Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Sixty-Four: I Really, Really Hate Clones

 I Really, Really Hate Clones

First Aired: January 31st, 1998

Synopsis: Spider-Man is transported to a Manhattan that's heavily destroyed, and the Beyonder tells him that he's responsible for it. Before he can explain what he means Hobgoblin and Green Goblin fly past and head to the Daily Bugle, where they attack J. Jonah Jameson, as they need him to unlock the security for the microwave satellite on the roof. Spider-Man fights them and they're confused, as he's the one that told them to do this. They end up blowing up the Daily Bugle, and Spider-Man loses them as he escapes the explosion. He manages to save J. Jonah Jameson but the goblins get away with the satellite regardless. Spider-Man's attacked by a Spider-Carnage hybrid and is about to be killed when he's teleported to the Beyonder. The Beyonder reveals that the longer he's in this dimension the weaker he gets, and shows Spider-Man the allies that have been brought here - a powerless Spider-Man, a Spider-Man with Doctor Octopus' tentacles, the Scarlet Spider, a Spider-Man in armour, and a six-armed Spider-Man. Scarlet Spider reveals that they're all in his reality, and that he's supposedly a clone of Spider-Man, except that a test by Professor Connors revealed that he's the original. The supposedly-original Spider-Man snapped at that news, and bonded with Carnage when he came through a portal thanks to Kingpin's research into other dimensions.

Beyonder shows everyone the future, which involves Spider-Carnage using a combination of the dimensional research and the microwave satellite to blow up not just his world, but all worlds. The Beyonder has already seen this and used his powers to rewind time so that a team could be put together to stop Spider-Carnage. After many tests, this group of Spider-Men is the team, with our Spider-Man being named the leader thanks to his leadership skills in the Secret Wars, to the Spider-Man in armour's protests. The heroes - minus the powerless Spider-Man - head off to Kingpin's headquarters to stop Spider-Carnage, but get seen and have to fight the goblins and Kingpin's crew along the way. Several of the Spider-Men get injured and have to be teleported to safety, leaving just Scarlet Spider, our Spider-Man, and the Six-Armed Spider-Man reaching Spider-Carnage. They fight the villains but the Six-Armed Spider-Man's mutation progresses, turning him into Man-Spider. His feral instincts have him attacking his allies, allowing the villains to escape.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Six-Armed Spider-Man is right out of Amazing Spider-Man #100 - 102, although here it's the result of the mutation that Spider-Man had to deal with in Neogenic Nightmare.
• The Spider-Man in armour is based on the armour from Web of Spider-Man #100, although he appears to be the most different to the other versions - he mentions that he's a billionaire with several companies, and is very cocky. His armour also has a laser, which the comics version didn't. He also mentions that he has a giant spider robot. Why the hell hasn't this guy gotten his own spinoff yet?
  
• The Scarlet Spider is explicitly Ben Reilly, and his backstory up until Spider-Carnage is pretty much an abridged version of Earth-616's. 
• "This is starting to sound like a bad comic book plot!", says Spider-Man when he finds out about Ben being a clone of this reality's Spider-Man, and "I don't want to hear your story!" when the Scarlet Spider first unmasks. Get it? Because in the comics, the clone saga was fucking abysmal!
• When Spider-Man's fighting Hobgoblin and the Green Goblin in the Daily Bugle, Hobgoblin blows it up by taking the head off a doll, which blows up like a grenade. Has he ever been shown to use toy-themed weaponry before?

Review: After the mostly-bad stuff that was Secret Wars, I'm not going to deny that I wasn't super keen on this episode. It's more Beyonder-and-Madam-Web nonsense, and Spider-Man jumping realities still just doesn't feel like a plot that suits the character that well. In what turned out to be a lovely surprise though, this episode ended up being pretty damn fun! If you're going to be throwing Spider-Man into a plot like this, you might as well introduce a bunch of alternate versions of him - who do show some differing personalities in the brief time we have - and take some cheap shots at the clone saga. 

Some of the episode could do with a bit of editing - why do the goblins first mistake our Spider-Man for their boss, even though they look so different? Why do the Spider-Men get caught by a camera they don't notice but moments later it shorts out thanks to them disabling the security? - but it manages to be remarkably solid, and does a really good job of weaving some different plots together. I doubt that when Madam Web first appeared there were plans to make her the Beyonder's assistant, nor for Spider-Man's mutation to be a Chekov's Gun for what happens at the climax of this episode, but it works. Hell, even the stuff with Secret Wars feels like it's a natural lead-in to this even though I think it's safe to say that "let's do Secret Wars" came before "how should the Beyonder test Spider-Man?" in the writing process.

The pacing could be picked up a little bit - it takes a bit of time to introduce the other Spider-Men, and there's a few flashbacks (an especially egregious one is Spider-Man going over the history of the clone Mary Jane from his universe) that feel like padding - but overall I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this episode. Going bigger doesn't always work for the end of a series, but this episode manages to make it work.