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The year was 1996, and Spider-Man was having a clone problem.

The Spider-Man titles were in the midst of a storyline that has become known as the Clone Saga. The storyline introduced Spider-Man’s clone Ben Reilly, and briefly toyed with the idea that he was the original Spider-Man, while Peter was the clone. While sales initially skyrocketed, the storyline went on too long, and readers became fatigued.

This was a problem for then-Spider-Man editor Ralph Macchio. The editor had to find a way to bring the Clone Saga to a close, while satisfying the readers and Marvel executives. It wouldn’t be easy.  Speaking to a crowd at Tampa Bay Comic Convention, Macchio recalled the chaos that occurred behind the scenes.

“The people who were upstairs, who were promotional people, wanted the Clone Saga to go on endlessly, because they thought we could get another Age of Apocalypse, but instead of X-Men, we would do this in Spider-Man. What happened was, it began to just drag, because there is just so much you could get out of this. Spider-Man books were beginning to drag down in sales. It was critical mass and the readers were no longer buying.”

“They established a lot of things. Ben Reilly was Spider-Man and Mary Jane was pregnant. [Editor] Bob Budiansky was let go, through no fault of his own. Bob did the best he could, but he was being directed by people upstairs. Bob Harras became editor-in-chief. He brought me in, and said, ‘Ralph, we have to fix this. I want to get rid of the baby, and I want to find somebody who could have been behind this whole thing.’”

Macchio quickly realized that in order for the Clone Saga to end, they needed a scapegoat. A villain to pin the whole thing on. The writers had chosen a mastermind, but Macchio didn’t agree with the choice. 

“They had set up Harry Osborn, and I said, ‘Bob, I agree, Harry Osborn is not a big enough personality to have done all this stuff to mess with Peter Parker’s life.’ So at the same moment Bob and I said, ‘Norman.’ We knew we were going to get grief for bringing Norman back, but he was the one guy who could’ve been behind it all.”

“We had to explain away the Scriers, Judas Traveller, and all the stuff. I talked to my writers, who at that time were a demoralized group of people, and I said, ‘We’re going to get this together. We’re going to put Peter Parker back as Spider-Man, we’re going to get rid of the baby, and we’re going to do a great scene where Norman shows up.’”

This resulted in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #75, which served as the grand finale to the Clone Saga. Norman Osborn revealed himself to Peter Parker, and Ben Reilly sacrificed himself to save the day. In the end, Ben Reilly was reduced to dust, which Macchio believed would definitively close the book on the character.

Not quite.

“We got rid of Ben Reilly. We reduced him to ashes floating away in the wind, and they still found a way to bring him back. I talked to [Spider-Man editor] Nick Lowe about this and said, ‘You had someone go up there and vacuum a couple of the pieces.’ They found a way to bring him back.”

In fact, Macchio had a small hand in Ben’s return. 

“20 years after I thought we got rid of Ben Reilly forever, Nick Lowe calls me up and asks me if I want to be consulting editor on the books that were going to bring Ben Reilly back. I agreed to this and I said, ‘I just can’t believe I’m doing this. You guys found a way to bring him back.’” 

In the ever-evolving world of Spider-Man, it seems that some stories, much like the characters themselves, are never truly finished…even when they’ve been turned to dust. 

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