#Avengers: The Initiative by Dan Slott and Stefano Caselli

[vertigoartgore]

Countdown to Avengers #800/34 (2026) : 2007's Avengers: The Initiative Vol.1 #1 wraparound cover by Jim Cheung and John Dell (including a map of all the 142 characters). Source

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Avengers: The Initiative 1 (2007) by Dan Slott & Stefano Caselli 

Cover: Jim Cheung

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Avengers: The Initiative #3 (2007)

Writer: Dan Slott

Artist: Stefano Caselli

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Avengers: The Initiative 1 (2007) by Dan Slott & Stefano Caselli

Cover: Jim Cheung

Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Initiative

[davidmann95]

Best comics of 2018?

A handful of disqualifications up front: since they’re just beginning, I’m not counting Electric Warriors, Martian Manhunter, The Green Lantern (though Evil Star explaining his name in #2 might be my favorite moment in comics this year), Ironheart, DIE, Shazam!, Killmonger, The Batman Who Laughs, or Miles Morales: Spider-Man, all of which almost certainly would have ended up somewhere in here with some more time. Additionally, I switched to a new online pull list system in March, so I don’t have a list of what I got before then - if I’m forgetting about something great that came out early this year, there’s a good chance that would be why.

Honorary Mentions: While there were plenty of comics I was happy to keep up with, a number stood out as exemplary examples of straight-take relatively traditional capeshit: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and companies’ Justice League, Steve Orlando’s Justice League of America (which would probably go among the best of the best if the art was a bit more consistent or the lineup more to my personal tastes), Brian Bendis and Nick Derington’s Batman work in the Walmart 100-Page Giants, Donny Cates’ Thanos and Doctor Strange work (the latter might not have quite made it, but that last issue with Irving and Zdarsky was gangbusters), Steve Orlando’s brief Wonder Woman run with Laura Braga, ACO, and Raul Allen, Tim Seeley’s Green Lanterns, Nnedi Okorafor and Leonardo Romero’s Shuri, Robert Vendetti and Bryan Hitch’s Hawkman, Saladin Ahmed, Javier Rodriguez, Rod Reis, Dario Brizuela, and Joe Quinones’s Exiles, Captain America by both the Mark Waid/Chris Samnee team and the current Ta-Nehisi Coates/Lenil Francis Yu lineup, Dan Slott and Valerio Schiti’s Tony Stark: Iron Man when it’s committed solely to being a superhero comic and not Dan Slott trying to be Contemporary, Brian Bendis, Patrick Gleason, Yanick Paquette, and Ryan Sook’s Action Comics, and Kelly Thompson and Stefano Caselli’s West Coast Avengers. 

On the slightly different side of things, Steve Orlando and Giovanni Timpano showed how you do an intercompany crossover right with The Shadow/Batman, Max Bemis’s Moon Knight while not living up to all it could have been - and likely to age poorly - had moments of truly bizarre grace, Saga was Saga even if I’ve lost the plot, Ahmed and Christian Ward’s Black Bolt concluded as well as we all might have hoped, Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt’s The Wild Storm continued to build up steam in its own fascinating style, Doomsday Clock remains utterly captivating in spite of itself, and Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle’s The Wrong Earth is making the most of a deceptively tough premise. On the one-off end, Chip Zdarsky and Declan Shalvey’s Marvel Two-In-One Annual is an essentially perfect off-kilter Doom/Richards story, Action Comics #1000 had no chance of living up to all it needed to be but was largely a great set of Superman stories regardless, and while the remainder of the miniseries has thus far been fine, Tim Seeley and Carlos Villa’s first issue of Shatterstar was a strange, special delight.

My Favorite Comics of 2018

Rock Candy Mountain: Technically Jackson - the rail-rider who can beat Any One Man in a fistfight - reached the end of his journey for hobo heaven this year, and flat-out, every Kyle Starks comic is a perfect one. This is a book where the first issue has a dude beating ass with a beautiful savagery that leaves an awestruck onlooker declaring “He’s got punch diarrhea and their faces are the toilet bowl”, and by the end it built up to one of the most moving climaxes of the year. It’s a comic about fallen men finding redemption in friendship and in dreams, and also there’s a cage fighter who calls himself Hundred Cats because it would be really hard to fight a hundred cats.

