Spider-Man: The Clone Saga- The Mark of Kaine

PART 6

Writers: Terry Kavanagh, J.M. DeMatteis, Howard Mackie, Tom DeFalco, and Tom Lyle

Artists: Steven Butler, Mark Bagley, Tom Lyle, Sal Buscema, Ron Lim, Ron Garney, and Tod Smith

Somewhat of a guilty pleasure as while I enjoyed THE MARK OF KAINE’s concepts, the narrative structure is just a mess…

Ranking: 3 stars

Welcome to part 6 of CLONE MADNESS fellow Spidey fans, where we delve into the story of Spider-Man’s clone Ben Reilly, a great character that unfortunately suffered under the writers constantly flip-flopping on whether he was a clone or the actual Peter Parker.

As I stated in my 4th CLONE MADNESS review, I felt that while THE CLONE SAGA started off with some truly great story lines such as THE EXILE RETURNS and WEB OF DEATH, it was with SMOKE AND MIRRORS that the first true signs of the saga’s eventual failure became apparent. While SMOKE AND MIRRORS in itself did not kill the saga, it did start its gradual decline in the qualities of the stories produced. Today’s story arc THE MARK OF KAINE, is a fascinating example of that gradual transition in quality. But before I begin my analysis of this story arc, I need to provide some backstory as the plot is centered on several events that have been built up to this point in THE CLONE SAGA. The first was a red herring the Jackal introduced at the introduced at the end of SMOKE AND MIRRORS, as he claimed that both Peter and Ben were clones, and that the real Spider-Man had been in cryogenic sleep for the past five years. The story ended an ominous image of a clone pod in the Jackal’s destroyed lab, which was revealed in the next storyline PLAYERS AND PAWNS (which while not great, was still a decent story) to contain another Peter clone who was suffering from amnesia, who escaped and began wondering back to New York while attempting to rediscover his identity. The other major plot point of THE MARK KAINE was one that was introduced in THE GIFT, which I discussed in my last CLONE SAGA review. At the end of that story, Jacob Raven, a detective from Salt Lake City, Utah, suddenly approaches Peter and arrests him on the charge of murder. This was a plot point that was built up in previous CLONE SAGA stories, as there were brief scenes of Detective Raven arriving in New York shortly after Ben and Kaine, and it was shown that he was hunting a mysterious serial killer that eluded him for the past five years. Raven’s scenes in those stories consisted him discussing the murder case with the NYPD, as well as questioning employees at the Daily Bugle about Peter Parker. These scenes not only effectively built-up to Peter’s arrest, but also hinted at the fact that Ben could have somehow been connected to the murders committed in Salt Lake City, as Peter’s fingerprints were discovered on the victims. However, in the arc that took place before this one, AFTERSHOCKS, it was revealed that Kaine was possibly been the real killer as while all of the murder victims had Peter Parker’s fingerprints on their bodies, they also had Kaine’s trademark “Mark of Kaine” scar on their faces, which he then used on Raven. With Peter in prison, Ben attempting to help MJ and her baby, Raven suspecting that he’s arrested the wrong man, a third Peter Parker clone still wondering around, and Kaine still on the loose, it has all led up to THE MARK OF KAINE. While this story that was originally intended to reveal more about Kaine’s identity and motives, it instead ended up accomplishing little in terms of progressing the plot of THE CLONE SAGA. This story is a weird one for me, as while I personally found THE MARK OF KAINE entertaining as it showcased several concepts that I thought were compelling, the narrative structure and dialogue are just a mess. As a result, this one is somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me…

