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- NARRATOR: Following
the death of Superman,
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00:00:02,919 --> 00:00:06,259
the comic book industry was
experiencing a boom in
sales.
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00:00:06,256 --> 00:00:08,676
Publishers began courting
the collector market
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00:00:08,675 --> 00:00:11,255
by introducing variant covers
with fancy printing
techniques
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00:00:11,261 --> 00:00:13,141
and special editions.
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00:00:13,138 --> 00:00:16,388
Feeling the pressure from the
enormous success of
Superman,
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Marvel had to come up with an
idea that would attempt
to garner
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the same level of
frenzied reader and collector
interest.
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- So they killed Superman.
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And the whole world
loses its shit.
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You turn on the TV, you open a
newspaper, and it's Superman,
Superman, Superman.
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So, my question is,
how do we respond?
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[triumphant music playing]
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- REED: So, over at
Marvel, they decided
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they were going to try to
do something with their most
popular character.
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- Who's your most favorite
character? - CHILD: Uh,
Spider-Man.
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- REED: And one of the
problems that the Marvel editos
had with Spider-Man
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00:00:59,684 --> 00:01:03,944
was so many stories had been
told about him by the 1990s
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that he was starting to
feel a little bit older.
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00:01:06,691 --> 00:01:09,491
- Why did you decide now
that they should get married?
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- Oh, just look at this
couple. How can you keep them
apart?
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- By the time
we came to 1994,
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he had a regular job and
he was married to Mary Jane
Watson,
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00:01:17,994 --> 00:01:20,584
and they had a
penthouse apartment.
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- TERRY: As the writers
and editorial aged
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and got families
and mortgages, et cetera,
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we sort of wrote
Spider-Man along with us.
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But then we found
ourselves in this situation
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where we had written him
away from our core audience.
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He no longer had a
16-year-old's problems, and now
he had our father's
problems.
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- And so, when we were tasked to
come up with our counter to
The Death of Superman,
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part of it was to get Peter
Parker back to the young
version
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that we had all known
and grown to love.
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We were brought together
in a conference room
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with the editorial staff
and a few of the artists.
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- TERRY STEWART: Sales are down.
Readers aren't relating.
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We got Peter Parker
all grown up.
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He's married. He's
doing grown-up stuff.
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So, what's our next story-line
for him gonna be?
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Is he gonna get a prostate exam?
Maybe he falls and he can't get
up.
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- HOWARD: It was just thrown
out to the table, if anybody hd
any thoughts.
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Probably what I did was throw
Terry under the bus and say,
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"Terry's got an idea."
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- I am very shy, so I didn't say
anything until Howard forced me
to.
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00:02:24,185 --> 00:02:24,805
- Anybody?
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- We have... I have an
idea. I mean, we... we have.
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- Clones.
- TERRY: Clones.
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- Clones?
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- NARRATOR: Since the
beginning, Spider-Man's
tights
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have always been filled by
a guy named Peter Parker.
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But in the
early '70s,
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writer Gerry Conway
wrote a story where Spider-Man
meets his clone,
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another web-slinger who
went by the name Ben Reilly.
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00:02:53,131 --> 00:02:54,551
- ALEX: So the
original clone story
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where Gerry Conway writes
about Professor Miles Warren,
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who was also known as the
Jackal, who creates a clone of
Peter Parker.
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- I thought it would be
fun to have Spider-Man fight his
clone.
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And then at the end of it,
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leave it kind of ambiguous of
which of them was the
real Spider-Man.
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- And there was in fact
a clone of Spider-Man out there
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somewhere in the
Marvel Universe.
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And so, their idea was,
they were going to bring that
clone
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back into the major
Spider-Man titles in a
big way.
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- NARRATOR: By revisiting
the old clone story-line,
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the writers had new
inspiration to create a
blockbuster saga for Marvel.
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- Okay, so the
clone is Ben Reilly,
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and we have Peter confront him
on the roof of the hospital
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where he's visiting Aunt May at.
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- What we posited was the
Spider-Man that we thought had
died
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was actually the
original Peter Parker,
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and he had gone away,
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and the character
who had remained
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and who had then ultimately
had all these
adventures
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and married Mary Jane was the
clone named Ben
Reilly.
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- Since has has
all of Peter's Spidey powers,
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he becomes a superhero
all on his own,
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the Scarlet Spider.
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00:04:02,867 --> 00:04:07,247
- REED: The Clone-Saga
sold very well because it was n
event.
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00:04:07,247 --> 00:04:10,417
You know, it was basically
introducing this other
Spider-Man,
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so people thought
they had to buy that.
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- And similar to
Death of Superman,
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this crossover multiple
issues of comics,
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Spider-Man had four different
comics going on at the same
time,
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00:04:19,968 --> 00:04:22,428
and they were all
leading into each other.
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So, you had to buy all four
comics each month to keep
up with the story-line.
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00:04:27,141 --> 00:04:29,851
- The original concept
was three months.
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- Swooping down...
- Yeah, yeah, yeah--
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00:04:31,062 --> 00:04:33,772
- Guys, sales are up. We need
to keep this clone story going.
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00:04:33,773 --> 00:04:35,193
[both exclaim]
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00:04:35,191 --> 00:04:37,821
- Sales and Marketing
were coming to us every month.
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- Hey, sales are still up.
We can't end the story-line.
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00:04:40,405 --> 00:04:42,735
- Okay... Um...
- Yeah... Mm...