Dark Knights: Metal: This is the final, perfected form of traditional Event Comic Bullshit. Everything good about Snyder, Capullo, Glapion, and Plascencia’s Batman post-Court Of Owls is retooled and reenergized to fit the scale of a Crisis event, everything that I would have considered to be a weakness regarding their partnership either burned away or placed in a context where it becomes a strength. This is the Morrison approach to the DCU rightfully ascendant and presented in a form even more fit for mass consumption, and manages to live up to being the first classic-style, large-scale DC event comic in almost a decade - Marvel may blow its own load every six months until it’s simply got nothing to offer anymore, but DC waited until they really and truly had something, and that something was bloodsoaked magic.

Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man (by Chip Zdarsky and assorted artists): I actually wavered a bit on whether this belonged in the best of the best as a whole; most of the issues this year were definitely very good (regarding Zdarsky’s run specifically, I haven’t checked out the Spider-Geddon tie-in stuff), but more on the honorary mention end of the scale. Ultimately however, the Amazing Fantasy arc and #310 are Spider-Man comics I’m going to be coming back to for years to come - the latter is going to end up in every ‘Best Spider-Man Stories Ever’ softcover from now until the end of time - and they tipped the scales.

Batman: Very much in the same boat as Spidey above; a lot of this year didn’t do it for me in the same way as this run has in the past, but The Best Man is the best thing anyone’s done with Joker since Morrison, the ‘wedding issue’ itself worked really well for me, Cold Days made a premise that’s often stymied creators work as well as people have always wanted it to, and the Dick team-up issue was a perfect little summation of a relationship, nevermind how much this year succeeded in getting me hyped up for things to come.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: This is one of those comics where it’s so consistently good in such a specific, quiet way that people stop talking about it, but for real, this has never not in the top five or six things Marvel is publishing at any given time for as long as it’s been around. Erica Henderson leaving right before hitting the Kraven story that had been building literally since its first issue 3 years earlier could have been disastrous, but North and new artist Derek Charm manage to hit their own rhythm and continue delivering one of the funniest, cleverest, most sincere superbooks on the stands every month.

Mister Miracle: Yeah, it really was that good.

The Immortal Hulk: So is this, and if I have to name a single best comic of the year, this has probably gotta be it. Al Ewing’s been Marvel’s best creator for a long, long time, and putting him and Joe Bennett (who holy moley, I don’t think anyone would have guessed had this in him) on a tentpole character Ewing’s got genuine reverence for worked out even better than a fanboy like me might have expected. It’s sublime horror, it’s perfect Marvel comics continuity bullshit, and if the superhero is at heart a morality fable, this is very much a soul-searing apex of the genre as it speaks of how we can all go wrong.

Eternity Girl: …or maybe this is the best? It’s probably gotta be this, Hulk, or Miracle. Mister Miracle’s where the comparison really becomes clear, as they’re both books way out on the fringes of the DCU dealing with a character grappling with depression amidst the mundanity of their cyclical existence. However, as perfectly constructed and rawly human as Mister Miracle is, this hits a lot more of my own buttons and expresses its own brand of more surreal emotional authenticity, and rather than the expected and beautiful next step of a pair of already-acclaimed creators with an established partnership, this was a shock coming out party for Visaggio and Liew, who do things stylistically just as odd to see in a DC Comic as anything King and Gerads came up with. It seemed to sail under the radar for readers but also seems to be racking up awards, and I hope this’ll attain the reputation it deserves in years to come.

Ice Cream Man: Likely the respectable fourth place to the three above, while I can’t quite sing its praises in quite the same way when it’s playing so hard-to-get that I can’t quite put a pin in what it’s ultimately about, oh my GOD this is as good as gut-punch horror gets. Not simply grody shock-value stuff, but pit-of-your-stomach-everything-in-the-world-hates-you-and-you-were-wrong-to-ever-believe-in-love shit that’ll rattle your bones and fuck you up good. Not usually a horror guy myself, but this is an essentially perfect comic.

