Spider-Man: The Clone Saga- Smoke and Mirrors
PART 4
Writers: Todd DeZago, J.M. DeMatteis, and Howard Mackie
Artists: Steven Butler, Mark Bagley, and Tom Lyle
With horrible mischaracterization of the Jackal and Gwen Stacy, the saga starts showing signs of its infamous downward spiral...
Ranking: 2 stars
Welcome to part 4 of CLONE MADNESS dear readers, where we take another look at THE CLONE SAGA, which started out with some pretty good story arcs, but would then start to collapse under bad story lines, insufferable characterizations, and continuously misdirecting readers on who was the real Spider-Man, and who was the clone.
For those who have been following, I’ve decided to take a glance at one of the most infamous periods of both Spider-Man and comic book history, and see if the stories that it produced were really as bad as people claimed them to be. As I stated in my review of THE “REAL” CLONE SAGA six-issue miniseries, I feel that the saga generated quite a few good ideas and that the concept behind the story held great potential. From THE CLONE SAGA stories that I’ve read and reviewed so far, I now see that while some of the early story arcs did possess flaws, the majority of them were actually really good. For all of the complaints I had with POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY, the story still succeeded in developing intriguing character dilemmas for Ben Reilly, and Peter’s triumph over insanity felt extremely satisfying and cathartic! THE EXILE RETURNS was simply an awesome story that showcased Ben triumphantly defeating Venom, and WEB OF DEATH was a beautifully written and tragic story arc that delved deep into the psychology of Peter and Doctor Octopus, while also advancing the overall plot of the saga with Kaine’s vendetta against Spider-Man villains, and the revelation of Mary Jane being pregnant. Ignoring unnecessary elements like Judas Traveller, the early stories of THE CLONE SAGA were actually well written and still hold up as great Spider-Man comics in my opinion. Unfortunately, the entire premise of the saga and the quality of story lines would begin to gradually decline following today’s story arc, SMOKE AND MIRRORS. Out of all THE CLONE SAGA stories that I’ve read and reviewed so far, this is the first one that I don’t care for. Not only does SMOKE AND MIRRORS mark the first of the many unnecessary stories that constantly debated over who was the clone and who was the original, but it’s also an insulting story on it’s own because of its horrible implications about Gwen Stacy, as well as its mischaracterization of the Jackal.
Before I begin my critique on this comic though, I need to provide some backstory, as the major problem behind SMOKE AND MIRRORS is that it either ignores or contradicts events that happened in previous stories. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, the general idea of THE CLONE SAGA was based around a story line that took place in the 1970’s. Following the death of Gwen Stacy at the hands of the Green Goblin, a mysterious new villain known as the Jackal suddenly launched a massive campaign to destroy Spider-Man. At the same time, Gwen had mysteriously returned from the dead, which brought about shock and confusion to Peter. He later learned however, that this woman was not the actual Gwen Stacy, but rather a clone of her. It was revealed that the Jackal, who turned out to be Miles Warren, Peter and Gwen’s science professor at ESU, created her. Professor Warren revealed that he had always held a secret attraction towards Gwen, and blamed Spider-Man for her death. When Warren began experimenting with cloning technology in attempt to revive Gwen, he accidentally killed his assistant Serba in a fit of rage, but attempted to convince himself that he wasn’t the one who did it. Warren soon became convinced that Serba was actually killed by a Jackal (who he had overheard to be described as cowardly predators), developing a split-personality disorder in the process. He soon adopted the identity of the Jackal, and managed to successfully create a clone of Gwen. The Jackal later attempted to kill Spider-Man by having him fight against a clone of himself, who would later become Ben Reilly in THE CLONE SAGA. This caused the Gwen Stacy clone to berate the Jackal, causing him to realize how evil he had become. As a result, Warren ended up sacrificing himself in an explosion that not only killed him, but supposedly the Spider-Man clone as well. While I haven’t read the entire “original” CLONE SAGA, I have read the issue where Warren sacrifices himself, and felt that it fleshed out the Jackal’s character by admitting to his sins before dying. It was a great way to end his character development. However, when Ben was revived for THE CLONE SAGA, the writers felt that it was also necessary to revive the Jackal since he was the mastermind behind the clone’s creation. While this did make sense to me from a narrative perspective and potentially could have worked, the characterization of the Jackal in SMOKE AND MIRRORS is the story line’s major downfall as it insultingly disregards the character development he had undergone twenty years earlier.