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- HOWARD: The addition
of another character,
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00:04:44,617 --> 00:04:47,657
it did exactly what Marvel
had tasked us to do,
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00:04:47,662 --> 00:04:50,542
which was to help lift
sales. - Yeah.
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00:04:50,540 --> 00:04:53,500
- And because it
was so successful,
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00:04:53,501 --> 00:04:56,711
Marketing had decided
to stretch the story out.
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00:04:58,548 --> 00:05:01,428
We were trying to
end the Clone-Saga,
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00:05:01,426 --> 00:05:04,426
but everybody had a different
opinion on how to do that,
100
00:05:04,429 --> 00:05:07,219
and we just kept bringing more
and more voices to the table.
101
00:05:07,223 --> 00:05:10,143
- Suddenly, it started
to spin out of control.
102
00:05:10,143 --> 00:05:11,943
And they had all
these story threads.
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00:05:11,936 --> 00:05:14,396
- TERRY: I believe there
was a murder somewhere,
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00:05:14,397 --> 00:05:17,817
that Peter was framed for a
murder. The details escape
me.
105
00:05:17,817 --> 00:05:20,647
Actually, I was confused about
what I was writing at a certain
point.
106
00:05:20,653 --> 00:05:22,663
- [exclaims] - No, I am thinking
for the finale.
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00:05:22,655 --> 00:05:23,655
- You know this isn't
making any sense, right?
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00:05:24,574 --> 00:05:25,914
- Yeah, we know.
- Yeah.
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00:05:25,908 --> 00:05:27,078
- Okay.
110
00:05:27,076 --> 00:05:29,116
- It became incredibly unwieldy
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00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:32,120
when we had to
string a story along
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00:05:32,123 --> 00:05:34,423
that we had conceived of
as being very tight.
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00:05:34,417 --> 00:05:36,037
And I think, in hindsight,
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00:05:36,044 --> 00:05:37,754
we started adding elements
that didn't belong in the story.
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00:05:39,714 --> 00:05:42,434
- REED: We've got clones and
evil twins and this villain,
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00:05:42,425 --> 00:05:44,045
and this wife
and girlfriends,
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00:05:44,052 --> 00:05:47,352
and it just became so ridiculous
and over the top.
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00:05:47,347 --> 00:05:51,977
- It got away from us when other
clones started popping up all
over the place.
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00:05:51,976 --> 00:05:55,226
That became more problematic,
I believe, for the fans
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00:05:55,229 --> 00:05:59,029
because it got dragged on and
they didn't get the ending they
wanted.
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- NARRATOR: The ending
the fans didn't want finally
arrived
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00:06:01,235 --> 00:06:03,985
after two years
and 150 issues.
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00:06:03,988 --> 00:06:06,448
As convoluted endings go,
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00:06:06,449 --> 00:06:10,409
Peter Parker and Ben Reilly
teamed up to defeat an old foe
named Norman Osborn.
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00:06:10,411 --> 00:06:12,121
But during the fight,
126
00:06:12,121 --> 00:06:14,581
Ben jumped in front of Peter
and received a fatal blow
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00:06:14,582 --> 00:06:17,002
disintegrating
him on contact.
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00:06:17,001 --> 00:06:20,251
This proved to Peter that
Ben was in fact the clone,
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00:06:20,254 --> 00:06:22,844
and that he, Peter Parker,
remained the true,
original Spider-Man.
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00:06:24,217 --> 00:06:24,967
- It's an ending.
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00:06:26,844 --> 00:06:28,644
- REED: The way the
Clone-Saga ended
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00:06:30,056 --> 00:06:33,226
really, really
displeased readers.
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00:06:33,226 --> 00:06:35,516
- [swish] - Yeah, so the actual
quality of comics
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00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:37,440
and characters just.
you know, shot down the drain.
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00:06:37,438 --> 00:06:38,768
- No longer is Spider-Man
my favorite character.
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00:06:41,025 --> 00:06:43,275
- HOWARD: I like to tell
everybody it was Terry
Kavanagh's idea.
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00:06:43,277 --> 00:06:46,907
- That entire story-line
became vilified in the industry
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00:06:46,906 --> 00:06:50,196
with me as the face
of that story-line,
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00:06:50,201 --> 00:06:53,911
which even my
Wikipedia entry sort of
led with that for a while,
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00:06:53,913 --> 00:06:54,463
which I didn't like.
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00:06:56,249 --> 00:06:58,879
- NARRATOR: Despite the early
sale success of the
Clone-Saga,
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00:06:58,876 --> 00:07:01,376
readers grew frustrated with
the long and convoluted
plots
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00:07:01,379 --> 00:07:03,419
covered across four
Spider-Man titles,
144
00:07:03,423 --> 00:07:05,593
and sales began to lag.
145
00:07:05,591 --> 00:07:08,551
This downturn coincided
with a change in ownership,
146
00:07:08,553 --> 00:07:11,103
risky mergers and the
collapse of the collectors
market,
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00:07:11,097 --> 00:07:14,137
creating one of darkest
periods in Marvel's history.
148
00:07:14,142 --> 00:07:17,232
- Marvel Entertainment, the
superhero of comic book
publishers
149
00:07:17,228 --> 00:07:19,018
has filed for bankruptcy.
150
00:07:19,021 --> 00:07:20,861
- NARRATOR: To
make matters worse,
151
00:07:20,857 --> 00:07:24,737
the bankruptcy allowed DC to
lure away Marvel's most famous
name
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00:07:24,735 --> 00:07:26,315
for the most unlikely
collaboration.
12747
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