Clone Saga Musings

I think about 90s comics megaevents far more than is healthy, and today, spurred on by this amazingly hilarious article, I got to thinking about the infamous late 90s Spider-book super event, the Clone Saga. For those of you who don't know (Pedro), the Clone Saga centered around the return of Ben Reilly, a clone of Spider-Man that Spidey had fought with back in the early 80s and thought was dead. With him came the original perpetrator of the clone saga, the Jackal (the one who had died in the 80s was a clone) and a bunch of crappy new villians, most of them also clones of Spider-Man. I know you're already sick of clones just from this paragraph, as they're about as boring a plot device as magical mind-wipes.

Thanks to a total lack of editorial control and orders from marketing to keep the surprisingly profitable storyline running for as long as possible, the thing took two years to finally finish with four or five aborted endings, eventually revealing that it was all the most elaborate practical joke in history perpetrated by the surprisingly not dead original Green Goblin Norman Osborn, who decided to kind of passive-aggresively dick around with Spidey with angsty clones instead of flying through his window and shoving a pumpkin bomb up his ass.

The main (well, one of the main) points of contention comes roughly a fourth of the way through, where the Spiders finally get an extensive battery of tests done and it is revealed that Ben Reilly is the original, and the Peter Parker we'd been reading about for 15 years was the clone. Naturally, fans HATED it, for reasons that should be obvious. The clone's Spider-adventures didn't count, they were just essentially reading about some guy who had dressed up as Spidey.

It was Marvel's intent to move Peter and his pregnant wife out of the books so they could have the REAL Peter Parker go back to being single and silver-agey without 20 years of crappy late 80s/90s baggage pulling him down, and I must say it makes a little more sense than changing reality by selling your pregnant supermodel wife to the devil. It didn't work out, they pulled Peter back as the original out of their asses and spent half a decade weighed down with the baggage, and now we're roughly back on track and never ever EVER mention it.

But think of it this way. What if Marvel had planned in advance for the massive fan backlash at Peter being a clone? This could have been some of the most meta shit in HISTORY.

Peter's a clone. Fans are unhappy. His adventures, accomplishments, his life didn't count because he's not the real guy. Well guess what? THAT'S HOW PETER FUCKING FEELS RIGHT NOW. It could have been an AMAZING way to get readers to identify with what Peter was going through. And, if they kept it going for awhile (like, say, two years) with good writers (yeah, the 90s) then slowly but surely Peter could have come to terms with his clone blues and become someone who liked himself and cared about himself again, regardless of his origins or what he was made for or all those other cliche clone dillemas, and at the same time the fans would come to accept him too. The writing would have to be really good though, surprisingly better than expected, "bring Bucky back from the dead as a cyborg soviet killer and make it awesome" level good. In the end, readers could identify with Peter getting back on his feet because they too would have accepted him.

Now let's look at his wife, Mary Jane. At this point, she was pregnant with Peter's child (don't ask how that turned out), but she has to know, as much as she loves Peter... he's NOT the same guy who was with her for the first 20 years of Spidey continuity. In the future, one of them is going to bring up a "remember that time" and then get really uncomfortably silent, because at that time Peter didn't exist, it was Ben. As caring and accepting and awesome as MJ is, there's some little part of her that's not going to accept it and taint the relationship. And this is ANOTHER GREAT WAY TO IDENTIFY WITH THE READER. Because as good as Peter as a clone is written, as many fans who have grown to love and accept the new status quo, there's still going to be that tainted feeling of getting screwed.

And finally, we have Ben. He's going to be picking up his life after Peter leaves with his wife for a happily ever after. But he's missed five in-universe years of experiences. He can't just walk in and have it be the silver age again. His friends are going to say "Hey Peter, where's your pregnant wife?" and be pissed off and suspicious when he can't remember relatively recent events. And Ben himself isn't just silver age Peter. He's spent five years on the road having god knows how many kinds of new experiences. He's still technically married to Mary Jane. The point is, if done intentionally, it goes to show that you can't just go back to the past. Things have changed, the world has changed, the characters have changed, and have to work with that.

These three characters could form an amazing meta-textual examination over the reality of ficional characters and change, which would be cool as christ.