The Man Of Steel: Screw all y’all, this kicked ass and after how hard the Rebirth books blew it - Jon and the new status quo were both excellent, Tomasi had good bits here and there alongside some quality fill-in teams, but those books were still aaaaaaaaaaassssss - this is exactly the fresh start Superman’s needed for years. Granted the Fabok interstitials had some wonky pacing, but this was on-point and insightful for Superman as a character, exciting as hell, and has thus far led to nothing but more good comics as far as I’m concerned.

Milk Wars: Did the various tie-ins live up to the bookends? Nah, though the Shade/Wonder Woman story was pretty good. But those bookends? Friends, those books were AAA+ sup-per-he-ro-bull-SHIT, and while I was initially let down because it seemed as though it would have Superman in a major role and then didn’t, this is even more of an apotheosis of the Morrison approach to the genre than Metal. ACO is ACO, Eaglesham slaughtered it, and Orlando and Way should be as joined at the hip as cowriters as Abbnett and Lanning used to be. This is a gold standard for strange, edgy, colorful, wondrous, fucked-up superhero comics, and there should be a million more like it every day.

Justice League (by Christopher Priest and assorted artists, primarily Pete Woods): On the exact opposite end of the scale, while I don’t think I can say I enjoyed this book as much as the current Snyder-helmed gonzo cosmic adventures, I absolutely feel this was the better of the two. More importantly, this run is the successful version of what just about every other Justice League comic of the past 15 years has been trying and failing to be as the post-Authority, post-Ultimates, post-Civil War take on the concept. It’s as smart and atmospheric and bold as a book like Justice League ever CAN be, building its exploration of the conceptual stress points of the team around one and two-part adventures and clever character dynamics, illustrating an interesting new take on how to handle the main team book with the power players: taking their ability to handle physical threats as a relative given, a structural conceit acting as a delivery mechanism for the politics and people in play. It hardly breaks new ground in terms of redefining the superhero concept, but it’s as far as they’ve gone with the marquis characters without ending in disaster, and it’s an approach I’d love to see more often applied to this scale.

Superman: Walmart 100 Page Giant (by Tom King and Andy Kubert): Of all the places for King to do a regular Superman comic, huh? Still, we’d already seen what he’d done in that Batman two-parter and Action #1000, so I’m more than willing to take what we can get (even if most are going to have to wait for this to come out in trade). There have been four installments so far: the first is the sort of stage-setting that’s common to this type of long-form arc but with a distinctly different atmosphere than how this is typically done with the character, evoking a sort of Miller-tinged Golden Age flavor connecting Superman back down to Earth before throwing him into the stars. The third is a great Fuck Yeah Superman Doin’ Superman Shit throwdown that gives Kubert a chance to shine. The fourth and most recent is haunting, inspired, moving, and tight as a drum. And the second begins as the worst-case scenario of Tom King doing a Superman comic, and ends as likely my favorite Superman story of the last 5 years. If it continues in its current direction, Superman: Up In The Sky is almost certainly going to be a perennial people are going to rank among the best Superman stories of all time for decades to come, and everything I’d want out of this team tackling my favorite character.

Detective Comics (by James Tynion IV and assorted artists): I’m honestly surprised at myself for putting this here, but I just have to hand it to this run - which had to go quite a ways to win me over, between its opening gambit with Batwoman’s status quo and centering the whole thing around my least-favorite Robin (even if it won me over to him over time) - as basically being the platonic form of Dang Good Superhero Comics. Not boundary-pushing, not the sort of thing you’ll remember in 20 years, but just really fun, exciting, good-looking, slick, character-driven adventures building on themselves into the logical culmination of 21st century popular Batman stories. This is Batman 101, but in a good way, and I honestly think that on reflection it’s gonna hold together better as a Batman run than its immediate predecessor in Snyder/Capullo.

