>Put the entire 90s Clone Saga out in TPB, under two different trade lines (Complete Clone Saga/Complete Ben Reilly)

>>Put the entire 90s Clone Saga out in TPB, under two different trade lines (Complete Clone Saga/Complete Ben Reilly)
>>Churn them out and basically let them fall out of print since they are huge $35-40
>>Repackage the first two Comlete Clone Saga TPBs as an omnibus with a small print run as a tie-in for Clone Conspiracy, because in spite of the story's negative reputation, the trades actually sold out better than expected
>>Do this even though there are TONS of Spidey runs (the DeMattius Spectacular Spider-Man run, the JMS Spidey run, Christopher Priest's Web of/Amazing Spider-Man, PAD's Spectacular Spider-Man) that deserve an omnibus reprint
>>Just as the first omnibus comes out, you also announce you are re-issuing all of the older Clone Saga TPBs, essentially fucking over sales for the omnibus since people will just buy the existing TPBs.

Seriously, what the fuck?????

They also are putting out an Erik Larsen Spidey omnibus even though they just reprinted his entire ASM run as part of the Epic line a year ago.

They did this even though the entire JMS Spider-Man trade series is out of print now and despite being the last good Spider-Man run (and one of Marvel's biggest evergreen TPB lines since 2000), has never been given the omnibus treatment

Marvel has always treated Spider-Man like shit trade paperback wise. Especially with needless double dipping.....

Hell, the fact that Spectacular Spider-Man #178-200 has never been collected but Byrne's giant size abortion of a Spider-Man run has been collected, alone shows you how bad things are in terms of Marvel not having a clue

Is the Clone Saga worth reading?

It's got a horrific reputation and all, but with Ben Reilly coming back and it being the story that gave us Kaine (who was great as Scarlet Spider), I have to wonder if it's worth picking up the omnibus and the OOP Ben Reilly trades?

Yes and no.

The storyline itself is a huge clusterfuck, dragged out by executives and editorial to the point of farce. Also, due to the way the books were released at the time, Howard Mackie was given the task of dealing with all of the chapters that answered major questions and his general bungling of those parts of the story were the basis for his negative reputation with fans and why he got the lion share of the blame for the story.

It has some good moments, but also bad ones. While Ben's run as Spidey was decent, it was kneecapped from day one by the decision to have him keep the Ben Reilly name even after declaring him the real Peter Parker. Also, Planet of the Symbiotes and anything involving Venom/Carnage was good in terms of the quality increasing when they were involved.

Kaine is poorly written in the Clone Saga and doesn't even resemble Yost's version. He's basically Kevin Nash cosplaying as Phantom of the Opera: a menacing thug who has annoying moment of angst.

The first four Ben Reilly volumes are worth picking up if you have to buy any of the books, but be warned the quality is kind of hit or miss. In particular the story with Ben meeting the daughter of the man who killed Uncle Ben (a story that JMS tried to retcon out in his run, before editorial told him he couldn't) is particularly bad since Dan Jurgens kept pushing it as the centerpiece of his run with Ben even though it clearly doesn't work without using the Peter Parker everyone loves.

Personally I liked it, but it's got plenty of shit stories (and art) and they really stretched it way beyond it's natural ending point. I was super pissed that they went and killed Ben in favor of bringing Peter back, so there is some definite bias involved.

>While Ben's run as Spidey was decent, it was kneecapped from day one by the decision to have him keep the Ben Reilly name even after declaring him the real Peter Parker.

Oh come on, Ben pretending to be Peter would have never worked.

>Dan Jurgens kept pushing it as the centerpiece of his run with Ben even though it clearly doesn't work without using the Peter Parker everyone loves.

But it made sense, since Ben's memories only stretch to the early years of Spider-man, and they needed some kind of a linchpin to show how different Ben had become from Peter during the years that he lived in self-imposed exile, and not being Spider-man.

>but Byrne's giant size abortion of a Spider-Man run has been collected

I never understood why that was even collected. Usually with these collections there's some reason for collecting it (like a character was gonna show up in the films or something or important to an upcoming story) but there seemed to be no real reason to collect that story. Was Slott going to establish the Chapter One version as an alt universe character in Spider-Verse but changed his mind?

>I never understood why that was even collected

I think it's pretty obvious: John Byrne still is a household name, and like it or not, his Chapter One and his awful run had plenty of status quo shakeups that people might see interesting. And I'm not sure if they've ever reprinted it before.

If I recall correctly, Byrne's work is a huge evergreen seller for Marvel when it comes to trade paperbacks/hardcovers/etc.

If I recall correctly, the thing that cinched it was that they released X-Men the Hidden Years and the second Hulk run of Byrne's both sold well in spite of their bad reputation. So they decided to complete the hat trick and release his Spidey work.

