written by Zeb Wells
penciled by Ed McGuiness
inked by Cliff Rathburn
colored by Marcio Menyz and Erick Arciniega
As "Dark Web" draws to a close, with Madelyne Pryor having made peace with Jean Grey, Ben Reilly's plan to steal back his memories from Peter quite quickly falls apart, even as Peter struggles to escape from Limbo with J. Jonah Jameson and Robbie Robertson. Embittered by Madelyne's decision to call off the attack on New York, Ben swings off, while Hallow's Eve, aka Ben's girlfriend Janine Godbe, decides to take matters into her own hands, and gives this tale one more monstrous twist.
One can see in this story how Ben Reilly well and truly is Peter Parker; even when he's going full on bad guy and teaming up with a bad guy who actually manages to get what she wants, he still manages to lose. If that isn't a variant of the infamous Parker luck, well, I don't know what is. Granted, Ben's plan wasn't all that great, but it basically worked for Madelyne, didn't it? Marvel pretty much telegraphed last issue and in its marketing for the X-Men issues that Ben's and Madelyne's paths would diverge, but I was honestly surprised that it happened at the very beginning of the issue. I guess it makes sense given how the issue actually ends.
McGuinness delivers another solid issue, his last for this story. Including the mammoth 900th issue, he's drawn the equivalent of eight whole issues for Zeb Wells' current run, and I'm really looking forward to seeing him again in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I'll content myself with Adam Kubert finishing off this story.
I sincerely doubt Marvel would go through all this trouble of featuring Ben Reilly in the yearlong "Beyond" saga and designing him a cool new supervillain suit just to kill him off yet again, so I am cautiously optimistic for how Zeb Wells will end this particular chapter of the never-ending epic that is the Clone Saga of Spider-Man.
8/10
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