The plot of SMOKE AND MIRRORS begins with the Scarlet Spider swinging across New York City before he suddenly suffers a hallucination of the Jackal about to attack him. Ben is confused by the illusion, as he not only knows that the Jackal is dead, but also feels that the hallucinations are somehow drawing him to a certain location. Elsewhere, Peter is preparing to celebrate his wife’s pregnancy before also suffering hallucinations about the Jackal calling out to him. While both Peter and Ben began to experience these hallucinations in the WEB OF DEATH and WEB OF LIFE arcs, Peter’s in particular are unique as they not only convey images of the Jackal, but also ones of him being trapped inside a cloning pod with wires hooked to his body, hinting at the possibility that he may actually be the clone, and not Ben Reilly. Meanwhile, the illusions lure Ben Reilly to a remote area in the Catskill Mountains, who is suddenly confronted by two mysterious individuals guarding a bunker. One of them is Jack, a little person wearing the Jackal’s costume, and the other is the Guardian, an enraged muscle-bound giant with veiny scars all over his body. After being defeated by the Guardian, Ben is soon reunited with Peter Parker for the first time since the events of POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY. The two then enter the bunker, which Jack reveals to be an enormous laboratory set up by the Jackal, who had actually survived the explosion back in the “original” CLONE SAGA back in the 70’s. Baffled by this sudden revelation, the two Spider-Men are soon confronted by the Jackal himself, who has spent the last five years genetically restructuring his body in a cellular matrix pod. The newly revived Jackal quickly overpowers Peter and Ben, revealing to them that the Jackal who had died back in the 70’s storyline was actually another clone, that Peter and Ben’s hallucinations were actually mental implants that he programed to activate once he was fully revived, and that inside one of his clone pods is supposedly Gwen Stacy. Not another clone, but the original Gwen. With these newfound revelations, will Spidey and Ben be able to defeat the Jackal and determine who is actually the original Spider-Man, or will the writers just use them as an excuse to pointlessly misdirect and confuse the reader?
SMOKE AND MIRRORS quite easily both the first genuinely bad storyline produced by THE CLONE SAGA, as well as the first one that I actually hate. Not only does the storyline do nothing to advance the overall plot of the saga and wastes the reader’s time with unnecessary twists and turns, but it also goes as far as to insult the characters and their development as established by past continuity. The character who is the most obviously damaged by this story arc is the Jackal, who is not only robbed of the development he originally underwent back in the 70’s, but is also insultingly mischaracterized. I’m not against the idea of reviving the Jackal itself, as it could be made to work (as evidenced to a degree in THE “REAL” CLONE SAGA miniseries), but it is the execution of it that fails. As I stated in my summary of the Jackal’s backstory, Professor Miles Warren became the Jackal because he blamed Spider-Man for Gwen Stacy’s death, and used his cloning technology as a means of reviving Gwen and getting his revenge on Peter. But when the clone of Gwen rejected him for attempting to kill Peter, Warren suddenly realized how evil he had become in his attempts to satisfy his own needs, and attempted to redeem himself by sacrificing his life for Peter and his friends. It was a satisfying conclusion for the Jackal’s development as a character, providing him depth as a sad and pathetic old man who became corrupted by his own desires, but redeemed himself when he acknowledged his sins and sacrificed his life. It turned the Jackal from a nasty and sinister creature, into a human being that readers could sympathize with. In SMOKE AND MIRRORS however, all of the development that gave the Jackal humanity and dimension is suddenly undone as it is revealed that the Jackal who died was not the real Miles Warren, but simply another clone. As a result, SMOKE AND MIRRORS retcons the Jackal’s character development by stating that he himself never actually acknowledged his mistakes, but that a clone of him did instead. I found this to be incredibly offensive as it robbed the Jackal any depth or humanity that he once had, effectively regressing his development as a character. Regression of character development is one of the biggest sins a writer can commit, as it robs the character of any dimension that they may have once had, disconnecting them from the reader in the process (it’s the exact same problem that I have with ONE MORE DAY, which I still think is 1,000 times worse than THE CLONE SAGA).
