Marvel Comics Exec Editor Confirms Ben Reilly Heel Turn Was Done In Order To Prop Up Miles Morales And Spider-Gwen: “There Really Isn’t A Whole Lot Of Room On Stage For Yet Another Middle-Of-The-Road Spider Character”
According to Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort, the ongoing running of the original Scarlet Spider’s character through the dirt is not being done because any particular writer had a good idea for such a story, but rather due to the publisher deciding to give his narrative role as ‘the second Spider-Man’ to both Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen.
Brevoort, who also currently serves as Marvel’s X-line editor, spoke to the current standing of the fan-favorite Spider-clone while answering fan questions for the January 15th entry of his weekly Substack blog, Man With A Hat.
Pressed by a Marvel Reader, “When Ben Reilly was brought back in Clone Conspiracy, what was your reaction to that decision? Do you think it was the right call to take away the spotlight from Kaine and give it back to Ben instead?”, Brevoort affirmed, “I can’t really say too much about how it all ultimately worked out, but I thought at the idea of bringing Ben Reilly back and crafting him into a dark mirror image of Spider-Man, an antagonist, made an awful lot of sense”.
“As [current Spider-Man line editor] Nick Lowe has said on a couple of occasions, especially given the success of Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen, there really isn’t a whole lot of room on stage for yet another middle-of-the-road spider character, especially not one with all of the history baggage that Ben brings with him,” he argued. “But as an enemy who believes that Peter Parker stole his life and whom readers at one point followed as a lead character, there’s a lot of strong emotional grist to play with. And Kaine continues to be Kaine, which is fine. I don’t really think that his transition into becoming the Scarlet Spider himself worked all that well.”
While Brevoort’s statement marks the first time such a higher-up, executive-level Marvel Comics staffer has confirmed the publisher’s anti-Ben sentiment, it is not the first time Spider-Man’s current stewards have mentioned their new disdain for the formerly-hoodied-hero.
Following Ben’s heel-turn into Chasm in the Zeb Wells-penned Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 5 #93 (an issue which, in hindsight, really should have been the canary in the coal mine for his entire run), the aforementioned Lowe offered readers an explanation as to the decision to throw out the Scarlet Spider’s identity as ‘What Spider-Man could be if he was able to healthily move past his guilt’ in favor of giving him the new role of ‘Yet another generic evil Spider-doppelganger’.
Amidst an overall reflection on the entirety of the book’s fifth volume, itself penned primarily by Nick Spencer before being ultimately wrapped up by Cody Ziglar and Wells, Lowe turned to the topic of the newly-crowned Chasm and explained, “I wanted to thank and…apologize isn’t quite the right word…to the Ben Reilly fans out there. Ben is an incredible character who didn’t really have a place in the Spider-Landscape anymore.”
“Peter Parker isn’t going anywhere, and Miles Morales is here to stay, so Ben has been a challenge for us, and we thought this story gave us an opportunity to not only give Ben a last run as Spider-Man and to do a rare thing in the world of super hero comics – a tragedy,” he wrote. “With most of our characters locked into eternal roles, a truly tragic story is very rare, and we hope we did Ben justice with it.”
Speaking frankly as one of the world’s few Ben Reilly fans, it should not be that hard to find a place within the wide, wide world of Marvel for the man to live independently of Peter and his ever-growing gang of derivatives
After his brother Kaine took up the mantle of Scarlet Spider, he moved to Houston, Texas, where he established himself as one of the southern metro’s rare superheroes.
Heck, right before he was brought back into the fold proper for Ziglar and Wells’ Beyond storyline, Ben was following in his brother’s footsteps and striking out on his own in Las Vegas, breaking off from his brothers even more by developing into a more ‘take no nonsense, tired of the shenanigans’ type character and even becoming a member of the latest incarnation of the Midnight Sons.
Of course, what makes these admissions from Lowe and Brevoort even more insulting is the fact that, in the years since Ben was thrown to the wayside, Marvel Comics has done practically nothing in regards to making either Miles or Spider-Gwen (or Ghost Spider, if you want to play nice with the publisher’s legal team) feel like anything other than marketing ploys.
In terms of the former, in the four years since Ben traded in his red-and-blues for purple-and-green, Miles’ biggest developments have been the ability to generate an energy sword (as well as energy blasts), vampire powers, a new Adamantium-based armor, and his recent choosing as the avatar of the Spider-God Anansi.
Meanwhile, Gwen’s biggest moves have been a permanent relocation to the 616, recruitment into the actual MCU version of the Time Variance Authority (via the new TVA Vol. 1 miniseries), and the recent discovery that she can shoot energy blasts from her hands à la Dragon Ball.
Ultimately, between their desire for more ‘inclusive’ characters with which to market their products and a ‘throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks’ mentality towards the two characters, both Miles and Gwen now feel less like genuine characters and more like very, very obvious ‘sales mascots’, every bit of their characters dedicated to moving more product rather than telling a good story.
And all it took was the sacrificing of a fully-realized, fan-favorite character to get there.
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