Clones… Why Did It Have To Be… Clones: Sibling Rivalry, or Superior Spider-Man #2 and Scarlet Spider #20 Review

Clones. I hate those guys.

Ever since Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body, started calling himself the Superior Spider-Man and violented himself up, it was only a matter of time before somebody put him face to face with Kaine, the Scarlet Spider – the version of Spider-Man who was already violented up. After all, the comic reading public has since proven that they will pay to see different versions of Spider-Man tuning each other up. It started with The Amazing Spider-Man #149, back in October, 1975, the first time Spider-Man fought a cloned version of himself, and continued, on and on, through the creation of Venom, and then Carnage, and then the return of that original Spider-Clone. And then the Clone Saga.

The Goddamned, everfucking Clone Saga.

Anyway, there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting through this Doc Ock incarnation of Spider-Man without someone spending some time having him knock around, and get knocked around by, Scarlet Spider. And frankly, I wasn’t looking all that forward to it; again, only 15 years ago, Marvel had one Spider-Man punch another, and they spent the next year and a half dragging it out until they all but knocked the title’s dick in the dirt. So in my mind’s eye, I was expecting a multi-issue extravaganza, dragged out over weeks if not months with big fights and constant wondering who the real Spider-Man was at any given time.

So imagine my surprise when the inevitable fight between these two guys was done in just two issues, both available on the same day, with some decent believable interplay between the two, and a common enemy to fight.

Of course, that enemy is The Jackal, who started the whole damn clone business in the first place. Oh: and a bunch of other clones.

Dirty, stinking clones.

Kaine has returned to New York to have a discussion with Peter Parker about… something. Honestly, I missed the last few issues of Scarlet Spider #19, so I have no idea what’s on his mind, but it didn’t really interfere with my understanding of the story. Anyhoo, Kaine has no idea that Peter Parker has taken a vacation and sublet his meatsuit to Doctor Octopus, and Doc Ock has no idea that Peter has made peace with Kaine (remembering only that Kaine had a large part in kicking the shit out of Ock while he was still a portly gentleman with a shitty taste in eyewear), so fisticuffs ensue. Thankfully, before they can do too much damage to each other, they are attacked by a bunch of clones. Filthy Goddamned clones. Clones that are half-spider and half-man, with some mutant DNA to make them especially crafty and detestable. Enter the Jackal, who captures the duo, takes them to his lab, and harvests a bunch of DNA from them. The duo escape their bonds, and while Scarlet Spider directly attacks Jackal and the clones, Doc Ock takes the opportunity to blow up the lab to destroy the DNA… and hopefully Kaine and The Jackal while he’s at it. But since Scarlet Spider still has his own title to return to, yeah: that doesn’t work out so well for Ock.

So lets start with what works best here, and for me, it was the interplay between Kaine and Ock. Writer Christopher Yost clearly kept in mind that Kaine thinks Spider-Man is Peter Parker (albeit Peter acting really strangely) while Ock is someone with no relationship to Kaine outside the realm of savage beatings. So Yost has Kaine act and talk like Spider-Man is someone he has a confused fondness for, while Ock treats Kaine as nothing more than a dirty, dirty clone (which is the right attitude to take towards dirty, dirty clones) who’s tried to kill Ock at least once. And Yost nails it, particularly from the standpoint of Kaine’s character; I really believed that Kaine saw his relationship with “Peter” as brotherly. Sure, Kaine took great glee in throwing a punch or two at Spider-Man, but what brothers haven’t tuned each other up now and again? And yet Kaine repeatedly comes to Spider-Man’s defense, despite the waves of negative attitude come off of Ock toward him. So the vibe I got from Kaine’s characterization was a younger brother, feeling picked on by his older sibling, and yet still coming to his defense when it was needed. It felt authentic, and helped draw me into the story.

With that said: Jesus Christ, can we be done with clones in the Spider-Man mythos now, please? Look, I recognize that this cloning business has been part of Spider-Man since I’ve been old enough to read comic books, but there is a generation of comic readers (They call us Generation X. And yet we have no superpowers. This is unfair.) for whom the Spider-Clone deal was almost enough to drive us away from comic books entirely. I read comic books through adolescence and trying to get girls to talk to me while trying to get jocks to not flush my head in the locker room toilet, so if a story concept alone was enough to winnow my take down to a few Vertigo comics? It’s a bad idea.

And this isn’t Yost’s fault. The fact is that, for some reason, there are apologists for the 90s Spider-Clone saga, and further, there is no way that Marvel is going to leave Doctor Octopus dead forever any more than they will leave Spider-Man dead forever. Somebody somewhere’s gonna need a new body, and only a Goddamned fool would turn his back on The Jackal and his Spider-Man Xerox tanks as a possible fix. So I took The Jackal’s involvement in this story as a first shot across the bow at a possible resolution to retcon the whole Ock-As-Spider-Man storyline, at least in time for next year’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie release.

And to be fair, as much as I dislike Spider-Clones (and regardless of any future cloning plans that I speculate will put Peter back in the Spider-Man suit and give Ock a new body), Yost’s use of The Jackal makes a lot of sense here. He is the one villain who, in a truncated crossover, could reasonably be expected to cause intense hatred in Kaine due to past history, and rage in Doc Ock due to his methods and implied theft of his superior uniqueness. So using the villain as a shorthand method to turn a superhero fight into a team-up without needing a lot of exposition is pretty clever on Yost’s part… but it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like fucking clones.

Being two separate issues, we have two separate art styles, and make no mistake: they couldn’t be more different. Marco Checchettos’ art in part one of the story, Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #2, is fairly conventional comic art, with a fine line and a good amount of detail, not only in his figures, but in his backgrounds. Further, the coloring work by Rachelle Rosenberg makes everything a bit dark and shadowy, and really does a good job of adding an impled third dimension to the proceedings. In-Hyuk Lee’s art in Scarlet Spider #2, however, is very different. A lot of what we see looks very photo referenced, as if lightboxed or modified photos via Photoshop. A lot of detail is added to the art, down to the little hegagons of Spider-Man’s costume as we’ve seen in all the movie versions, but it still looks like pictures that have been modified to look like superheroes and villains. Which is fine, and not a style you see outside of Alex Ross or Greg Land a whole hell of a lot, but for me, that kind of art makes things feel less dynamic. It’s a series of snapshots rather than flowing comic art, which is a fine line to cross with this style. It’s okay, but I prefer Checchetto’s more standard style. What can I say? I’m old school.

Sibling Rivalry is a refreshing kind of crossover in modern comics. By making it two issues available on the same day, it’s as close to a one-and-done as we’re likely to get in a big crossover event featuring an A-List character these days. Yost’s characterizations of both protagonists felt real and relatable, and using The Jackal as a gimmick to put them on the same side without needing a lot of exposition helped keep the story tight and self-contained.

But I am tired of clones, man. And for good or ill, I see this story, and its intimations that The Jackal is ramping up his operation to spit out yet more clones, as both the first real sign that an endgame to Doc Ock’s run as Spider-Man… and that that endgame might lead to another year of Clone Saga-ish stories about who Peter Parker really is.

So long as he’s not a clone. A dirty, dirty Goddamned clone.