Amazing Spider-Man recently showcased two heroes taking these different journeys simultaneously in its "Beyond" storyline thanks to the return of Ben Reilly, Peter Parker's clone from the mid 1990's infamous Clone Saga. Ben's first death at the end of the Clone Saga came after he and Peter had grown into essentially being brothers. Prior to his death he had demonstrated that he was every bit a Spider-Man as Peter was. Since Ben's return, though, his characterization and relationship to Peter has swung in different directions--sometimes wildly so--at the whims of his writers, never reflecting the character he was at the time of his first death. Regardless of one's opinion of how Ben is depicted, he's really the only character that can truly serve as an inverted mirror to Peter: high while Peter is low, falling while Peter is rising.
Needless to say, this will contain detailed spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man "Beyond."
While all of this is going on, Aunt May reaches out to Doctor Octopus for help saving Peter and is surprised when he comes through, anonymously dropping off the information at the hospital. From this point Peter tries to engage in some Spier-Man activities (with decidedly mixed and tragic results) in addition to traditional physical therapy.
"Beyond" runs for nineteen issues of Amazing Spider-Man from 75-93 (plus multiple ancillary issues) and was published three times a week. The story was written by a team consisting of Saladin Ahmed, Patrick Gleason, Jed MacKay, Kelly Thompson, Geoffrey Thorne, Zeb Wells, and Cody Ziglar. The three times a week schedule necessitated an art by committee situation. "Beyond" wasn't a continuation of anything from Nick Spencer's run on Amazing Spider-Man so it's a great jumping on point. Likewise it's not necessary to have read any of Ben Reilly's previous appearances; the story provides the small amount of backstory that is necessary to understand the character's history.
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| Amazing Spider-Man 75 |
Peter is still thinking about Harry Osborn's death (which took place in the previous issue at the end of Nick Spencer's run) when issue 75 opens. He goes out to take a head clearing web spin only to see another Spider-Man swinging through the New York skyline. And we're off!
With a nineteen part story it's probably not surprising that the synopsis is on the long side. You can skip past the synopsis to a commentary on the art or even further to an examination of the story.
Ben's Back
Beyond Corporation purchased the trademark for Spider-Man after Parker Industries went under, and they've hired Ben Reilly to take on the role. After a quick conversation about the situation, Peter and Ben find themselves teamed up against the U-Foes. One of the U-Foes, X-Ray, puts out a radioactive explosion that critically injures Peter.
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| Amazing Spider-Man 75 |
Peter ends up in the hospital, paralyzed and on the verge of death. From this point Ben is effectively the star of the series while Peter's recovery is tracked over time as a subplot.
Ben is living with his girlfriend Janine in a penthouse in the Beyond Corporation building. Beyond is providing him with state of the art tech and a fairly comfortable life. They've also hired Doctor Ashley Kafka to provide counseling.
Unsurprisingly much of the story sees Ben do typical Spider-Man stuff. His first major fight after the U-Foes is against Morbius who has lost the control of his hunger. After that he faces Kraven after he breaks into the penthouse of a Beyond executive. It turns out that in addition to being a hero, Beyond expects Ben to protect their interests.
Ben's next fight is a little different. Beyond sends him out to confront Miles Morales for trademark infringement. This ends predictably with Ben deciding Miles is a good guy and leaving him to continue being Spider-Man.
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| Amazing Spider-Man 80.BEY |
Elsewhere in New York, Ben is summoned to a Beyond facility that Doctor Octopus is attacking. After a brief fight that Ben loses, Ock retrieves information that he contends Beyond stole from him and escapes only to turn up soon after at the Beyond tower looking for revenge against the company because they stole his ideas and hard work from his Superior Spider-Man days and used it to develop new technologies twisted to their own benefit. This time when Ben arrives he wins the fight, losing control a little bit as he pummels Ock. The doctor convinces Ben to give up the fight by telling him that Beyond actually hired him because he's psychologically weak. He also provides Ben with a drive full of all of Beyond's dirty secrets.
In the aftermath of his encounter with Doc Ock Ben visits Doctor Kafka to discuss his growing distrust of Beyond. Kafka has similar misgiving. In the course of their session she reveals to Ben that he asked Beyond to erase the memories of his experiences during "The Clone Conspiracy." Beyond, worried that they'll lose Ben as an asset, interrupts the session and takes him to have his memories about Doctor Octopus erased, but something goes wrong. While this is going on Janine takes the drive Doc Ock gave Ben and escapes the tower.
