Cloning around with Brian Bendis

Marvel held a teleconference today for the comics press, with writer Brian Michael Bendis as the featured guest.

Bendis was there to talk about the upcoming “Ultimate Spider-Man” No. 100 and the ongoing “Clone Saga” story line. (Artist Mark Bagley was supposed to be on the line, too, but never showed.)

The current story line is the “Ultimate” version of a long-running story in the ‘90s that turned off many a reader. Particularly galling was the disclosure that the Peter Parker we’d all been following for years wasn’t the real one - though Marvel later pulled a switcheroo and Peter stood as the one and only Spider-Man.

So why revisit a story that has drawn such scorn?

“The reason we did do it is it is a big part of the Spider-Man mythos,” Bendis said. “Even though the original Clone Saga is kind of seen as a punchline, people don’t remember that the actual idea of it was very popular and very intriguing to people.”

It was only after the story kept going and going and going that people got tired of it, Bendis added, noting, “It got to such ridiculous heights with the original Clone Saga that Marvel actually produced a book called ‘101 Ways to End the Clone Saga.’ ” He assures that his saga will be a much more manageable length.