The regression of the Jackal’s development as a character also contributes to his horrible mischaracterization in both SMOKE AND MIRRORS and the rest of THE CLONE SAGA. Instead of the Jackal being the sympathetic villain that he once was, he is now portrayed as a stereotypical super villain from a Saturday morning cartoon show. Whereas the original Jackal’s vendetta against Spider-Man was motivated by his perverted love for Gwen Stacy, the Jackal in SMOKE AND MIRRORS does evil things just because he is evil. There is no logical motivation behind his actions, and simply does whatever he does because he’s the villain. This is most evident when he lies back-and-forth to Peter and Ben Reilly about who is the clone and who is the original. First he says that Ben is the real Peter Parker, then he says that Peter is the actually original, and finally contradicts both statements by saying that neither one of them is actually the real Peter Parker. It is never explained why the Jackal does this other than because he gets enjoyment out of tormenting them. It’s clear that the writers were trying to rip-off the Joker with their characterization of the Jackal here, but it fails miserably. The reason this sort of behavior works with the Joker however, is because he’s designed to symbolize mindless anarchy. It fails with the Jackal as it not only contradicts his original characterization, but it also doesn’t incorporate well with him being a geneticist obsessed with cloning. The other major problem with the Jackal’s mischaracterization is that his character design throughout THE CLONE SAGA is hilariously atrocious. The Jackal’s original costume, despite being green, truly emphasized what a predatory humanoid Jackal would look like. Here in SMOKE AND MIRRORS, the Jackal has suddenly been transformed into a green version of the Joker with troll-doll hair, while sporting an outfit stolen from THE MATRIX movies (and what makes me laugh even more is that this hilariously bad design some how manages to get even worse as THE CLONE SAGA progresses). Overall, the mischaracterization of the Jackal not only robs him of any dimension that the character once had, but regresses him into a “Saturday-Morning” cartoon super villain in the process.
Aside from how horribly written the Jackal was in this story, the other element of SMOKE AND MIRRORS that I found incredibly insulting was its attempts to convince the reader that Gwen Stacy was actually alive again. While it’s become a cliché in comics that “all characters who die will eventually be brought back to life in some way,” Gwen is one of the few characters that I feel should never be revived as her death had an enormous impact on Spider-Man’s mythos. Not only is the famous story were she was killed by the Green Goblin considered a classic, but her death also provided development for Spidey’s own character by making him more cautious when protecting those he cares about, and also brought him closer to Mary Jane who he eventually married. Although the Gwen Stacy in SMOKE AND MIRRORS is later revealed to actually be another clone and that the Jackal was simply lying about her being the original, the fact that the story even attempted to trick the reader into believing that this was the genuine Gwen and that she never died was unbelievably offensive in my opinion. Not only is it emotionally manipulative in its execution, but it attempts to convince the readers that the Gwen presented to them is in fact the real one, and that she had never died and has been trapped inside a “clone pod” for the last five years. I find this to be incredibly insulting as it goes completely against all of the development Spidey had undergone since her death and that the death itself was a huge event in Spidey’s mythos (though ironically, I did not take offense to Norman Osborn being revived later at the end of THE CLONE SAGA, and I’ll explain why when I finally get to REVELATIONS). It also doesn’t work from a narrative perspective because if the Jackal had been keeping the “real” Gwen inside a pod for the last five years, then why did Warren even make the clones or become the Jackal in the first place. Fortunately, this entire plot point becomes irrelevant as due to this Gwen actually being another clone, but the idea that the writers would even attempt to convince us otherwise just offends me.
The only positive things that I can give towards SMOKE AND MIRRORS is that Ben Reilly still remains a likable character throughout this mess, we do get some interesting scenes of Kaine watching everything from the shadows and showing concern for Peter, and the artwork by Mark Bagley and Tom Lyle is pretty good (despite having wonky perspective at points). Other than that, SMOKE AND MIRRORS is not only the first CLONE SAGA story that I dislike, but as editor Glenn Greenberg perfectly stated in THE LIFE OF REILLY essay, “it was this story that kicked off what would become an increasingly tiresome stream of clones, lies upon lies, fake-outs, and convoluted twists and turns.” I’m not saying that it alone contributed to the saga’s failure, but it was the first story that truly foreshadowed the story’s eventual collapse. The story line not only relied upon unnecessary twists for simple shock value, but it also went as far as to insult both the reader and past continuity through both its mischaracterization of the Jackal, as well as its manipulative suggestions towards Gwen Stacy’s death. But perhaps the worst sin of all is that in the end, the only thing that SMOKE AND MIRRORS accomplished in terms of progressing the saga’s plot was reviving the Jackal (abet horribly done in the process). Other than that, all it does is waste the reader’s time and insults the characters and stories that they read before it. I don’t believe that the insulting qualities of this story were intentional on the writer’s part (as from what I’ve read in THE LIFE OF REILLY, they come across as intelligent and polite individuals), but it’s what we get from the story’s execution. And while there were still quite a few good stories that would come after SMOKE AND MIRRORS, the decline of THE CLONE SAGA’S quality would become more evident from this point onward…
“I just don't believe that you have to come in and insult people when you want to change things.”
-Sydney Schanberg
