WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #90, available now from Marvel.
Over the past sixty years, Spider-Man has been at the center of some of if not the most remarkable team-ups the Marvel Universe has ever seen. Right now, it isn’t even just one web-swinging hero headed into the fray. After some of the toughest months of their lives Peter Parker and Ben Reilly have finally joined forces again. They might not have taken down Beyond Corporation yet, but they have proved precisely how much each of them deserves to carry the mantle of Spider-Man.
While Ben Reilly has been lucky enough to escape the clutches of the Goblin Queen, Peter Parker has taken the fight back to her in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #90 (by Patrick Gleason, Mark Bagley, Andrew Hennessy, John Dell, Andy Owens, Wayne Faucher, Victor Olazaba, Bryan Valenza, Dijjo Lima, Andrew Crossley, and VC’s Joe Carmagna). After months recovering from the injuries he sustained battling the U-Foes, Peter is finally ready to spring back into action against a proper supervillain. Unfortunately, doing so sees him fall prey to his new enemy’s Goblin Gaze, and in an instant Peter is sent sinking to the bottom of the ocean as the memories of the people he loves most belittle and berate him. As it turns out, there is one person who knows that the Goblin Queen’s powers will never really work on Spider-Man, and that person just so happens to be Ben Reilly.
When Peter is at his lowest in every possible way, Ben is the one to remind him how amazing they both truly are. This doesn’t just give Peter the strength he needs to fight through the Goblin Queen’s influence, it proves to be the exact state of mind that both of them have been needing for a very long time. When the two heroes reconnect, even though Ben is suffering from the gaps left in his memory by Beyond Corporation, they are nothing but genuinely happy to see one another as Spider-Man. Considering the history between them, the fact that Peter and Ben can still connect on such an intimate level is nothing short of spectacular.
After his first appearance as an unnamed Spider-Clone in 1975’s Amazing Spider-Man #149, Ben Reilly spent years in the shadows trying to wrap his mind around his own existence. By the time Ben had taken on the mantle of Scarlet Spider, he and Peter had both come to terms with the possibility that they had been posing as one another for years, though this was thankfully exposed as part of yet another villainous plot. For years, it seemed as if every time Ben and Peter crossed paths, some new, traumatic event would unfold to complicate their relationship further, including the many deaths of Ben Reilly himself. Despite this myriad of tragedies, and the parts of himself that were stolen by Beyond, Ben hasn’t lost the core principles that make him who he (and Peter Parker) really are.
Now that both he and Peter have truly come to terms with their respective places in the world, there is no telling what they could accomplish together. At least, after they’ve dealt with the Goblin Queen and whatever else Beyond has waiting for them. Assuming neither of them lose their lives in the coming days, their latest team-up could be ushering in a whole new era for Spider-Man. Considering everything they have already overcome, it’s hard to imagine that either Spider-Man will be going away anytime soon, and if they do, it probably won’t be anywhere that readers can’t follow.
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