Welcome to the five hundred and seventy-ninth in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the first five hundred (I actually haven't been able to update it in a while). This week, in honor of the news that Marvel is re-visiting the Clone Saga with their next big Spider-Man event, The Clone Conspiracy, this week is an all-Clone Saga edition of CBLR! Was the original intent of 1990s Clone Saga to make Spider-Man single again? Was Harry Osborn going to be the mastermind behind the Clone Saga? And finally, did the negative reaction to the Clone Saga change the ending of DC's Superman event, "Dead Again"?

Let's begin!

NOTE: The column is on three pages, a page for each legend. There's a little "next" button on the top of the page and the bottom of the page to take you to the next page (and you can navigate between each page by just clicking on the little 1, 2 and 3 on the top and the bottom, as well).

COMIC LEGEND: The Clone Saga was developed as a plan to get Spider-Man single again.

STATUS: False

It's amazing how far comic book projects can go from where they began. In a past CBLR, I discussed how the original Clone Saga began with a simple directive from Stan Lee to the writer of Amazing Spider-Man, Gerry Conway, "bring Gwen Stacy back!" That simple idea became the inspiration for the Clone Saga.



Similarly, when the writers of the Spider-Man titles got together to brainstorm an idea that would serve as their next big event (the massive success of the Death of Superman had made it so that every major comic book franchise had to start coming up with yearly events. The year earlier, their event was the smash hit Maximum Carnage storyline), they had a basic idea. That basic idea went much, much further than their original intent.

However, that leads to the question - what WAS their original basic idea? Many fans believe that the original idea was to introduce a new, single Spider-Man, as almost as soon as Spider-Man got married, the people writing his comic book series were looking to ways to get rid of the marriage. So was that the idea behind the Clone Saga? Introduce a clone of Peter Parker, but then reveal that he was the REAL Peter Parker so that they could have a single Spider-Man again while keeping Peter and Mary Jane married?



It does not appear that that was the case. Howard Mackie explained to Matt Adler that the whole "make Spider-Man single" idea was not part of their original plan, but it WAS something that came up with they came up with the idea (first suggested by Terry Kavanagh) of introducing a clone of Spider-Man...



However, even then, while yes, the initial plan WAS to reveal that Ben Reilly was the "original" Peter Parker, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco and Spider-Man group editor Danny Fingeroth had another plan at the time entirely.

For this one and the next legend, I'll be relying heavily on Andrew Goletz and Glenn Greenberg's seminal work on the 1990s Clone Saga, "Life of Reilly." Their website going over, bit by bit, the various behind-the-scenes narrative behind the Clone Saga is fascinating - one of the best pieces of comic book historical writing you'll ever read.

Goletz interviewed DeFalco, and he laid out the original plans for the Clone Saga, and said original plans are shocking in how normal they are...

Andrew: Was there any consideration about just bringing Ben Reilly back to introduce a new character and rogues gallery, or was the sole purpose to shock the readers by making him the real deal?

Tom: Here's a secret - when I finally okayed the clone saga, I told Danny Fingeroth to build a backdoor into it. I said that I wanted to be able to bring Peter back as the real deal. But I didn't tell Danny everything. I believe that both comic book creators and comic book fans are a cowardly and superstitious lot. While the fans claim they want change, they tend to react negatively to it. So do most creators! With this in mind, I later updated Mark Gruenwald on our plans for the clone saga. Mark was my second-in-command, and the logical guy to succeed me. He and I agreed that Peter was the real guy, but that we would let the Spider-team try to convince the readers otherwise. If the Spider-creators succeeded, they would love the idea of the old switcheroo. If they failed, they'd be soooo harry that they had a backdoor. Either way, the readers were guaranteed a great story with a lot of unexpected twists.

Andrew: How were you going to resolve the Clone Saga initially?

Tom: Our plan was to structure the clone saga like a three-act play. Act One would climax at or around Amazing #400 - when we revealed that Pete was the clone and Ben was the real guy. Act Two would last around three months and follow Ben's adventures. In Act Three, Peter would triumphantly return as the one, true Spider-Man. Mark and I were hoping the Spider-crew could make Ben a viable character during his turn in the spotlight, and we planned to star Ben in his own monthly title after Peter returned. It was kind of like what I had already done with Thor and Thunderstrike - two very different titles based on a single concept. Of course, our plan went into the trash the day I got fired, and Mark wasn't picked to succeed me.

At the time, that sure seemed to be the way to go. Scarlet Spider went over very well when he was introduced, so I remember thinking, "Well, this is set up well to spin him off into his own book." Instead, they went the other direction and got rid of "Peter Parker" while making Ben the star of the Spider-Man titles.