You Are Deadpool: This is the smartest, funniest, most inventive big two comic of the year and even if you’re so tired of Deadpool that your skull bones are threatening to suddenly contract and spear your brain in an attempt at saving your weary soul from the prospect of seeing any more of him, you should get this.

Superman (by Brian Bendis and Ivan Reis): I noted Action Comics among the honorable mentions, as while it’s a dang good comic that I enjoy a great deal - and Ryan Sook may well have established himself as my ideal modern Superman artist - it’s very much the best possible version of *exactly* what you’d expect from Brian Bendis doing Superman. This, on the other hand, feels like Bendis stretching himself to do something truly different in a way he hasn’t in years, and the results are stunning. I won’t pretend Rogol Zaar has amounted to much of anything as of yet, but Bendis has acclimated to the realm of Cosmic Superman Punch-Ups in a way no one could have reasonably seen coming; he’s managed to sidestep his usual issues by anchoring each issue in a crazy setpiece and a single perfect Superman character moment, and Reis is doing work here than can unquestionably stand alongside his Sinestro Corps War heyday. Whether it’s #1 having Superman fight an astro-goilla in the middle of a questioning on his responsibilities to humanity, #4 going full Shonen in the best possible way with probably my favorite fight scene of the year, or #6′s storybook mythmaking building to the best, cruelest needle in the balloon possible, or the consistent delightful fucking with Adam Strange, every issue here has something I didn’t know I badly wanted to see, and damn if that isn’t exactly what I want in my Superman stuff.

Assorted one-offs: Along with the major arcs and runs, we’ve got stuff like the Thanos Annual and DC Nuclear Winter Special, as good as anthologies of this kind get. T-shirt Superman got one last ride under Morrison in the Sideways Annual, fighting his way out from under the wreckage of a weird DiDio book to get exactly the sendoff he deserved. The Injustice 2 Annual, of all things, was a perfect piece of bittersweet character work. Invincible #144 satisfyingly closed out The Best Superhero Comic In The Universe by essentially also doing Invincible #145-500 or so, putting this often tumultuous title to bed with the dignity it had earned. And finally, Slott and Marcos Martin’s The Amazing Spider-Man #801 was a perfect minor mediation not even on the title character so much as the basic moral appeal of the genre as a whole.

[chsingnostalgia]

AVENGERS the INITIATIVE issue 1 *Jim Cheung Covers Written by Dan Slott Drawn by Stefano Caselli (2007) ________________________ “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”. - Henry Ford #avengers #disneyplus #marvel #comics #ironman https://www.instagram.com/p/CbtcNm_MUx6/?utm_medium=tumblr

[biggoonie]

HULK: WORLD WAR HULK OMNIBUS HC

Written by GREG PAK, PETER DAVID, JEFF PARKER, CHRISTOS GAGE, DAN SLOTT, ROBERT KIRKMAN, DANIEL WAY, ZEB WELLS, MATT FRACTION, FRANK TIERI, PAUL JENKINS & DWAYNE MCDUFFIE Penciled by JOHN ROMITA JR., GARY FRANK, LEONARD KIRK, CARLO PAGULAYAN, JACKSON GUICE, STEFANO CASELLI, PHIL HESTER, ANDREA DI VITO, JAVIER SALTARES, CLAY MANN, JOHN BOSCO, ARIEL OLIVETTI, CARLOS FERREIRA, RAMON BACHS, SHAWN MARTINBROUGH, RAFA SANDOVAL, SALVA ESPIN & MORE Cover by DAVID FINCH Hulk versus the world, in an epic story of anger unbound! Exiled by his so-called friends, the Hulk has raged, bled and conquered on the alien planet Sakaar. Now, he returns to Earth to wreak terrible vengeance on Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange and Black Bolt — and anyone else who gets in the way! Madder than ever, stronger than ever and accompanied by his monstrous Warbound allies — this time the Hulk may just tear this stupid planet in half! Collecting WORLD WAR HULK PROLOGUE: WORLD BREAKER, WORLD WAR HULK #1-5, INCREDIBLE HULK (2000) #106-111, IRON MAN (2005) #19-20, AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #4-5, IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #10, WORLD WAR HULK: X-MEN #1-3, GHOST RIDER (2006) #12-13, HEROES FOR HIRE (2006) #11-15, PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL (2007) #12, WORLD WAR HULK: GAMMA CORPS #1-4, WORLD WAR HULK: FRONT LINE #1-6, WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH ONE-SHOT, WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH: DAMAGE CONTROL #1-3, WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH: WARBOUND #1-5 and PLANET HULK SAGA. 1,304 PGS./Rated T+ …$125.00

[aion-rsa]

Iron Fist Season 2 Villain: Who is Mary?

