Credits: Story by Tom Lyle, breakdowns by Robert Brown, Roy Burdine, Mark Bagley with Tom Lyle, finishes by Sam DeLaRosa, Randy Emberlin, Roy Burdine, Al Milgrom and Scott Hanna, edited was done between Danny Fingeroth and Bob Budiansky.
Cast: Ben ‘Scarlet Spider’ Reilly, Peter ‘Spider-Man’ Parker, Mary Jane Watson Parker, J. Jonah Jameson, Dr Miles ‘The Jackal’ Warren, Scrier, Spidercide and the clone of Gwen Stacy.
Plot: The finale of Maximum Cloneage is here. The Jackal is on his way to the Daily Bugle building with his cloned jackal minions and a virus bomb and he’s left Ben fighting an amorphous blob made of the dissolved bodies of the clones he’d already beaten. The battle ends with the blob dissolving and an exhausted Ben heads to the Bugle.
Elsewhere in Peter’s Kitchen, Peter and FauxGwen decide to go to the Jackal at his lab as neither think they have a place in the regular world. MJ is now watching her life with Peter disintegrate in front of her. In the city, Jackal and his clones ensure that his viral attack will go unreported as they kill and replace all the newsreaders in the surrounding area. He is setting the virus bomb when he is opposed by Scrier and his new acolyte Spidercide. Peter and Gwen arrive at Jackal’s lab and contend with automatic defences. When they’re both safe Peter looks through the Jackal’s systems and finds his real plan of detonating the virus bomb and doing to the whole world, what he did to Springville, Ben arrives at the Bugle and tries to get J.J.J. to evacuate, a request punctuated by the fight between Spidercide and Jackal busting through the wall of his office. The news reports on the fight and MJ decides that she has to do something to grabs some web fluid to take to Ben.
Ben stands between Jackal and Spidercide, reminded about how everything he has done has been about Gwen Stacy’s death at the hands of the Green Goblin, a death he blames Peter for. The fight between Jackal and Spidercide gets to an exterior wall, which Jackal dissolves and this leaves the battling pair dangling above the city streets below. Ben struggles to web them as they fall with his sore ankle. As he holds on, Spidercide cuts the web and falls to his death. Pulled up, Jackal pulls a gun on Ben as thanks for saving him. Peter and Gwen arrive and Peter learns that Gwen intends to kill the Jackal. As Peter moves to intervene, Ben heads up to the roof to deal with the virus bomb. Jackal brings the fight with Peter to the roof, but gets himself webbed to a rooftop wall by Peter and Ben.
Peter and Ben disarm the virus bomb, as the Jackal clones free their master. The Jackal then faces an armed Gwen who wants revenge. Peter goes over to her and tries to point out that whilst a clone, she is a person and as human as anyone else. Gwen is reconsidering when MJ arrives, in this confusion, Gwen and the Jackal fall from the roof. MJ throws Ben web fluid and he tries to save them both, he manages to save Gwen, but the Jackal falls to his death. Then the virus bomb re-arms. Peter removes the viral payload and Ben swings the bomb into the air, for it to explode harmlessly. With Jackal dead, Spidercide inert and FauxGwen having walked away, it seems to be over.
Later Peter and MJ reconcile, planning for the future, Peter decides to swing over to see Ben, things need to be settled. But settled how? Ben is Ben, Peter is Peter, but who should be Spider-Man?
Notes: Finally we get to the end of this Saga within a saga, it also brings to head the ongoing story with the Jackal and tries to set up what can be regarded as a new status quo after Peter is revealed to be the clone, very much as if this is where the Saga was supposed to end. But instead we get a tired plot of a bomb/virus threat that has action movie third act written all over it. For an oversized issue, it does leave a lot of work for the last 5 pages to do and highlights how bloated and messy this clone saga has become. Ultimately we’re left with a few questions, why didn’t we see where Peter took out the viral payload? Why was the already replaced news staff able to report on the Bugle attack? What was Scrier’s part in all this and just who is going to be Spider-Man.
Now the last question would be resolved within the next few issues, the rest are left hanging, making this an unsatisfying tale.
Verdict: Writing 2 out of 5 – There’s an effort to tie it all together and give several characters their moment, but it does really lane. No one seems to have any stake in what’s going on. The idea of vat grown news anchors fixing the news is a good one, but this is wasted here as are most characters in this.
Art: 2 out of 5 – The art is a little slapdash with stylised almost cartoony pencils, robbing the story beats of any real emotion. Bagley’s Jackal was threatening, but this is very much the opposite direction and makes him look almost comical and not really in a good way. His death, falling in place of Gwen feels hollow and honestly it robs the finale of that big moment. I imagine that the art team on this was affected by availability or deadlines, but a better team could have been on this.
Overall: 4/10 – As well as this story started, Maximum Cloneage’s quality was front loaded and as it went on, it only got worse.
Next Time: Gambit returns as the Age of Apocalypse enters it’s final lap.
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