With Peter Parker out of commission thanks to a showdown with the evil U-Foes, New York City needs a new Spider-Man, so it’s better than a clone of Ben Riley, everyone’s favorite web player. Throwing a lot behind the shady company known as Beyond, the former Scarlet Spider donned an entirely new outfit that made him the new creeper of town, but his loyalty with the shady organization came at a price. After losing a good portion of his memories, Riley puts on a new outfit and a new vanity completely different from what we saw.
In the last issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Issue #93 of the final round, Riley and Parker don their Spider-Man costumes and try to take down the Beyond Corporation for their recent assaults against them. With the company that originally appeared in Marvel’s Nextwave working alongside Reilly, the clone lost a number of his memories in order to protect Peter’s identity, which in turn faded with his sense of responsibility. He was given only one chance to get his memories back, by ripping them straight from Peter’s head via a helmet he gave to Ben from Beyond’s head. Unfortunately, Ben couldn’t convince Peter because the helmet might not have been all it looked like.
With Ben down on the set of a “reactive psychic purge,” the former Spider-Man is now in a much darker costume, while his sporting tendrils seem not much different from those of symbiotes like Venom and Carnage. No longer called Spider-Man or the Scarlet Spider, Ben’s new nickname is “Chasm” and it looks like his starring style will be more brutal than before as he no longer has the memories of Peter Parker to help fake his sense of right and wrong.
It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen Ben Reilly go down a darker path than Peter, with the clone previously taking on the Jackal identity during the crossover event known as The Clone Conspiracy. After this event, Reilly tried to fight crime again as the Scarlet Spider even though he still had some severe mental issues while running.
What do you think of Riley’s new identity as a hiatus? Do you think we’ll see him return as a darker hero or upright villain? Feel free to tell us in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk about all things comics, anime, and the Spider-Man world.
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