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Who is the mysterious Mary on Netflix's Iron Fist Season 2, and what is her Marvel Comics history? We've got you covered.

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Feature

Books

Marc Buxton

Iron Fist

Sep 7, 2018

Iron Fist Season 2

Marvel

Netflix

Alice Eve

For decades, Typhoid Mary has been one of the most twisted, dangerous, and darkly fascinating women in the Marvel Universe. Typhoid Mary is a sometimes villain, sometimes hero, sometimes sympathetic victim, but wherever this powerful and deadly killer goes, great stories follow. But despite her introduction on Iron Fist Season 2, Typhoid Mary has long been considered one of the top stars of Daredevil’s rogues’ gallery, not Danny Rand's. One can speculate that Alive Eve’s Mary will move from Iron Fist to Daredevil and become a threat to the entire pantheon of Marvel Netflix heroes. If so, there is certainly a great deal of comic book history for Marvel to mine.

Typhoid Mary made her debut in Daredevil #254 (1988) where she was created by Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr. Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to appreciate writer Ann Nocenti. Nocenti not only crafted groundbreaking classic tales in all the comics she worked on, she also had to follow Frank Miller on Daredevil. That would be daunting for any writer much less a woman writer at a time when the industry was even less balanced than it is today. But Nocenti kicked ass and dropped Typhoid Mary on an unsuspecting world, making her mark as one of the all-time great Daredevil writers. You can read her incredible Typhoid Mary stories here.

Typhoid Mary was part of a tradition of ill-advised Daredevil romances. Comic fans have known for years that dating Matt Murdock was a one way ticket to the grave, insanity, villainy, or something worse. Just a few years after Daredevil lost Elektra, he was hooking up with Typhoid Mary, a paid assassin. Needless to say, things got heated. Actually, in sparking a romance with Typhoid Mary, Murdock actually entered into three romantic relationships. Or is it four? Let’s explain...

Mary has dissociative identity disorder, but she’s also a mutant (don’t expect that latter part to show up on TV any time soon, as the Fox/Disney merger is still in progress). Mary’s primary personality does not present with powers, but her other two identities, Typhoid and Bloody Mary, possess telekinesis and pyrokinesis, respectively. Mary is a shy and timid religious woman, Typhoid is a bold adventurer, and Bloody Mary is a spiteful murderer who lives to kill men. And if all this wasn’t confusing enough, Mary has also developed a personality known as Mary Walker who is basically an amalgamation of all three.

So how did Mary become this twisted mass of anguish, pain, and death? Well (as usual), it’s all Daredevil’s fault.

Daredevil first met Typhoid Mary when the disturbed killer replaced Bullseye as Kingpin’s head assassin. Later, Matt Murdock met timid Mary and the two struck up a quick romance. Meanwhile, the Typhoid personality began a romantic entanglement with Wilson Fisk. Umm, wow. If Typhoid Mary arrives on the Daredevil TV series, that season just kinda writes itself, doesn’t it?

Mary came to Kingpin’s attention when she began murdering low level drug dealers in Fisk’s territory. Seeing an opportunity, Wilson Fisk hired Mary to play a deadly game with Daredevil. As Mary, Kingpin’s new assassin seduced Murdock, but as Typhoid, she annoyed Daredevil. And Typhoid Mary was the perfect assassin to foil Daredevil both as a man and as a superhero. Her telekinetic ability allowed Typhoid Mary to befuddle DD’s hyper-senses, and her dissociative identity disorder allowed her to change her appearance, voice, and even her scent.