The story opens to a chained-up Peter Parker being presented before the news media, who was previously arrested on the charges of first-degree murder. One of the on lookers in the crowd is Detective Jacob Raven, who despite having found Peter’s fingerprints on the trail of bodies from Salt Lake City to New York, is beginning to suspect Peter’s innocence due to new evidence in the form of the scar Kaine left across his face. Elseware, Mary Jane has been taken to see Ben Reilly’s friend and confidant Dr. Seward Trainer, a world-renowned geneticist who fears that Peter’s radioactive blood may negatively affect her baby. As Dr. Trainer monitors MJ’s growing fetus, Kaine is unknowingly watching them. Kaine has been closely keeping an eye on MJ since his arrival to New York as he has been recently suffering precognitive visions that foretell a future where an unknown assailant kills MJ and her unborn child. Because Kaine’s primary desire is to prevent anything from interfering with Peter having a happy life, he has become extremely focused on protecting MJ, even going as far as to kill villains like Doc Ock and the Grim Hunter in previous CLONE SAGA stories. As MJ walks home after receiving inclusive results from Trainer’s tests, she is suddenly abducted by Kaine, who feels that the only way to prevent her from being killed in the future is by hiding her in his sewer lair. Meanwhile, the mysterious third Peter clone has now regained his memories, believes to be the original, and is determined to rescue MJ and get his life back from the two “impostors.” At the same time, the actual Peter Parker escapes Rykers Island when he learns about his wife’s kidnapping. With Kaine holding MJ hostage for her supposed protection, a third clone going under the belief that he’s the original, and Peter and Ben reuniting to help find MJ, will they be able to rescue her and discover Kaine’s true motives, or will Kaine’s visions of MJ’s death truly come to pass.

From reading the summary alone, one can immediately tell that there is a lot of plot points touched upon in this story. While I don’t feel that this automatically ruins the story, it does help contribute to THE MARK OF KAINE’s narrative shortcomings. Because the writers felt like they had to tie-up numerous plot points that they built up in previous story lines, it not only causes the narrative structure to become a jumbled mess, but also means that the writers were unable to accomplish what they originally intended to do with this story. Based on the information that I’ve read from the 36-part online essay, THE LIFE OF REILLY (which offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on what the original writers and editors felt went wrong with THE CLONE SAGA), THE MARK OF KAINE was intended to shed some light on Kaine’s true identity, reasons for hating Ben Reilly, and motives for wanting to protect Peter, as well as wrap up the stuff with the third Peter Parker clone. The writers somewhat succeeded in wrapping up the third clone’s arc by revealing that he’s actually another clone that the Jackal programed to mutate into a shape-shifting genetic monstrosity. While this was done well to an extent (as he had some intriguing moments in suffering an identity crisis), I felt that overall this third clone wasn’t really needed in the saga as he was basically just a red-herring designed to mislead the readers. The other problem with this third Peter was that while the story did clear up the fact that he wasn’t the real Spidey, for unknown reasons he kept appearing in later story lines as a shape-shifting assassin working for the Jackal (made worse his new cringe-inducing name “Freakface,” and another that was even worse later in MAXIMUM CLONAGE). The other thing that THE MARK OF KAINE failed to accomplish was in revealing Kaine’s true identity and backstory in the story. While the writer’s still give Kaine compelling moments in emphasizing his efforts to protect MJ from death, it’s still not revealed why he is going so far to protect Peter Parker, and his identity as a failed Spider-Man clone was pushed back to being revealed in THE TRIAL OF PETER PARKER story. Also, I felt that there should have been more focus on Detective Raven attempting to find evidence to prove Peter’s innocence, so that the reveal of Kaine as the actual murderer would been more effectively set-up for future stories. So what exactly went wrong here?

Well referring back to THE LIFE OF REILLY essay, Spider-Man editor Glenn Greenberg speculated that it was the marketing department that was to blame. As I’ve stated in previous CLONE SAGA reviews, Marvel was suffering serious financial troubles during the 1990’s because of Ron Perelman and the speculator boom. Their economic troubles were so disastrous to the point that the company was later forced to declare bankruptcy in As a result, the marketing department actually possessed veto power over the creative decisions, and because sales of THE CLONE SAGA were strong at the time, the story was ordered to be stretched out as much as possible. By the time of THE MARK OF KAINE, the writers were already feeling that they needed to start wrapping things up since they originally intended to wrap things up in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #400, which ended up being THE GIFT story line that I talked about last time. Based on this information, I get the sense that the writers wanted to use THE MARK OF KAINE to start wrapping things up, but the marketing department’s interference caused the story arc to be overly stretched out and pushed important plot points like the reveal of Kaine’s identity into later CLONE SAGA stories instead. As a result, it feels as if THE MARK OF KAINE has a bunch of plot points crammed into it as if the writers were trying to resolve the CLONE SAGA as quickly as possible while also resisting marketing interference at the same time. As a result, the narrative structure of the story becomes a huge mess with the dialogue feeling unfinished in several scenes, and certain plot points being padded out to longer than they should have been in order to fill up five issues. So what could have been a story that successfully wrapped up multiple plot points ends up accomplishing little in terms of the overall CLONE SAGA narrative due to marketing interference with creative decisions.

