Struggling With My Bad Judgment

I'm posting from the library today. I needed to come to town anyway, so it works out nicely. The Internet did do a little better yesterday evening, but I think the unpleasant weather's been giving it trouble.

In the last round of solicits, Marvel listed the 'Complete Ben Reilly Epic, Volume 1', and I actually considered ordering it. I still am, though I could probably pick up all the issues pretty cheap in back issues bins (I'm not too picky about quality, as long as they're readable). In truth, the $40 price tag did more to dissuade me than the fact I bet a lot of the comics within aren't very good. Heck, I know some of them aren't good because I owned some of them back in the day.

But I've always had a soft spot for Ben Reilly, at least as the Scarlet Spider (I didn't read many of his adventures as Spider-Man, and I really didn't like his Spider-Man costume*). He kept meaning to leave New York, kept meaning to not get involved in crime-fighting, but he couldn't help himself. He had a connection to the people and places, but either they had no connection (the times when he was the clone), or he had a connection, but it had broken and someone else had taken it up (when they were telling us Ben was the original and Peter was the clone). His whole life had sort of an unrequited aspect to it. So he started to build another life, with new friends. Eventually, he and Peter even became friends, which admittedly isn't that strange for Spider-Man (we've discussed before his tendency to make friends out of former enemies, even if it doesn't always last), but considering their circumstances, it was fairly impressive. Especially with the tension about who is the real one, did Peter steal Ben's life, did Ben's presence bring Kaine into the mix, so and so on.

Plus, as far as ways to get a single Spider-Man go, having the married one retire to be a father and husband seems a little more in tune with the character than asking Mephisto to go back and slightly alter events so Pete misses his wedding and then he and MJ decide not to get hitched**.

And I liked the Scarlet Spider costume. I know people make fun of the sweatshirt over the spandex look, but I liked the makeshift feel of it. He did throw on whatever he had available when he first started being the Scarlet Spider, and he kept telling himself he wasn't going to keep it up (that Parker capacity for self-delusion), so he didn't need to bring Peter's fairly impressive ability to sew into the picture. Hey, at least it didn't have shoulder pads (though there was an unnecessary pouch around one ankle).

* Though it works for me as Spider-Girl's costume. Maybe because it's a nice tip of the cap to her Uncle Ben. I actually think of it as her costume now, not as Ben's. Or not as Spider-Man's, at least.

** I had to look that up on Wikipedia for this post, since I hadn't bothered to keep up on what One Moment in Time said when it came out. Very surprised they were able to convince Stark to help Petre reestablish the secret identity.