Dead No More – The Clone Conspiracy #1 Spoilers and Review follow for Post Civil War II / Marvel Now 2016’s Amazing Spider-Man.
The book opens with the usual opening credits page and a bit of a blurb on how we got here.
The story or Chapter One opens at a funeral which is a poignant way to start an event series that turns the concept of death in Marvel on its a head bit. The Jackal doesn’t see his creations as clones of the old era, but more on that later.
Its the funeral for Aunt May’s boyfriend, J. Jonah Jameson’s dad. JJJ blames Peter for his dad’s death because he convinced him not to take experimental meds. Peter Parker’s spidey sense tingled over this experimental drugs, but he explained it Jay and May as the science wasn’t proven.
As the Amazing Spider-Man, Peter breaks into to the headquarters of the pharmaceutical company tracing a tracker he placed on someone else who had been using the experimental drug and…
…finds him/it in a vat very much alive (in a sense?).
We saw from the teaser / preview panels the next few scenes that show Dr. Miles Warren walking on Spider-Man’s revelation only to be confronted by…
…the new female Electro and a reanimated/cloned original Rhino!
And Gwen Stacy.
And Doctor Octopus! Will he be good or evil or the tweener Superior Spider-Man?
The back-up story was an interesting one concerning the death and life of Gwen Stacy.
We see the scene where Spider-Man tried to save her, but his efforts proved catastrophic.
Gwen then wakes up years later from a vat and meets the Jackal.
He explains she is not a clone, but a reanimation with all her old memories including her death.
Then she meets her father Captain Stacy who also died in the past and has been reanimated.
We end with a word from the creators and a listing of the Clone Conspiracy tie-ins…
…including Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy #2 cover.
So…
Overall an interesting first issue setting up all the key pieces for this event mini-series. We knew many of the folks who are returning from the teaser image below, but this issue did have some emotional heft that helped advance the overall story. The post Civil War II and Marvel Now 2016 era has reanimations not clones? Interesting. I don’t get the difference yet, but we may see that play itself out over this event mini-series.
7 out of 10 with a nice node for the back-up which proved integral to the main story.