Based on the information I’ve provided, you’d think that THE MARK OF KAINE was a story I absolutely hated. Ironically though, despite the serious problems with the story’s narrative, I was actually really enjoying myself throughout the story, and felt that the majority of the concepts presented in THE MARK OF KAINE were genuinely good. Because of this, THE MARK OF KAINE ends up being somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me (similar to ULTIMATES 3). I like to define a guilty pleasure as a story that while you know it suffers serious problems and is technically not good, for one reason or another you can’t help but still enjoy it. THE MARK OF KAINE meets these qualifications in my opinion as while the narrative structure is a mess, and the dialogue felt unfinished, I actually enjoyed most of the scenes and ideas they featured. I’m not talking about just one or two scenes though, I mean that 95% of the comic was filled with scenes and concepts that I thought were actually well thought-out. For instance, I loved how much emphasis placed on Kaine’s desire to protect Mary Jane and her baby from being killed in the future. As I previously stated, Kaine had been getting ominous visions about MJ being killed by an unknown attacker in several stories that took place before, which motivates Kaine to go as far as to kill several Spider-Man villains in order to prevent her death from happening. Because this plot point had been heavily built-up I enjoyed seeing the lengths that Kaine was willing to go in order to protect MJ, making it feel as if things were finally starting to go down with this scenario. While this is not entirely the case, it does result in an awesome action sequence between Kaine and Peter, Ben, and the third Spider-Man clone. I also really enjoyed the scenes where Peter and Ben were working together to find MJ, as it not only showed how much Peter loved his wife, but it was also one of the first times in THE CLONE SAGA to see the two working alongside each other as allies. Speaking of Ben Reilly, there’s also a compelling moment where he volunteers to take Peter’s place in prison so Peter could be with his pregnant wife. I also enjoyed a scene where MJ temporarily escapes from Kaine and is revealed to have secretly owned a gun in order to protect herself from Peter’s enemies. What I found interesting about this scene was how it showed while MJ was willing to stand-up for herself, she simultaneously felt guilty about possessing a firearm due to her husband’s moral principles against killing. It not only provided a deep moment for Mary Jane’s character, but also conveyed a realistic dilemma of being married to a superhero. Other scenes and concepts I enjoyed in THE MARK OF KAINE were those of Peter suffering the stress of being imprisoned, Spidey’s enemies teaming up to stop Kaine from killing more super villains, as well as basically any scene just featuring Ben Reilly and Kaine, who are my two favorite characters throughout the entire CLONE SAGA.

It’s because of these several scenes that feature concepts and ideas that I found genuinely compelling, that I found THE MARK OF KAINE entertaining despite the problems with it’s narrative structure. As I was reading these scenes, I kept thinking to myself, “while the narrative is a mess and the dialogue feels rushed, that was actually rather profound and entertaining.” If it were only one or two scenes that I thought were good, this would have gotten a two-star rating or lower, but because there were so many enjoyable scenes for me I just can’t bring myself to hate it. As a result THE MARK OF KAINE ends up being a guilty pleasure in my eyes as while it fails on a narrative level, and was the first sign of the marketing interference becoming particularly noticeable, on a conceptual level, it features multiple scenes and concepts that I found to be compelling and entertaining. I do wish that THE MARK OF KAINE could have succeeded in accomplishing the goals the writers originally set out to do, but for what we got, I still found it to be decent and entertaining. What’s truly astonishing though, is that while THE MARK OF KAINE’s narrative structure was a mess on several levels, I’d go as far as to say that it’s actually Oscar-worthy in comparison to the next two stories that would come afterwards: THE TRIAL OF PETER PARKER and MAXIMUM CLONAGE, both of which are considered to be the absolute worst stories of the entire CLONE SAGA!

“I don't believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. But at least if you try to do good things, then you're spending your time doing something worthwhile.”

-Helen Mirren

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