"I really, really hate clones", says Spider-Man? Well, guess what - So do the writing staff!
We gotta wrap up The Clone Saga and make it work!
— Ralph Macchionote , summing up the sisyphean task our heroes face.
A one-shot parody comic, written by Mark Bernardo, drawn by Ben Herrera and tolerated by Bob Harras in 1997, just after the end of The Clone Saga, but set right before the writers settled on an ending. The premise is that everyone in the Marvel offices is pitching in to put an end to the messy Kudzu Plot that they created in a way that satisfies all readers, fills all plot holes and changes the status quo in a beneficial way. It's as zany as you'd expect.
Tropes included in 101 Ways to End the Clone Saga:
- Accidental Misnaming: Upon recovering in the hospital during Todd DeZago's solution, Peter asks Betty Brant for a mirror to check his hair, only to call her Becky.Peter: (thinking) Okay. So maybe not all of the early memories are there...
- Actually a Good Idea: "Next thing, you tell me maybe DEVIL make you do it, heh?"
- Affectionate Parody: It wasn't a very good time to be in the Marvel offices back then, and this comic wastes no time lampooning the situation.
- Ambiguous Clone Ending: Howard Mackie proposes this, but the other writers don't go for it.
- Ambiguous Situation: What happened to make Peter wash up on New York's shores in Howard Mackie's take on the ending is never explained.
- Arc Welding: Two of the ideas try to connect the Clone Saga's resolution to the ongoing-at-the-time Master Programmer arc, one of which is the "Mary Jane was a hologram the whole time" world. Another attempts to tie it to the upcoming Onslaught arc, and yet another uses an old Marvel Team-Up story arc from 1976 to write Peter out.
- Artistic License – Biology: Both DeZago's idea and the Mephisto solution. If Peter and Ben are the same person, Seward Trainer's tests should have picked up on it, since they would have the same mitochondrial DNA. The comic portrays him as a hack to explain this even though he was previously stated to be one of the nation's top geneticists. Granted, Peter David does point out the mistake and the writers are willing to pull anything so long as it gets the book back on track.
- As You Know: Tom Lyle recaps the events that had been going on in the comics at that time (up to the point before the last few stories were published). Later on, Greenberg also begins talking like a narrative caption (which is Lampshaded by the other characters).
- Back in the Saddle: Tom's proposition shows Peter putting on his old suit once again in order to assist Ben, despite acknowledging his wife would kill him if she knew. The story actually needs him to do this for its big twist to work, since Peter is then sent back to the past without his memories of the last five years and assumes he is the clone he fought, who was wearing the costume.
- Beat Panel: The staff is shocked into Stunned Silence for one panel after Peter David lists off all the Plot Holes in the Mephisto solution.
- Big Damn Heroes: Green Goblin (Phil Urich), Firestar, Black Cat and Peter!Spider-Man show up rather out of nowhere to help Ben!Spider-Man defeat Judas Traveler, Scrier, Carnage, and the Host during Tom's idea.
- Big "WHAT?!": In response to the Timey-Wimey Ball presented by their past version, both Peter and Ben go "What!" in a big speech bubble, while Seward Trainer massages his temples in frustration.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: The story is a pretty raw look at the chaos that the Marvel offices were suffering from due to the Clone Saga, complete with apathetic editors and frustrated writers.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Carnage kills Traveler while he's in the midst of proposing "Maximum Carnage 2".Carnage: Now you've gone too far, "boss"! Do you realize I didn't see one red cent of royalty money for that game?
- Brick Joke: When Peter David shows up in Ralph's office to discuss continuity issues with the writers, he mentions S.H.I.E.L.D. in passing, and an editor's footnote pops up attempting to helpfully define its acronym, only stumble and leave ("Supreme — no, Strategic Headquarters — no. I'll get back to you...Ralf"). Five pages later, during an irrelevant, asteriskless panel where the Master Programmer reveals himself as the mastermind behind the Clone Saga, another footnote appears, finally defining S.H.I.E.L.D. as Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, as well as apologizing for interrupting the story.
- Clones Are People, Too: The original plan following the Maximum Clonage arc is to give Peter a happy ending with Mary Jane and allow Ben to continue being the 'real' Peter as far as the world is concerned.
- Clue from Ed.: This being a parody of Marvel's writing, there are several, most notably the one regarding S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Comical Overreacting: In response to the idea that clones don't have souls, Bernardo goes on a rant about the X-Men and their use of clones, from Madeline Pryor to Xavier's current body, and the fact they're not given any guff about it. And, given that the X-Men had finished a similarly-infuriating storyline that also threw into doubt which one of two characters was a clone for no other reason than to create unnecessary strife, he might actually have a point here.
