The Case for Ben Reilly, Part 1

Written by Gerard Delatour II

“Redundant.”  “Unnecessary.”  “A slap in the face to the fans.”

The preceding three statements are all phrases I have heard describing Ben Reilly.  To many people, Ben is symbolic of Marvel “losing their way” in the mid-1990s – ignoring the fact, of course, that the Clone Saga almost singlehandedly kept Marvel operating during this period.

But was Ben Reilly necessary?  Let’s try to figure that out together!

The premise is simple … we’ll look at several “cases” and then try to examine them.  Like Matlock … everybody loves Matlock, right?

 

Grampa Simpson would be proud.

Case #1: Peter Parker has always been relatable, so Ben Reilly didn’t need to fill that role.

Okay, I have to get this off my chest – Peter Parker is not relatable to the average reader.

Think about it – how many of you were straight-A students in high school, scored 1600 on the SAT, and got a full scholarship to your college of choice?  He created a super-adhesive and a delivery system for it while he was fifteen years old, he created brilliant tools and devices to overcome his enemies, and he somehow talked a roomful of news reporters into believing that he was just lucky to get photos of Spider-Man.  And this is before the marriage that supposedly made him unrelatable to readers.

Was Ben Reilly more relatable than Peter?  Yes and no.  On the one hand, he was portrayed a little more naïve and raw than Peter was under the mask.  On the other hand, he invented new applications for his webbing and modified his equipment to allow him to use them.

 

Can you do this?

So was Ben Reilly less relatable than Peter?  Nope.  Peter was never relatable to begin with!

Case #2: Ben Reilly was redundant.

Let’s hop in the wayback machine to take a trip to 1994: Tonya Harding’s goon squad busted up Nancy Kerrigan’s knee, Kurt Cobain decided to play Russian Roulette with a shotgun, The Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills to win Super Bowl XXVIII, Nelson Mandela rose to power in South Africa, and OJ Simpson decided to go for a little joyride in his Bronco.

 

They pre-empted the NBA Finals for this crap!

More important for our discussion: Peter Parker was married and living in an apartment in Manhattan, his Aunt May was in the hospital after having her 97th heart attack, he had just found out that his recently-returned parents were robot duplicates (shudder), and poor old Pete was pretty much the most emo dude in comics.  In comes Ben Reilly – the swingin’ single transient outsider.  Unlike Peter, Ben’s life lacked structure, and he was still looking for his place in this world.  Over the course of the next few months, their distinct personalities asserted themselves – Peter was the veteran crimefighter protecting his family, and Ben was the wild and raw vigilante trying to find himself.

In other words, they were completely different characters.  The set dressing was the same – swinging on webs through the streets of New York, busting up supervillains, etc. – but at the core these were two identifiably different people.  Ben Reilly was the Brand New Day Peter Parker about 14 years before the Brand New Day Peter Parker would show up!  (Well, except that Ben Reilly was less of a schmuck.)

Case #3: Replacing Peter with Ben was an insult to the longtime fans.

Well, damn.  You got me there.

One of the trends that I hate that cropped up a lot in the late 80s and persisted throughout the 90s was the idea of replacing longtime heroes with new characters that would take up their identities.  The conventional wisdom was that these replacements would allow the writers to reach back to the core truths of the original incarnations without the baggage of decades of continuity.  The truth, of course, was that this was mostly a lazy attempt to allow themselves to rehash the stories they grew up reading as fans, but that’s another article unto itself.

 

The preceding statement was not a shot at this man. The sentence preceding this one is a lie.

The John Walker Captain America, Thunderstrike, the Azrael Batman … there are plenty of examples.  Ben Reilly was another in a line of characters intended to replace the old guy and let the writer tell these rehashed – er, I mean more interesting – stories.  Ben Reilly is guilty as charged on this one.

 

Check back next time for the conclusion of our look at Ben Reilly’s worth.  (Yes, that’s a tease!  We hooked you good, didn’t we?)

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