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| Amazing Spider-Man 89 |
Janine approaches Mary Jane for help, and the two go to the Daily Bugle meaning to expose Beyond's secrets. Before they can make any progress, though, they are attacked by Queen Goblin. It turns out that Beyond not only has a superhero program but also a supervillain program, and they're responsible for this new villain. Queen Goblin destroys the drive before being briefly interrupted by Ben. Rather than fight her, though, he grabs Janine and flees the scene, leaving Mary Jane at Queen Goblin's mercy.
Black Cat arrives just in time to save MJ from Queen Goblin and she in turn is saved by a still not 100% Peter. He defeats Queen Goblin, meets up with Ben, and the pair sets off to take Beyond down. The moment the two of them come up against a powerful villain, though, Ben ditches Peter so he can go after Beyond on his own. It turns out that Ben's recent memory wipe erased his memories of his formative years--the memories copied when Peter was originally cloned.
The only way for Ben to get these memories back is to steal them from Peter. This naturally leads to a fight between the two Spider-Men. Unsurprisingly Ben loses and appears to die only to recover and rename himself Chasm.
The Success of Art by Committee
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| Amazing Spider-Man 75 |
With that very long summary out of the way, it's important to take a look at the art. As I noted above, the art for this story was handled by a variety of teams who have very different styles. This sort of arrangement can have mixed results with mid-storyline changes sometimes being jarring, especially if it can't quite accomplish what the story requires or the prior art team achieved. This is something that I was very worried about going into "Beyond." Happily, I found my concerns unwarranted because most of the art seemed to be exactly what was needed for the various issues.
Patrick Gleason's art and Marcio Menyz's colors lead off the story with issues 75 and 76, and they are perfect for them. There's a lot of emotion running through these two issues and relatively little action. If the story is going to avoid conveying a character's emotion through dialogue or narration, the art has to make the characters expressive enough to make the reader understand what they're going for. The truth is that while an artist may not be bad at this, it may not be their strength. This is not the case for Gleason and Menyz who are able to impress on the reader just what the characters on the page are feeling. When Aunt May simultaneously expresses concern and anger when she arrives at the hospital you feel the toll Peter's condition is taking on his loved ones. The conversation between Ben and Peter where Ben says he's going to be Spider-Man is carried by a range of feeling that go from shock to anger to resignation, and all of it is visible on Peter's face from panel to panel.
Standing out just as much as Gleason and Menyz are artist Michael Dowling and colorist Jesus Aburtov. There's a certain ethereal quality to their issues with characters having an almost heavenly quality, something that manages to elevate the story's significance. Dowling and Aburtov also handle a sequence where Ben is under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs Kraven exposed him to as well as the moment where Ben's memories are ripped away from him--both of them being almost otherworldly scenes.
Having some qualities of both of those art teams are Carlos Gómez and Bryan Valenza. They don't quite have that ethereal softness that Dowling and Aburtov bring to the fore, but the colors retain some softness even as the characters are a touch sharper in their expressiveness.
The Bagley issues are successful but a bit of a mixed bag. 89 works well with Mark Bagley art, Andrew Hennessy and John Dell inks, and Bryan Valenza colors. 90 isn't quite as smooth with its five inkers and three color artists. And for some reason in both issues Bagley has a tough time keeping Queen Goblin's face quite the same panel to panel.
The issues that don't work as well in the larger sensibility of the story are those drawn by Sara Pichelli. They have a slightly cartoon quality, especially issue 78 which features Morbius. The switch to her issues is jarring each time.
A Fun Ride
"Beyond" is generally a good time. There are a number of entertaining action set pieces, and they all have a decent amount of tension because Ben repeatedly has trouble winning fights on the first time out. The drugged-up-by-Kraven sequence is intriguing and it offers a fair degree of foreshadowing. In fact, there's a consistent thread of foreshadowing from the first issue. Whether or not that foreshadowing actually makes sense I'll get to in a moment, but as a device it's effective.
Sidelining Peter for most of the arc is a good choice. The story gives us just enough of his road to recovery that we can keep track of it and believe his progress but never so much that it gets boring. Being comatose and then in physical therapy can be only so entertaining. When Peter returns in the final issues we've had just enough of his story to believe he can return though not at 100%.