- Continuity Nod:
- A Spider-Man in a classic style (read: not nineties) outfit appears in DeZago's Imagine Spot and mocks Ben for his outfit having too-large eyes, a result of the increased stylization of his design at the time. "And it looks like they forgot to finish the boots!"
- Peter David spends the entire story after his appearance talking to himself about continuity bits no one else seems to care about.
- Carnage's remark about not receiving royalties for Maximum Carnage may in fact be one to the miniseries Venom: Carnage Unleashed, which features a video game by that name (though starring Carnage) that was created to raise funding for the Ravencroft Institute where Carnage et al. get psychiatric treatment. So he really didn't get any money from it.
- "Ski" was a character in Ghost Rider and another writer recognizes him from there, and not from working with him. He's not pleased.
- A reference to Spider-Man #59 is footnoted, with the editor immediately apologizing for being unable to get through the issue without a single footnote.
- Credits Gag: The opening credits state Bob Harras tolerated this story, rather than presented or approved. In-universe he doesn't seem to actually tolerate it at all. The "Stan Lee presents" header on the opening splash page is also altered to say, "Stan Lee hesitantly presents".
- Da Chief: Bob Harras is portrayed like this, but to be fair, he is very overworked and Ralph is nowhere to be found, and he just had triplets.
- Dark Age of Supernames: Lampshaded when a past version of Spider-Man is assumed to be Spidercide. Old-school Pete just says whoever that is has lousy taste in codenames. This being set in The '90s, there are many other examples, such as Carnage, and Trope Makers Killraven and Deathlok are mentioned in passing.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Tom DeFalco shows up with a pile of papers, and the others ask him if, like Peter David, he's come with a list of Plot Holes. He responds by claiming it's actually a Thunderstrike graphic novel.
- Spider-Man and his clones also engage in this, natch. Peter at one point remarks that he finds the premise of Multiplicity hard to swallow.
- When Ski is mistaken as a Ghost Rider character, he sarcastically claims he's still upset over being left out of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Of course, that's assuming he wasn't being serious.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: For some reason Ski thinks it's a good idea to just let a sentinel squash Ben like a bug... er, arachnid... during Onslaught, while Tom DeFalco would rather let Ben melt suddenly and be done with it.
- Dumb Struck: Ralph is reduced to a babbling mess due to Tom Lyle's crazy idea. He proceeds to ruin his meal by filling it with salt inadvertently.
- Easy Amnesia: Howard Mackie makes "Peter" forget whether he's the real Pete or not, after an explosion during a battle with Kaine rendered him unconscious on a beach.
- The End: The story closes with a traditional-for-Marvel "The ever-lovin' end!"
- "Eureka!" Moment: The story ends with the writers deciding to use the Green Goblin in some way.
- Fake Boobs: Ben jokes that C-List Fodder villainess Stunner's breasts are a result of her stuffing her bra.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: Ralph strides into the office like some kind of movie star, but quickly proves to be out of his element.
- Fantastic Drug: The Watcher appears in the ending to comment on the story's outlandishness and states he has never witnessed an alternate reality such as this before, "not even the time I sniffed Badoonian Glue back on Aldebaran-4".
- Female Gaze: The real Peter washes up on a beach in Howard Mackie's idea, and one of the beachgoers comment on his memetically-nice butt.
- Floating Head Syndrome: The cover portrays the Marvel staff (Ralph Macchio, Tom Lyle, and Bob Harras, to be specific) looming menacingly over several Spider-Clones.
- Foregone Conclusion: The story was published after the ending to the Clone Saga, so we all know which idea they're going to pick, and boy is it a dumb one.
- Framing Device: The writers and other staffers joining together to invent a good ending to the Clone Saga serves as the framing device for the stories.
- Fridge Logic: Peter David lists a cavalcade of these in response to the idea of using Mephisto to send Peter back in time and give Ben Peter's memories, including that Mephisto can't actually show up because in Marvel continuity back then, he was actually dead.
- Funetik Aksent: Tom DeFalco's thick New York accent.
- Funny Foreigner: The waiter who serves the staff in the restaurant they visit later on definitely doesn't have english as his first language.
- Gallows Humor: The idea to make an entire issue about "101 Uses for a Dead Clone".
