was "apparently" killed and Peter limped away to reassume the role of the real Spider-Man.