Mary was born into an abusive home. As a small child, she lashed out at her father, severely burning and injuring him. She was sent away to an institution where she was further abused and experimented on. There, both Mary and Typhoid personas fully emerged. Mary was compliant, but Typhoid was brutal and rebellious, and also ran a constant fever.

So how is Typhoid Mary Matt Murdock’s fault?

Mary ended up as a prostitute (it gets darker, kids) and was present when Daredevil busted into a house of ill repute looking for a mobster known as the Fixer. For those not in the know, the Fixer was responsible for the death of Matt Murdock’s boxer father after the elder Murdock refused to throw a fight. So DD was fighting mad and the fearful ladies of the evening attacked the neophyte superhero to prevent a police raid. During the struggle, Daredevil accidentally punched poor Mary through a window, severely injuring her. This allows Typhoid to take over, as she swore no man would ever harm her again.

Back in the present, Typhoid manipulates a weakened Daredevil and with the help of other members of Daredevil’s rogues (sadly, no Stilt-Man), she tosses him off a bridge. What Typhoid didn’t expect was that Mary truly had fallen for Murdock, finds his broken prostitute punching carcass, and nurses him back to health. From there, Mary slowly begins to suppress Typhoid and briefly was able to thwart the dominance of the evil persona.

Whew, how dark was that?

Sadly, the dominance of Mary did not last and Typhoid Mary returned again and again to bedevil the heroes of the Marvel Universe. One of the earliest non-Daredevil appearances of Typhoid Mary was in Power Pack #53 (1990) because nothing goes together like a superhero team made up of tweens and little kids and an abused ex-prostitute who gets off on burning men. Wheeee!

Related article - Iron Fist Season 2: Who is Davos?

One particularly fascinating appearance of Typhoid Mary was when creator Ann Nocenti brought her twisted creation into the pages of Spider-Man. In The Spectacular Spider-Man #214 (1994), Nocenti and artist James Fry had Mary befriend Mary Jane Watson when the rarely seen Bloody Mary persona came out. Bloody Mary began murdering domestic abusers, but Mary Jane helped Mary gain control and suppress Bloody Mary. And that’s the most Marys you’ll ever see in a comic at one time.

Typhoid Mary also frequently pals around with Deadpool, and yes, it’s disturbing, although ‘ol Wade is very accepting of her mental issues, more so than that jerk Murdock. But for now, let’s talk about when Typhoid Mary was associated with the Avengers.

Wait...what?

In Avengers: The Initiative #4 (2007), writer Dan Slott and artist Stefano Caselli introduced a masked killer by the name of Mutant Zero. This deadly but unstable mutant works for all around government dickbag Henry Peter Gyrich. She is unleashed only for the deadliest of missions and is not at all trusted by her Avengers: Initiative teammates. For newer fans, the Initiative were a bunch of heroes in training, so we’re not talking classic Avengers like Captain America, Iron Man, or Black Widow here, but a bunch of green recruits trained by the US government as a byproduct of Civil War. Gyrich holds Mutant Zero in a bare white chamber called the Zero Room and basically only unleashes her during the direst missions. You probably guessed by now that Mutant Zero was indeed Typhoid Mary. Sadly, the time spent alone in the sparse confines of the Zero Room undid all the progress that Mary made as she began to lose control of her more deadly personas. Typhoid Mary abandoned the Initiative the first chance she got and ended up a powerful force in the Marvel underworld as a troubled killer for hire and a woman you just really want to avoid.

So there you have it, the really dark history of Typhoid Mary, a killer woman with a horrific past that is now coming to spread chaos on Iron Fist Season 2. Hopefully Alice Eve’s Mary will eventually make appearances on the other Netflix shows like Daredevil or Jessica Jones, as she'd be a perfect fit. In truth, Mary would be equally perfect in a Blumhouse film as she would in the MCU, and that's one of the reasons the character has endured for as long as she has.