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Ralph gets beaned with a wad of paper to wake him up from his stupor.
- The Greatest Story Never Told/Hero of Another Story: A past version of Peter shows up, explains that Peter and Ben are his own past selves due to Timey-Wimey Ball and asks for them to come with him to fix the timeline. This is an expansion of (and Retcon to) a previous time travel story Spidey engaged in, but the version we read in Marvel Team-Up was much shorter and Peter certainly never wound up creating duplicates of himself during it.
- Good Old Ways: Tom DeFalco states this about himself and proposes a very blunt solution that will get the job done without concern for continuity or
Fridge Logic because he's from the old school. - Hair-Trigger Temper: Bob Harras is not happy.Harras: My hands are either on the slinky or around your NECK, okay, Greenberg?
- Hand Wave: Howard Mackie's idea is entirely based around this.
- Hero on Hiatus: Ralph Macchio is M.I.A. at the beginning of the story, and his coworkers presume he's procrastinating in his house.
- Imagine Spot: The story is a series of Imagine Spots of potential solutions to the Clone Saga.
- Impostor-Exposing Test: Seward Trainer's tests of Pete and Ben's genomes were ostensibly meant to figure out which of them was the clone, but the Marvel writers who aren't Peter David don't really care about that.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Seward Trainer wonders where his bottle of Wild Turkey is. One wonders if he needs a drink to forget he just found out he's not actually a good geneticist or if he just wants to forget the massive Timey-Wimey Ball Past Pete just dropped on him.
- Kudzu Plot: A lot of the ideas are this, in true Clone Saga fashion. Not even the characters have the patience to process some of the in-Universe Ass Pulls the writers throw at them.Judas Traveller: Peter Parker...Ben Reilly. The time for deception is over. The time has come... for the truth.
Ben and Peter: AGAIN??! - Lampshade Hanging:
- Mephisto questions why he, a devil, would dress as a monk, though he praises the ironic touch.
- Peter David explains that Mephisto is currently dead and not able to appear in comics right now, and goes "Yes, I know it's comics''.
- "Greenberg, what have I told you about talking like a narrative caption?"
- Large Ham: Todd DeZago is apparently very excited to lay out his solution to the rest of the cast.Todd DeZago: Boooooy! What a solution!
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Past Pete comments on the ugly feet of Ben's outfit, and Ben is relieved at Seward Trainer's explanation wasn't something idiotic like he was his time-traveling son from the future.
- The Long List: The list that Peter David prepared with various continuity issues, which is compared to a Graphic Novel due to its size.
- The Man Behind the Man: Master Programmer (who was revealed as Doctor Octopus in the comics tries to pull this on the Clone Saga, but Marvel's lawyers stop the whole thing to keep his identity a mystery. In the end, they use The Green Goblin to do the same.
- Meaningful Name: One of the ideas proposes Judas Traveler had this all along, with Judas referring to how he betrayed Peter's trust and Traveler being about how he's travelled the earth and the timestream looking for repentance.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: Peter David greets his colleagues with "gentlemen... Ralph... Good afternoon".
- My Future Self and Me: A time-traveling Spider-Man meets his future selves (through they are his present selves to us) in one of the ideas, while Seward Trainer discovers Judas Traveler is his evil future self in another.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Ben Reilly uses a "Long-winded expository narrative sense" in one of the ideas. This is naturally followed by Past!Peter going on an expository Info Dump for a whole page.
- Not Now, Kiddo: This is Ben's response when told that he's letting Electro get away.
- Older Than They Look: The Stable Time Loop solutions cause this to apply to Ben. If Ben is the present-day Peter Parker sent back five years ago, he should look five years older than Peter, and yet he doesn't. None of the writers realize this until another Peter points it out for them.
- Old Shame: While having his memory restored by Scrier, Spidey questions what he was on when he designed the Spider-Armor.
- One-Steve Limit: There's two writers named Tom in this story (DeFalco and Lyle), two Bobs (Bob Harras, and Lyle mentions kicking an idea around with Bob Budiansky), as well as Peter David who shares a first name with Peter Parker. Naturally, par for the course in Real Life.
- One-Tract Mind: J. Jonah Jameson, as usual, attempts to find some way to blame things on Spider-Man in the original plan for Ben Reilly following Maximum Clonage.
- Only in It for the Money: DeFalco states he'll put up with any idea so long as the money keeps coming in.
- Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: One of the ideas is just about to spoil the Master Programmer's identity, only for one of Marvel's lawyers to slap a big "censored" sticker on the panel and prevent the reader from being spoiled.
