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He may have made his first relatively incongruous appearance in 1975 as the first successful clone of Peter Parker, but good ol’ Ben Reilly returned with a vengeance in the mid ’90s, after Marvel management demanded a story controversial enough to rival Superman’s death and Batman’s broken back.
After being defeated in battle with the “real” Peter Parker during his initial debut, his presumed dead body was dropped in a smokestack, only to return 20 years later in the oft maligned/post traumatically repressed “The Clone Saga” which claimed that there had been a bit of a soap opera-ry snaffu with the test results and Ben was the real Parker all along.
Backlash? Just a bit. Fans went more than a little loopy, with a poorly-explained, over convoluted clone plot that spiralled well out of control with no real guiding hand on the creative rudder (Spider-Man editor Mark Bernardo said, “the length of the story arc was initially planned to be short, but rapidly spun out of control and ended as a fiasco”).
Gender/Sexuality/Ethnicity Reassignment? Nah: like-for-like in every sense, only now with added Vagabond Backstory.
How Long Did They Last? Two whole years, before eventually succumbing to the Green Goblin in 1996’s Spider-Man #75, sacrificing himself in the belief he was the real Spidey, despite his crumbling clone-dusty death proving otherwise.
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