death of peter parker?

[saxman]

I was going through some of the stuff in my room recently when I came upon an old spider-man comic that was in fairly rough shape, however it is the story that interests me. In this issue ben reilly is spider-man and peter parker is on his death bed. The issue states that peter was a clone of ben and peter ends up dying at the end. I've done some research on the clone saga and every source I have found states that ben was the clone and that he died instead of peter. I was hoping someone could explain some of this to me. The issue is Spider-man vol 1 no 71 and came out in august of 96 it is titled "the promise"

[saxman]

anyone have an answer

[therapist]

Haven't read anything from the clone saga since I was really young but if memory serves the whole Ben VS Peter as to whos a clone and whos real is very compicated and there really isnt any clear defined answer. But I believe there were some implanted memories to make Ben believe he was real.

[4lcc]

I'll go slow so as not to lose you in the "twists"

Ben was told he was a clone, but that the real Peter had been released. The "Real" Peter turned out to be a clone, the "fake Peter, then calling himself Ben" turned out to have been the real Peter all along.

See, the Jackal had cloned Peter and wackiness ensued that almost got the Spider-Man books canceled due to loss of readership ultimately leading. Marvel considered using the "Ben Reilly" angle to replace Peter to increase fandom and while it drew a ton of attention, it got too complicated and lost fun and readers started dropping the series left and right.

So Marvel decided to reveal that Ben had been Peter all along and the Peter that died was just the clone.

[saxman]

Thanks alot man that information was very helpful. One more question though why did they have different hair colors?

[4lcc]

When Peter was believing he was the clone he took the name Ben Reilly and dyed his hair to have his own separate identity from Peter.

[mpelichoff]

I'm not sure exactly what was going on in the issue you are talking about but Peter Parker turned out to be the real one all along, not Ben. Ben died fighting the green golbin while he had taken over the role as Spider-Man because Peter decided to give it up to raise a child (Mary Jane was prego at the time). When Ben died it was believed that Ben was the original Peter but when he was killed, he turned to dust, revealing that he was the clone. The Peter you are talking about dying in a hospital bed was probably just another clone who thought he was the original Peter, there were about 5 or 6 of them at one point and continuity went out the window.

Unless! You have an old issue of Amazing Spider-Man? If that is the case then this was the first clone from the first clone saga in which peter dumped the body of the dead clone into a smoke stack after he died.
What year is the comic from?

Also, Ben died his hair becasue he had been framed for murder by Kaine and was on the run from the police. (Peter was later arrested for it because forensic evidence matched him but broke out of jail to rescue Mary Jane from Kaine after she signaled him with some kind of distress signal that set off his spider sense).

[mpelichoff]

Just did a little research on that particular issue and it turns out that when the story continues in spectacular spider man 237, Peter is not dead. His heart just temporarily stopped because his powers were returning to him.

At this point in the spider-man universe these stories were being passed around from creative team to creative team. One wanted to kill pete and the next picked up the story and decided they didn't want him dead. The clone saga did a lot of one step forward eight steps back kind of story lines.