Unfortunately, in the real world it would never happen because:
1. No writer is that good.
2. Marvel would much rather go back to status quo with Spidey as opposed to accepting that 50 goddamned years of stuff has happened to him that might change him a bit.
3. Their entire premise would rest on fans being utterly disgusted with a major plot development, which isn't good from a sales standpoint.

Still, I think it could have been interesting, given a decade and a half of retrospect.

Microsoft's Terrifying Vision of the Future, Part Two

I know, I know, I know... it's been a few days, and I admit I've calmed down some. But good GOD, this Natal thing is still terrifying as hell.

First of all, the kid with the skateboard. Stealing Clobert's joke, there's finally a game for people who own a skateboard, and know how to skateboard, but do not want to actually go outside and skateboard. And, just from a non-terrifying marketing perspective (well, I'm sure it's terrifying to Microsoft's sales team), it just seems like an idea that wouldn't really work. DDR's fun, but it's not something you want to play all the time, or even most of the time. I'm the biggest light-gun fanatic in the world, but one two-hour Gameworks run through a majority of the greats and I was willing to hang it up for a month or so. And I'm betting this will be the same thing.

Now, look at the bit of the video (it's in the first post, scroll down some ya lazy bastards) about the girls discussing clothing options for the upcoming "big dance." The scrolling through with a frenchman's wave to pick out a random dress (that of course has no labels or... is anything close to a real dress you can buy) virtually while talking on the video phone reminds me of the future everyone thought we would have in the 80s until we realized that it was stupid and we didn't want it.

But by far the most terrifying thing is this:



Good God. I'm hoping to God that this isn't real, I really really do. First of all, this kid is right in the center of the uncanny valley, which is creepy enough, but let's face it:

Filthy things are going to happen to this poor, virtual child.

What's the first thing EVERYBODY does when they play Grand Theft Auto? Turn on cheat codes and run people over with a tank. When people get their hands on this incredibly realistic child simulator (and I have to ask... how do they plan to really sell this thing? Is it a game or what?), and see how lifelike it's responses are, they're going to start thinking.

"Does this child really understand everything I say?"

"Will this child recognize that I took off my pants?"

This isn't just child molestors, folks. Everyone is going to do this. If I got a copy of this "game," I am 100% sure that I'd do it sooner rather than later too.

So yeah. It's creepy.

Whew, glad I got that done with. Now I can write some other stuff.

Omnibuses: Where Have You Been All My Life?

Hello, all (well... again, just Pedro). Recently I happened upon the first two Starman omnibuses in my local library, and I have to say, in addition to being a high-quality series (tho unless it picks up later, I can't see myself going completely gaga over it), it has really, really endeared me to the omnibus format. Being able to grab a book and read it for a span of a few hours, as opposed to your standard 30-minute, 6-issue trade, is much more satisfying than I ever imagined it would be. Furthermore, the gutter loss is minimal (although worse in the second, tho it's also because the text seems to have shrunk beween the two), and it's not the heavy-enough-to-be-slightly-uncomfortable you would think a 17-issue hardcover would be.

In short, I love it and I want more.

Browsing around, I see that there are some terrific-looking books out there: the Garth Ennis Punisher omnibus, the Brubaker Daredevil and Iron Fist omnibuses, and the Ultimates omnibus just to name a few. I plan to start buying those over regular trades as soon as I can afford to buy regular trades again, as the dollar to content value seems to be about the same or better, and having it all in one book really makes the reading experience seem more like... well, a book!

Furthermore, there's something that's been brewing in the back of my mind for a long time that my newfound omnilust has really brought back to an obsessive degree. It was spurred on when I found this forum a few months back, which is dedicated to binding comics into hardcovers your own damn self. Check out some of the pictures in the book threads; they make my balls tingle. There's so much I'd love to bind that's either not available as an omnibus (and whose individual issues + binding costs would equal the costs of buying the trades) or which has never been collected:

-A Batman: Cataclysm/Aftershock/Road to No Man's Land omnibus
-A Batman: No Man's Land omnibus (or omnibuses, more likely)
-A Batman: New Gotham/Officer Down omnibus, filled with Rucka/Brubaker stuff
-A Bruce Wanyne: Murderer/Fugitive omnibus
-Christ, everything from the 90s Batbooks from Knightfall on
-An omnibus completely collecting Puckett's Batgirl
-Young Justice omnibuses
-Impulse omnibuses
-A Dan Abnett Legion/Legion Lost omnibus (wouldn't the cover to the first issue be a fantastic dust jacket image?)
-Supergirl omnibuses, the first 3 collecting the first 74+odds and ends of Peter David's run and the last basically containing the last six, Puckett's run on Supergirl, Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, and whatever else really good issues I can find
-A Peter David/Kurt Buseik Aquaman collection
-A Gail Simone Taskmaster/Deadpool/Agent X omnibus
-All 40 issues of Gotham Central + Detective backups
-Other 90's stuff that is awesome and will never be collected
-How about event omnibuses? Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Final Crisis had enough (quality) tie-ins to push the 30-50 issue mark; or even a "main event" omnibus featuring, say, Avengers: Disassembled/House of M/Civil War/World War Hulk/Secret Invasion or Lightning Saga/Superman and the Legion of Superheroes/Legion of 3 Worlds
-Perhaps character omnibuses too; the best of the Batman (Includes Year One, The Cult, vs. Preadator, and Blind Justice no question) or someone like the Riddler or Two Face (dear god those last two would be fantastic).

Okay, see, those are off the top of my head. I get excited about this kind of thing pretty easily. The hard part is actually finding the issues at an affordable price, but with the internet it shouldn't be TOO hard (especially when there are scans for previewing). But then there are a million other questions: What kind of binding? Trim the edges? Create title pages, table of contents, extras sections? The answer to that last one is "yes, obviously"; I'm only doing this if I can go all out, dammit.

Judging by the prices I've seen, buying the issues and getting them bound well costs roughly as much as buying one of those professional omnibuses on ebay, but I think they would be cooler made by my hand.

Well, that's all for now. Goddamit I've gotten myself all worked up again. I need some goddamned money so I can start mining back issues. Which should be half the fun of having a comics hobby, right?

You Know Who's Fucking Great?

My friend Pedro, that's who. He's the greatest, most important person in the universe. If he told me to suck his dick while he was making out with my mother and sister (he's a great multitasker) I wouldn't even take the time to set down the baby I was holding first.

Microsoft's Terrifying Vision of the Future

Every year at E3, I enjoy watching the press conferences, preferably live, but always with friends. At the few legitimately cool moments (such as the scene in the God of War 3 demo where Kratos rips half the face off a Manticore and stabs it into the other half) a collective oooh and aaah is always more fun, but mostly the value comes from the entertainment of snarking about the crappy games and long stretches of people talking and not even showing a crappy game. I've just now gotten to watch them all, and while in recent years they've shown me that I really don't need to run out and buy a new console (like I could anyhow), this is the first E3 that has really, truly terrified me.

That is not hyperbole. As about the last third of Microsoft's press conference went on, I went from a sensation of mild apprehension that slowly increased to one of absolute horror. Over the last few years my playime and spending on new or used games has drastically dropped, but at seeing this I think I can safely say that the game industry has probably moved beyond me; to paraphrase and old EGM, it made me want to crawl into the corner and play Tetris on my Game Boy.

(Sidenote: today, I did actually dig up my old copy of Game Boy Tetris. I had totally forgotten that it had color on the Game Boy Advance, and probably the Game Boy Color as well. Whatever.)

As anyone who watched the press conference knows, this fight or flight reflex was triggered by Microsoft's attempt to latch onto the sweet, sweet motion gaming teat, an apparently incredibly powerful EyeToy-esque camera/microphone called Natal:



God. Damn. You. Nintendo.

Look what you've done. Look! THIS IS YOUR FAULT!

Ugh. Jesus.

More to come. I have to gather my thoughts in order to properly express my disgust, and no, you're the bigger loser for taking the time to read about my disgust towards a product that I'll never buy anyhow.

The First Post

Hello, all, I'm sure... well, let's face it, it's probably just going to be Pedro reading this thing. Just Pedro. Hello, Pedro. I'm blogging now. I've always had all kinds of bullshit ideas and half-formed topics that I always thought would be entertaining to read or write, so maybe I'll try it. More likely, I'll get bored and forget everything, but time will tell.