Marc Buxton is an English teacher/private tutor by day and a former comic retailer who reads way too many comics, often choosing his Wednesday haul over groceries. Read more of his work here.

from Books https://ift.tt/2wURiKJ

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Avengers: the Initiative 1-2 interlocking cover by Jim Cheung

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Avengers: The Initiative #8 (2008)

Writers: Dan Slott and Christos Gage

Artist: Stefano Caselli

[aion-rsa]

The Long, Strange Legacy of Marvel’s Scarlet Spider

It’s official: Marvel has announced “Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider,” a new ongoing series by Peter David and Mark Bagley spinning out of its current crossover event “The Clone Conspiracy.” The question that remains, of course, is just who the Scarlet Spider will be in this upcoming series, especially as Ben Reilly doesn’t currently seem to be in a position to be running around as a superhero.

RELATED: Spider-Cloned: The Life, Death & Return of Ben Reilly

That there might be a question as to who would be in a “Scarlet Spider” comic book might come as a surprise to those fans that naturally think of Ben Reilly whenever they hear the name “Scarlet Spider,” but surprisingly enough, the name has gotten around quite a bit over the years. We’ll showcase you all the characters that have used the name “Scarlet Spider”, both in comics and on television.

BEN REILLY

Introduced during the original clone saga, Ben Reilly was the name given to the clone of Peter Parker (cloned by Miles Warren, the Jackal) who fought Peter at the end of the event, as both the clone and the original believed that they were the real Peter Parker. In the end, the clone seemingly sacrificed himself to stop a bomb from killing Ned Leeds. However, after Spider-Man disposed of the clone’s body, it turned out that the clone lived. He went on the road and took on the name Ben Reilly, using the first name of Peter’s beloved Uncle Ben and the maiden name of Peter’s beloved Aunt May.

When May suffered a serious stroke, Ben returned to visit her and ran into Peter. He stuck around and became friends with Peter, which was hard to do back then as Peter was in the middle of a dark period in his life and Ben took to questioning some of his decisions. One in particular was the deal that Peter had cut with Venom where he agreed not to fight Venom in exchange for Venom not causing any more trouble in New York City. Ben, though, felt that someone had to take down Venom. Since he couldn’t do so as Spider-Man, he threw together a make-shift costume (complete with a spider sweatshirt that he tore the sleeves off of, making it one of the most 1990s costumes ever) and debuted as a new hero, the Scarlet Spider, in “Web of Spider-Man” #118 by Terry Kavanagh, Steven Butler and Randy Emberlin.

Eventually, Peter and Ben were convinced that Peter was actually the clone and Ben was the original Peter Parker. Peter and his wife, Mary Jane, left town, with Peter entrusting the city to Ben. Initially, Ben planned to fight crime as the Scarlet Spider still, but then something changed his plans.

JOE WADE

What changed Ben’s plans was a plot by the second Doctor Octopus (Carolyn Trainer) to discredit Ben. She did so by using Joe Wade, an F.B.I. agent who was undercover in Trainer’s operation but was discovered. As a punishment, and to further her schemes, she did a virtual reality graft on Wade. He was trapped in a virtual reality chamber while he powered a hard light hologram of the Scarlet Spider that committed a series of crimes during a point in time when all of the “Spider-Man” comics were temporarily replaced by “Scarlet Spider” comic books (as a nod to when all of the X-Books were replaced by new titles for the “Age of Apocalypse”). Eventually, Ben stopped the fake Scarlet Spider by damaging the machine that made the fake Scarlet Spider. It was too late to save Ben’s reputation as the Scarlet Spider, though, so he had to give up the identity and return to being Spider-Man (Ben would tragically later learn that he was, in fact, the clone, something made clear when the Green Goblin killed Ben and Ben dissolved into ooze).

However, the damage to the machine ended up screwing with the virtual reality graft and Wade’s mind entirely, so he came back as a new cybernetic version of the Scarlet Spider and fought Ben (now Spider-Man) and the New Warriors. Eventually, Wade was rescued and slowly cured.