That having been said, even Marvel knows that the work he did on Spider-Man is widely reviled; hence why the John Byrne FF Omnibus omitted Amazing Spider-Man #4 (the infamous "Sandman never reformed" story) even though they included in the omnibus, every other Thing story Byrne did, including the XTHY and ASM V2 covers he did (excluding #4) that had the FF on them.

Ben keeping the Ben Reilly name was a half measure.

One of the proposed endings for Maximum Clonage (which underwent numerous rewrites) was going to be a "kill them all" ending: MJ, Peter, and the Gwen Stacy clone were all supposed to die and in the case of Ben, with Peter dead, he'd resume his old life.

This was dropped because half the Spider-Man writing team, were pissed off editorial was going to go ahead with making Ben the real Peter Parker, as opposed to doing a fake out as originally planned when they first pitched the idea of making Ben the real thing. They also refused to allow MJ to die (editorial wanted a single Peter Parker) and Clone Gwen's death got dropped because Maximum Clonage's ending kept getting rewritten so many times that they couldn't squeeze it into the story given the additions being made to it.

They also proposed just sticking MJ/Peter/Ben in an explosion: MJ dies and there is a corpse so badly burnt it can't be identified and a badly burnt fellow that later gets IDed as Peter via DNA and we never find out if it was Ben or Peter that lived, due to the survivor having suffered extensive memory loss.....

>Kaine is poorly written in the Clone Saga and doesn't even resemble Yost's version.

Yeah, it's not *supposed* to, they are basically very different characters from what Kaine was and what he went through to get to the Yost version.

If anyone got in expecting Kaine to be the Yost version already then they're doing it wrong.

mackie deserves all the shit he gets tho, his awful run afterwards just confirmed how terrible he was, defalco on the other hand, got his reputation damaged by it but he still did spider girl wich was great

remember when the clone saga was going to be a time travel fuckery story instead? with ben being just a future or past version of peter, i don´t remember

>remember when the clone saga was going to be a time travel fuckery story instead?
what the fuck?!
i've never heard this before

DeFalco was the one who did Spider-Girl

That's kinda weird, are they just selling better because people miss the storytelling Byrne represents? Then again I probably would too after reading so much stuff in the last seven years that's making me almost prefer Byrne's late 90's Marvel work. It's that bad.

>However, in July 1995 Tom Brevoort proposed a story in which Ben Reilly is sent five years back in time (to the end of the original Clone Saga) by the Scrier, as part of a contest between himself and Judas Traveller. The Scrier would be revealed as Mephisto, who would appear at the end of the "time loop" to give Ben the option of saving Peter's life in place of his own. This would eliminate the idea that either Ben or Peter was a clone, instead asserting that Ben was Peter from 5 years in the future, sent back by Mephisto to co-exist with the current Peter. The Jackal would be responsible for convincing Peter that was sent back in time that he was a clone, thus taking on the ID of Ben. The major selling point to this plan was that it would restore the memories of Ben (who was really Peter all along) and thus hopefully satisfy longtime readers.

They're selling because people remember his greatest hits and aren't necessarily familiar with how badly received his Spider-man was. Keep in mind that it's been nearly twenty years when Chapter One first hit the stands. There's an entire generation who have no idea what shitshow those stories were.

>the Clone Saga is still fucking things up decades later
Some things never change

what the actual fuck
that sounds interesting though.

its still a bit confusing

>In particular the story with Ben meeting the daughter of the man who killed Uncle Ben (a story that JMS tried to retcon out in his run, before editorial told him he couldn't) is particularly bad since Dan Jurgens kept pushing it as the centerpiece of his run with Ben even though it clearly doesn't work without using the Peter Parker everyone loves.

>Not liking Jessica Carradine

The hell is wrong with you?

>It has some good moments, but also bad ones.

This.

But some of those good moments are top tier Spider-Man moments.

For example, ASM #400's The Gift story, is one of the single greatest Spider-Man comics ever published.

The Exile Returns, Media Blizzard, Revelations and Blood Brother are also very good stories within the 90s Clone Saga.

Chapter One is officially non-canon though, and rightfully so.

>a story that JMS tried to retcon out in his run, before editorial told him he couldn't
What's this avout? Can I get a source?

If you don't wanna read the actual comic just read Life of Reilly. It's the majority of the Clone Saga summed up in a bunch of blog posts, and shows a look inside the creative and editorial process for the books at the time.

People have heard of The Clone Saga, and will therefore buy it.

That's their logic.

This

Clone Saga hasn't been an issue since it ended. Slott is fucking up Spider-Man comics right now.