Once they decided that they were not going to keep Ben as Spider-Man, though, the books needed a way out of it all, and they needed an evil mastermind. In the next legend, learn who that evil mastermind was going to be at first!

But as to this legend, Mackie says that it wasn't intended to get rid of the marriage and DeFalco says that Peter was always intended to return, so I think it is safe to give this one a false.

Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:

Who Was the Surprising Mystery Owner of Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl Costume?

Did the Authors of Curious George Escape From the Nazis on Bicycles With a Copy of the Manuscript?

Did Nightmare on Elm Street Originally Have a Happy Ending?

COMIC LEGEND: Harry Osborn was going to be the evil mastermind behind the Clone Saga.

STATUS: True

Many moons ago, I discussed in Comic Book Legends Revealed about how, for a time, the plan to end the Clone Saga was to use Mephisto and time travel to tie everything together. That plan was dropped in favor of one that began in the storyline "Blood Brothers," where Peter Parker is brought back to New York City and the endgame for the Clone Saga began.

That storyline introduced a new villain known as Gaunt...



In Amazing Spider-Man #410, we see Gaunt and learn what his deal is...



In the following issue, he fights Spider-Man and Harry Osborn's former brother-in-law, the Molten Man and boy, it sure seems like this guy is Harry Osborn....









On the Life of Reilly, Glenn Greenberg explains the original plan:

[T]he mystery man, who had become known as Gaunt, was intended to be the master villain behind the whole clone saga. His identity was going to be revealed at the climax of "Blood Brothers." Now, the truth can be told.

Gaunt was intended to be Harry Osborn. It would have been revealed that the Goblin formula had not really killed Harry in SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #200, but it did cause his body to start to weaken and wither away. Harry had essentially become a living corpse, and the environmental suit he wore was the only thing keeping him alive. Harry was blackmailing Seward Trainer into restoring his body, holding some great secret over Seward's head. (Bob Budiansky suggested that the secret was that Seward had worked with the Jackal on his original cloning experiments, which would explain why he felt such an attachment to Ben Reilly.)

So Harry, the second Green Goblin, Peter's onetime best friend, would have been the architect of the whole thing, and Ben would have died in the final confrontation. So what happened? Well, around the time "Blood Brothers" got underway, Marvel reorganized again and Bob Harras, the EIC of the X-Men Group, became Marvel's one and only Editor in Chief. Budiansky, now the Spider-Man "Group Editor," had to answer to Harras. And one of the first things Harras did was tell Budiansky to postpone the end of the clone saga until at least October. Harras's explanation was that there was going to be a big X-Men event happening in April 1996, and he didn't want the end of the clone saga to have to compete with that. Since "Onslaught" happened around that time, I have to assume that that was the big X-Men event Harras was referring to.

The other thing Bob Harras did upon taking over as EIC was reject the notion that Harry Osborn would be the big villain. Harras told me personally, "I never felt that Harry had the power or the presence of his father, he always seemed very ineffective to me as the Goblin." So even though work had already begun on the story, and clues were already being dropped that Gaunt was Harry, Harry had to be dropped from the plans.

Harry's father, Norman Osborn, turned out to be the ACTUAL mastermind of the Clone Saga.



Thanks to The Life of Reilly for the awesome information!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Was Good Will Hunting originally an action thriller?

COMIC LEGEND: DC changed the ending to the Superman event, "Dead Again," due to negative reactions over the clone saga.

STATUS: I'm Going With False

Reader LG wrote in to ask:

Is it true that DC changed the ending of the Superman Dead Again storyline because of the Spider-Man clone saga storyline ?

"Dead Again" was a three-month event (the Superman writers also got themselves stuck with the success of The Death of Superman, so THEY had to come up with new events every year, like the Trial of Superman, the Death of Clark Kent, etc.) where the "real" corpse of Superman shows up and makes people doubt whether Superman is really Superman or if Superman stayed dead after the Death of Superman.



Let's put it simply, the Clone Saga began in books cover-dated October 1994...



Dead Again began in books cover-dated November 1994...



So no, the latter was not re-written based on reaction to the former. No one has ever even really claimed as such, outside of a conspiracy theory posted on Bleeding Cool, but that was not so much of a "this really happened" so much as "this COULD have happened."

In addition, the first part of the Clone Saga was WELL received. There's a reason they kept extending it, ya know? It was POPULAR.

Plus, if you actually read Dead Again, they clearly didn't change anything. There are hints that Brainiac (the ultimate villain) was behind it all the way.

I typically don't confirm or debunk stuff like this without a creator confirmation, but yeah, this one is so obviously false, I'm not even going to wait for that.

Thanks to LG for the suggestion!

Okay, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!

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See you all next week!