- Painting the Medium:
- When Peter David mentions the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, a note pops up trying to explain the acronym, but Ralf can't remember what it actually stood for, and promises to come back once he does. Much later a new narration bubble shows up with zero prompting in a panel with no mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. with the complete acronym.
- The instance where a lawyer rips through the page to tell Ralph there's no way in hell he's spoiling the ending to one of their
profitable storylines in a gag one-shot.
- Pen Name: One of the writers signed his idea with the name "Harvey Briscoll", which is called out as an obvious fake name.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Peter David finishes his summation of the Plot Holes in the Mephisto story by questioning how acclaimed geneticist Seward Trainer never seems to have a job.
- Place Worse Than Death: DeFalco threatens the staff with cabfare to DC if they don't reach a consensus quickly. It's unclear if he means Washington or the Distinguished Competition, but regardless, they treat it like this.
- Prequel: The story is set in the past - our past, showing a satirical version of the events that led to the Clone Saga's resolution. The real one had concluded just a few months prior.
- The Reveal: All of the ending ideas, from the outlandish to the REALLY outlandish.
- Round Robin: There is a segment where three of the staff build on a single idea.
- Self-Deprecation: Not only for the Clone Saga, but several things, including the similarly complex (and dumb) storylines in X-Men, and Spider-Man's design change to be more dynamic causing him to look deformed in certain comics. And of course, to itself when the Watcher states even he would do well to avert his gaze from it.
- Shout-Out:
- Glenn Greenberg nervously recites a lyric from a slinky commercial jingle in response to Harras insisting he'll keep moving one around to relieve stress.
- Glenn Greenberg and Tom Lyle get into an argument over Planet of the Apes while Mark Bernardo is on the phone with Todd DeZago.
- Stable Time Loop: Scrier sends Peter back to the ending of the original Clone Saga to complete one of these.
- Stating the Simple Solution: The original plan to have Ben change his name back to Peter and come clean with the public about being cloned is the simplest and most reasonable premise compared to his current state in the storyline, but is contested by the Marvel writers due to the Fridge Logic of it.
- Status Quo Is God: Most of the proposed ideas try to revert the "Peter was a clone and Ben was the real one" Retcon, and this is what they went with in Real Life. They are also very interested in making Peter single again, which Glenn Greenberg points out would infuriate Mary Jane's fans.
- Stealth Insult: The staff balks at DeZago's idea, and one of them wonders if there's a gas leak in his area.
- Tempting Fate: Bernardo pleads to the One-Above-All for Bob Harras to not ask him where Ralph is. He immediately asks him where Ralph is.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: DeZago's idea is to retcon Peter into being a time-displaced version of Ben, though he doesn't explain how they ended forgetting what happened. Surely there's a Greatest Story Never Told in there.
- Title Drop: Almost - they try to get a one-shot titled "101 Uses for a Dead Clone" off the ground.
- Understatement: Ben Reilly's only response to discovering that Mephisto just tricked him into selling his soul is "Wow. This kinda stinks".
- The Unreveal: Some of the ideas go this route, throwing their hands in the air about the "which of them is the real Peter" situation.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In Howard Mackie's idea, a blonde beachgoer asks everyone to get back to their game and sarcastically remarks, "Like you've never seen a half-dead guy in New York before."
- Variant Cover: In-Universe, the marketing guys suggest cushioning the blow of Ben's unceremonious death with a chromium cover, and then propose a "Self-Replicating" cover that clones itself when dipped in water.
- Verbal Tic: The waiter serving the staff during the latter part of the framing device ends most of his sentences with "heh?"
- The 'Verse: The story is set in Earth-1218, ostensibly "our" earth, though not really, as established in other series.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: After claiming Spider-Man was definitely gonna die this time, Electro skedaddles at the first opportunity when Spidey (Ben Reilly, that is) starts getting memory flashes of events that happened to Peter.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Black Cat is disgusted to find out she was doing something that she will not say with a clone.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: The Watcher is disturbed by the events of the story.
- Wolverine Publicity: Carnage shows up in one of the proposed endings solely because of his popularity, and it's so clear a shoehorn even the characters realize it. Carnage ends up murdering Traveler so that he doesn't make a Maximum Carnage sequel.
- Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Tom DeFalco isn't worried about any of the plot holes his idea to have Ben abruptly die from Clone Degeneration fails to address, saying they'll just make it up as they go along. I mean, it's worked well for them so far, hasn't it?
