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The Amazing Spider-Man relaunches with a brand new #1 in April and a couple of months later celebrates #900 issues with Amazing Spider-Man #6.
But before that, the current volume has to conclude, and with it the end of the Ben Reilly-centric 'Beyond' era in March 30's double-sized Amazing Spider-Man #93. Newsarama readers get to check out a preview of the inevitable showdown between Peter and Ben...
...who doesn't seem to be doing very well.
The Peter Parker clone has had his mind messed with by the Beyond Corporation, and as Amazing Spider-Man #93's opening summary page succinctly puts it (seen in our preview gallery), Ben's implanted childhood memories (of what was really Peter's childhood, but we digress) have been removed, essentially taking away the moral compass which Uncle Ben helped calibrate.
Marvel has previously said that this end of Ben's second stint as Spidey "may be the beginning of something else..." and it sure does look that that something else may be a heel-turn.
Check out the start of the Spidey V Spidery confrontation in our preview of Amazing Spider-Man #93 along with unlettered pages Marvel previously released.
Marvel has made Ben a supervillain previously - but not without a comic book explanation of how an exact clone of Peter Parker could become a supervillain despite the superheroic morality that guides him as Spider-Man.
Ben's biggest villain stint came in the story Spider-Man: The Clone Conspiracy, in which he took on the villainous identity of the Jackal while suffering cellular degeneration caused by the cloning process that initially created him - degeneration which the Beyond Corporation supposedly 'cured' when they made Ben their official Spider-man.
So, by wiping away Uncle Ben's guidance, the publisher essentially has license to have Ben go bad while maintaining the heroic purity of Peter if that is the direction it goes in.
But a new arch-villain that's essentially an exact replica of Spider-Man but without his moral foundation would be pretty much the most Marvel ever.
Just sayin'...
Amazing Spider-Man #93 is written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by Patrick Gleason and features a cover by Arthur Adams.
Variant covers are by Gleason, Gerardo Sandoval, and Mark Bagley and can be seen in the gallery below.
Stay up on everything coming for Spidey including his relaunch with our listing of all the new Spider-Man comics and collections scheduled for release in 2022.
