Any loyal reader of Den of Geek know that the first trailers for Lanterns didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. Like everyone else, we wondered why there was so little green in the Green Lantern show, why the space cops acted so much like Earth cops, why Hal would even bring up Ch’p if the show wasn’t going to show us Ch’p. Yet, here we are, days away from the finale, completely in love with the show.
Which is a long way of saying that even a really bad idea for a superhero TV show can lead to a great superhero TV show. Speaking of which: Sony is making a TV show about The Clone Saga, the infamous and unanimously-agreed-upon absolute worst story in Spider-Man‘s 64-year history. If your first question is “Why?”, and that really should be your first question, the answer is easy to see fromDeadline’sreport: the series will adapt “the second Clone Saga story arc that focuses on two Spider-Man clones, Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker.” In other words, we’ve got two people who don’t like each other making sense of their powers. Just like Lanterns.
The Clone Saga ran across every Spider-Man comic book from October 1994 to December 1996, and, like most superhero debacles, stemmed from an editorial mandate. Marvel editorial did not like the fact that Peter Parker had grown to adulthood, married Mary Jane, and was expecting a kid, so they wanted a reboot. They wouldn’t settle on the absolutely stupid idea of Peter making a deal with the devil to wipe out his marriage for another decade. So instead, they picked a story from the ’70s in which Spidey fights a clone of himself.
That story ends with the clone seemingly dying in a fire and Peter Parker returning home to resume his life. But The Clone Saga posits that the person who went to Peter Parker’s apartment that day was not, in fact, Peter Parker. Instead, he was the clone, who only thought he was Peter. The real Peter suffered amnesia from the explosion and spent years wandering around, trying to remember who he was. Once he figured it out, he came to confront the false Peter and reclaim his life.
Initially, Marvel planned for a smooth transition: the Clone would realize his mistake, take the name Ben Reilly, dye his hair blonde and move to the West Coast with Mary Jane and his child, finally free from the responsibility of being Spider-Man. The real Peter would take his place, having more adventures without the baggage of a family. However, fans hated this idea, and editorial was forced to rewrite plans on the fly, leading to a confusing, ambling story that ultimately resulted in no changes to the status quo. Marvel affirmed that the Peter we knew was in fact the real Peter, that the other guy was the clone. The other guy took the name Ben Reilly and stuck around as the Scarlet Spider for a while, until he died… and came back… and died again… and also came back.
You can see where the confusion comes in, and we haven’t even talked about Kaine Parker yet. Kaine arrives midway through the Clone Saga, and reveals himself to be the first clone of Peter Parker, a deeply flawed one at that. Scarred and monstrous-looking, Kaine has none of the inherent goodness of Peter or Ben. Further, he has the ability to burn people with his touch, which he uses on the faces of his enemies.
These days, both Ben and Kaine have become accepted, regular parts of the Spider-Man mythos, sometimes carrying their own books and appearing in Spider-Verse crossovers. Which is just one reason why a Sony TV show isn’t the worst idea.
The other reason is that Sony just made (and canceled after one season) a really good Spider-Noir show, which also seemed like an unlikely choice for a TV series. The show had none of the leftist grit of the original comic book series, nor any of the overt goofiness of Nicolas Cage‘s performance in Into the Spider-Verse. Yet, it was still incredibly well done, both thematically rich and entertaining.
The same, of course, is true of Lanterns, a series that is indeed about two guys walking around Nebraska wearing street clothes and also about space cops who work alongside a sentient planet. So, you know what? Go ahead, Sony. You make your Clone Saga TV show. Maybe you can finally make something beautiful out of that legendary mess.