SCARLET SPIDER ON THE SPIDER-MAN ANIMATED SERIES

In the final season of the 1990s “Spider-Man” animated series, Spider-Man is forced to team up with a group of Spider-Men from alternate realities. One of them is Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider! On his world, he is also the clone of Peter Parker (although he might be the original, as it is a bit unclear) but the original Peter Parker became unhinged and ended up merging with Carnage. So the other Spider-Men help take down Spider-Carnage.

FELICIA HARDY

“Spider-Girl” told stories about May Parker, the teenage daughter of Peter and Mary Jane, who became a superhero like her father when she became a teenager (she had her dad’s spider-powers). In “Spider-Girl” #44 (by Tom DeFalco, Pat Olliffe and Al Williamson), someone discovered May’s costume in her locker. The following issue it was revealed that it was stolen by Felicia Hardy, the daughter of Black Cat and Flash Thompson. Felicia wanted to become Spider-Girl’s crime-fighting partner.

In “Spider-Girl” #46, Felicia debuted her new superhero identity as the new Scarlet Spider. While she did not become partners with Spider-Girl, she did remain a hero and helped out occasionally for the rest of the first volume of “Spider-Girl.”

MICHAEL VAN PATRICK

In “Avengers: The Initiative” #7 (by Dan Slott and Stefano Caselli), we met three new heroes who each wore versions of the special costume that Iron Man had made for Spider-Man. They called themselves the Scarlet Spiders and they turned out to be clones of the slain Initiative hero, MVP (whose real name was Michael Van Patrick). The three clones were each named one part of MVP’s name, so one was Michael, one was Van and one was Patrick. Taskmaster taught them how to move like Spider-Man.

One by one, each member of the group was killed until only Patrick remained. He re-named himself Iron Spider. Amusingly enough, during this period, which was when Peter Parker’s secret identity was public knowledge following Spider-Man unmasking himself on national TV (and before Tony Stark, Reed Richards and Stephen Strange used their combined know-how to make Spider-Man’s identity a secret again), they threw some doubt into whether Peter was actually the “real” Spider-Man or not.

KAINE

Kaine was the Jackal’s first attempt at cloning Peter Parker. He was “unsuccessful,” which is to say that he was not a perfect clone. He was suffering from degeneration, which caused him to have strange scars all over his body. He hated Ben for Ben being “perfect,” so during the years that Ben was on the run, Kaine kept trying to hunt him down.

Eventually, Kaine was redeemed and ended up sacrificing himself to save Spider-Man’s life during the Grim Hunt storyline (where Kaine was a ritual sacrifice in the place of Peter Parker). Kaine returned during “Spider Island” and was now more a normal looking person in his regular form (he also had Spider-Man’s new powers from “The Other,” including talons in his arms). He moved to Houston and he ended up being forced into becoming a superhero. He took on the name “Scarlet Spider” in honor of his “brother,” Ben Reilly, who he realized he hated for no good reason. He had his own short-lived series.

Kaine has returned during “The Clone Conspiracy.” Time will tell if he’s the Scarlet Spider in the new “Scarlet Spider” series.

FLASH THOMPSON (WEB WARRIORS)

On the “Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors” animated series, Flash Thompson briefly tried to fight crime as the Scarlet Spider before he ended up merging with the Venom symbiote and became Agent Venom.

BEN REILLY (WEB WARRIORS)

Ben Reilly later showed up on “Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors,” as well. This take on Ben Reilly was similar to Kaine, including using Kaine’s costume. He also was sort of a villain, but it turned out that he was just being used by Doctor Octopus. He ended up becoming a hero and a loyal ally of Peter as part of the Web Warriors.

Kaine later showed up, as well, but he wasn’t Scarlet Spider.

SCARLET SPIDERS (SPIDER-VERSE)

This doesn’t really count, but hey, we might as well be completists. During the “Spider-Verse” crossover, where a bunch of alternate Spider-Man teamed up with each other, there was a “Scarlet Spiders” series that teamed up Kaine with Ben Reilly from an alternate universe where Ben was still Spider-Man and Jessica Drew, the female clone of Peter Parker from the Ultimate Universe who had become the new Black Widow.

The post The Long, Strange Legacy of Marvel’s Scarlet Spider appeared first on CBR.com.

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