Clone Saga - Television

Television

Further information: The Return of Hydro-Man and Spider Wars

In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Clone Saga appears in two forms. First in the show, Spider-Man is reunited with Mary Jane after she disappeared into a vortex in his last fight with the original Green Goblin. It was soon revealed that this Mary Jane was a clone as was the resurrected Hydro-Man all of which were the product of the experiments of Miles Warren. Spider-Man tears his costume in a fight with the Hydro-Man clone. The Mary Jane clone saves him with water powers she has by virtue of her body structure being derived from Hydro-Man. Warren runs off from an upcoming flood Hydro-Man's clone would create and finds a piece of Spider-Man's costume, hinting at the possible cloning of Peter Parker. Due to their unstable cell structures, the Mary Jane and Hydro-Man clones evaporate in front of Spider-Man. The death of the Mary Jane clone devastates him, and he is next taken to another dimension by Madame Web to fight in the animated version of the Secret Wars. Warren managed to get a sample of Spider-Man's DNA from a torn piece of his costume.

After that was the two-part Spider Wars series finale, where Spider-Man is presented in an alternate reality version of the Clone Saga. In this version of events, though, the revelation that Peter is the clone, and Ben Reilly is the original leads Peter to become incredibly depressed and vulnerable. The Carnage symbiote takes advantage of this and merges with Peter Parker, becoming the composite being known as Spider-Carnage, who then attempts to destroy all of existence; which includes all universes; from his native universe. Later, after his plan to destroy all of reality is stopped by the original Spider-Man and other Spider-Men from different realities; including the Scarlet Spider; Carnage attempts to destroy every reality, one at a time, starting with the universe that was home to a wealthy, armored version of Spider-Man. However, the "prime" Spider-Man follows Spider-Carnage into that reality. Realizing that his armored counterpart is so arrogant because he has never failed, the "prime" Spider-Man contacts that reality's version of Uncle Ben, the only person who might be able to get through to Spider-Carnage. The gamble works, and Spider-Carnage stops the chain of destruction he had been about to initiate. He sacrifices himself by jumping in one of his unstable portals from the Time Dilation Accelerator in his reality which disintegrates him. The "prime" Spider-Man at one point remarks: "This is starting to sound like a bad comic book plot!" and part of the arc was called "I Really, Really Hate Clones".

The Spider-Carnage character first appeared in comics, and was the result of a forced merger between the Carnage entity and Ben Reilly, who had taken on the role of Spider-Man at that time. The Peter Parker with whom the symbiote merges with was wearing the original version of the costume; however, when the symbiote merges with him, his costume takes on the appearance of Ben Reilly's Spider-Man costume, which was itself subtly changed by the creature merging with him.

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