As a story about someone who feels that he needs to prove he's just as good as his brother, "Beyond" is done very well. Ben starts off pretty much at the top of the world from his point of view. He's got his girlfriend back. He's got a lot of support both to maintain a high class personal life and a high tech crime fighting life. And...he's Spider-Man. The threads that will eventually bring Ben down start early but remain subtle for most of the story. And the resentment that he would have once he's lost everything while his brother has regained everything is understandable. In the abstract, the character arc is very good. As it applies specifically to Ben, though, it has some problems.
What's Up With Ben This Time?
Looking at this as a Ben Reilly story, "Beyond" arguably has a minor problem right from the outset. He's almost combative with Peter in that opening conversation about him becoming Spider-Man. He's definitely selfish. Since the consequences of Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider were overridden and his memories of "The Clone Conspiracy" were wiped out, it seems like he should have reverted back to his personality at the end of the Clone Saga. If that's the case his attitude toward Peter seems a little off. It's also curious that he's so hellbent on being Spider-Man when he was so reluctant to take up the mantle in the Clone Saga before the credibility of his Scarlet Spider identity was ruined. It can be argued that Ben's attitude changed as a result of events after Spider-Geddon, but if so that's a story point that should have been elucidated. On the other hand, it could be a side effect of what Beyond did with Ben's memories. This would tie into the poorly handled idea of how personality changes when memories are altered, but there is nothing hinted at to suggest such a side effect occurred. As I said, though, this is pretty minor and probably wouldn't be worth mentioning if it weren't for what comes after.
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| Amazing Spider-Man 92 |
Later in the issue, when Ben loses the memories he got from Peter, he starts talking about how he can't be good man without those memories. The story pays a little lip service to the idea that a loss of those kind of memories would change someone's personality, but it doesn't really consider the idea in detail. That said, Ben should still have the memories of the life he made after discovering he was a clone. He would remember all the things he did while he was on the road. He would remember his time as Scarlet Spider during the Clone Saga and then his time as Spider-Man after Peter passed the mantle to him. He would remember all his interactions with Peter. Does he remember the "why" of his actions as it relates back to Uncle Ben? No. But he would have a lifetime of memories of choosing to do the right thing and knowing at that time that it was the right thing even if he doesn't remember the impetus that led him to be Spider-Man. He would know who he has been. The only way the idea that he can't be a good man without those memories works is if the series is arguing that without the experience of Uncle Ben's death Ben has no sense of morality.
This is also when all the foreshadowing pays off. Ben has been seeing blank, empty chasms where people's faces should be. This was a significant part of his hallucinations during the Kraven encounter. He event punched a mirror that broke in a way that put that same kind of empty blackness where his face was in the reflection. This same visual idea appears more heavily after Ben loses his memories. But at no point in the early part of the story does Ben exhibit any signs that he feels he's missing knowledge or memories so it's unclear why he should be having these experiences. The loss of his memories later occurs thanks to a specific event that he had no control over. Foreshadowing an idea by presenting it in the exact same way it manifests later when its later occurrence happens solely as the result of a specific future event makes no sense.
The end of "Beyond" sees Ben decide that to be a whole person he has to steal those early memories from Peter. This flies in the face of every bit of character development Ben went through during the Clone Saga. If he remembered his experiences from "The Clone Conspiracy" or was still a sociopath thanks to his experiences in Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider this might make sense because his personality would still be skewed from those experiences. But neither of those are impacting him anymore. This is something else that only makes sense if the story is arguing that Ben has no understanding of morality without the memories of Uncle Ben. Unfortunately the story doesn't attempt to make that argument in any way. It really doesn't offer any kind of justification for Ben's inability to be a good person.
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| Amazing Spider-Man 92 |
"Beyond" is a frustrating story, It's a good concept executed well, and there's a lot to enjoy about the overall arc. Ben does get some good material in the middle where he is acting as the sole Spider-Man, and in many ways this is reminiscent of who he was before his first death back in Spider-Man 75. The trouble comes at the end with the change in Ben's character. The story had the opportunity to explore memory and personality and how removing some memories but not others could change a person. Unfortunately there's no real exploration of that idea. Nor is there an attempt to explain why the memories Ben does have aren't sufficient to reinforce his identity despite what was lost. As a result Ben's transformation feels arbitrary and unjustified, nothing more than an excuse to turn him into either a new anti-hero or a new villain in Spider-Man's orbit. It makes the end of "Beyond" feel more like a device than a satisfying conclusion which is an unfortunate way to end an otherwise good story.
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