Marvel's Bizarre BTS Story about the Spider-Man Clone's Hottest Meet-Cute

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, see how the Christmas meeting between the Ben Reilly Spider-Man and Human Torch had a crazy origin!

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twentieth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

The Christmas meeting between the Human Torch and the Ben Reilly Spider-Man was written years before Ben Reilly showed up in the Spider-Man books

STATUS:

True

Recently, as part of our look at 1990s Christmas comics all December long, I spotlighted the "first" meeting of the Human Torch and the Ben Reilly Spider-Man in "Merry Christmas, Mister Storm" from Spider-Man Holiday Special #1 by Sholly Fisch, Robert Brown, Josh Hood and Al Williamson

First off, here's a recap of the story, from my initial write-up...

The story opens with Johnny wondering where Spider-Man was and sending off a Spider-Man-shaped flare to get his attention.

Meanwhile, he thinks back to the previous year.

This allowed for a cute bit by Fisch where he has Johnny recount all of the crazy stuff that he went through in the pages of the Fantastic Four in 1991-1993. It was quite a busy year as Tom DeFalco was doing everything he could to make Fantastic Four a "hot" book, and that meant lots of turmoil in the life of the Fantastic Four, most prominently being Johnny learning that his wife was actually a Skull and Reed Richards seemingly dying.

Peter then reveals to Johnny for the first time that he is married, making this a rather notable moment, really...

Peter tries to take the moment to an even bigger step by revealing his identity to Johnny, but Johnny tells him not to. They then exchange presents, with Johnny giving him a Venom action figure, which is pretty hilarious, and Spidey gives Johnny a seemingly simple gift, but the REAL gift is Spider-Man's telephone number printed on the base of the gift that he says Johnny can call whenever he needs to talk.

Well, Spider-Man shows up in response to the signal (how Spider-Man gets to the top of the Statue of Liberty by webswinging is beyond me. There really isn't anything to swing FROM, is there? Perhaps he made web-glider-wing?) and they suddenly have to face the fact that this isn't the same Spider-Man that Johnny has known for all of these years, which leads to a conversation...

Again, though, the weird thing here is that they ARE friends, they are just friends who haven't spoken in years. That's really something that I would have liked to have seen explored a bit more with Ben Reilly, which is the fact that he actually DOES know most of the heroes who were still active in 1995, he just hasn't spoken to them in years. The relationships are still there, though.

In any event, Fisch (who is always great) turns things around and now it is Johnny offering HIS phone number to Ben to talk to if he needs help. Very cool stuff.

The amusing thing, though, is that the story was originally NOT written as a meeting of the Human Torch and Ben Reilly, but just of Torch and Peter Parker's Spider-Mam!

You see, Fisch originally did just the Peter Parker Spidey/Torch stuff as his original story that was written and sold to Marvel and it was going to appear in I believe either the 1993 or 1994 Marvel Holiday Specials, but then the editor of those specials, Renee Witterstaetter, left the Holiday Specials projects and the problem is that the incoming editor didn't know that Witterstaetter had already purchased Fisch's story (and was just waiting for someone to draw it) until it was too late to be included in that year's special. Fisch had already been paid for the story, but he wanted to still see it published if possible, but it was too late for that first year.

Fisch then pitched the story to Spider-Man editor Danny Fingeroth so that it could possibly be included in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, who had begun to use back-up stories at the time, and perhaps this story that was done for the special could be repurposed as a back-up story. It certainly has the feel of something that would you see as a back-up story, especially in the multiple over-sized issues that Marvel seemed to be releasing of the Spider-Man books at the time (not even getting into the "Super Specials" that Marvel would release o all of the Spider-Man books later in 1995). Fingeroth really liked the story, but then he was out as the editor on the Spider-Man books and so Fisch was seemingly out of luck.

Then he pitched it to Sarra Mossoff, who had edited a Holiday Special, as well, and she was putting together a Spider-Man special for 1995 and it would be a perfect opportunity to use Fisch's story, but the problem was that now the story was out of date because Peter was the Spider-Man in the story and he no longer WAS Spider-Man in the comics!

So Fisch came up with a clever framing sequence involving the Ben Reilly Spider-Man and the rest is awesome Christmas history! The story works so well together it is fascinating to learn that it was not intended that way right from the start!

Thanks to Sholly Fisch for the information!