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'''Linkara:''' But let's get back to how the story all began by digging into ''(holds up several Spidey comics at once)'' "Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility".
  
'''Linkara:''' But let's get back to how the story all began by digging into ''(holds up several Spidey comics at once)'' "Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility".
   
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''(''AT4W'' title theme plays, followed by title card, which has "Something's Always Wrong" by Toad the Wet Sprocket playing in the background)''
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''(''AT4W'' title theme plays, followed by title card, which has "Something's Always Wrong" by Toad the Wet Sprocket playing in the background. Cut to a closeup of the first comic's cover)''
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'''Linkara (v/o):''' Because we're covering four comics, we're gonna skip the covers. Not much to say, aside from some nice, shiny, pointless holograms on them that, of course, don't show up in the scans. It should also be noted that, like "Youngblood", the four-parter contains a flip book, wherein you can go to the back cover and read another story. In this case, it shows some of the early days of Ben Reilly. We've already got ''a lot'' to cover and we really don't need to see this stuff, so I'm skipping that, too. One thing I will say about the cover to "Web of Spider-Man #117", which is our official beginning, it has this quote: ''(reads dramatically)'' "Beginning the saga that will ROCK the Spiderverse!"
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'''Linkara:''' Oh, my, yes. It rocks it, rolls it, ties it up, beats it up with baseball bats, then shoves it in a dumpster and tosses it off a pier!
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'''Linkara (v/o):''' We open where the previous comic had left off, with Spider-Man on the rooftop of a hospital, discovering... Peter Parker.
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'''Peter:''' ''Wait!'' This is a ''mistake...''
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'''Linkara:''' Oh, Benjy, like you would not believe.
   
 
'''This guide is not complete. Please finish.'''
  
'''This guide is not complete. Please finish.'''

Revision as of 00:12, 18 April 2020

Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility

Spiderman- Power and Irresponsibility

Released
October 22, 2012
Running time
41:50
Previous review
Next review
Tagline
The beginning of the saga that rocked the Spiderverse, the Clone Saga! And by that I mean it pelted it with rocks. In this episode, Linkara celebrates his fourth anniversary and looks at the first story from the Clone Saga!
Link

Linkara: Hello, and welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, (throws out his arms excitedly) WHERE IT'S OUR FOUR-YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!

(The Super Smash Bros. Brawl theme song plays, set to fireworks, while text appears saying "HAPPY FOURTH ANNIVERSARY" with the Atop the Fourth Wall logo below it)

Linkara: Ah, it's been four years since I started this happy little show, a show that has brought be nothing but joy.

(Cut to a montage of BAD stuff that has happened to Linkara, starting with him trying to cut his wrists with his magic gun during his meltdown at the end of his review of "Amazons Attack #5" and "#6"...)

Linkara: (audio from review) Why doesn't it work?!

(Next, cut to him screaming in frustration just before his breakdown in "Maximum Clonage" while throwing the comic in the air. Then cut to the closing bit after his EPIC rant on Lian Harper's death towards the end of his review of "Justice League: Cry for Justice #5" through "#7")

Linkara: (audio from review) THIS... EXPLOITIVE [sic]... BADLY WRITTEN TRASH!!!

(Then cut to him yelling in frustration over the sheer amount of satire in "The Dark Knight Strikes Again Part 3")

Linkara: (audio from review) WHY ARE THEY MAKING ME REVIEW THIS?! (lunges at the camera) WHY?!? SOMEBODY SEND HELP!!!

(Next, cut to him summing up his thoughts of the "JLA: Act of God" miniseries...)

Linkara: (audio from review) THESE... COMICS... SUCK!!!

(Then cut to him summing up his thoughts of the "Silent Hill: Dead/Alive" miniseries and the Silent Hill comics in general...)

Linkara: (audio from review; holds up comic angrily) THIS PIECE OF CRAP SUCKS!!!!

(Finally, cut to his thoughts on "Spider-Man: One More Day")

Linkara: (audio from review, slams comic on the floor angrily) OF COURSE IT ISN'T! THIS COMIC SUCKS!!!

(Cut back to present-day Linkara, gnashing his teeth in frustration)

Linkara: Why the hell am I still doing this?!

(Cut to a closeup of the cover of "Spider-Man: The Triumph of the Jackal")

Linkara (v/o): Because by teaching all of you how something is bad, you learn how something is good, and that if you are creative types yourselves, these are tips on how not to create something horrible.

Linkara: As per usual, in honor of the anniversary, we're looking at a Clone Saga story: "Power and Responsibility".

(Cut to a shot of the cover of an Ultimate Spider-Man story by that name)

Linkara (v/o): No, not that one! Haven't I made it abundantly clear by now that I do not care about the Ultimate Universe?!

(Cut to a shot of the comic, "Avengers Arena: Murder World")

Linkara (v/o): I have a hard enough time getting invested in the regular Marvel Universe when they spend all the damn time either killing their characters in pointless Hunger Games ripoffs...

(Cut to a shot of another Marvel comic, "Avengers vs. X-Men")

Linkara (v/o): ...or having their characters fight and kill each other in their big event comics.

(Cut to a shot of the DC comic, "Crisis on Infinite Earths")

Linkara (v/o): Say what you will about DC's events; at least they tried to have their big crossover events be about villains.

(Cut to a shot of Superboy-Prime)

Linkara (v/o): That doesn't count!

(Cut to a shot of the cover of an issue of "Ultimatum")

Linkara (v/o): My point is that even if I did care about the Ultimate Universe, I think any enthusiasm I might have had for it would have died alongside half the characters in "Ultimatum".

(Cut to a shot of today's comic: the Spider-Man comic "Power and Responsibility")

Linkara (v/o): No, we're talking about the mainstream universe: the Clone Saga's "Power and Responsibility".

Linkara: (irritably) And seriously, Spider-Man writers, buy a friggin' thesaurus! It feels like half the titles of all Spider-Man stories revolve around the friggin' Mono!

Linkara (v/o): Anyway, today's comic is "Power and Responsibility", the start of the Clone Saga. Well, okay, it technically started in the 1970s, but you know what I mean. You're probably wondering why we're going all the way back to the beginning of the Clone Saga epic, when we've tackled lots and lots of stories much farther down the line. It might be especially confusing because I've stated before that the early Clone Saga stuff showed lots of promise and there were plenty of good stories. Well, that is still true, and in the end, the story is not the worst that the Clone Saga had to offer. However, it is not a perfect story. Its good elements come about more in concept than execution, aside from a few moments of genuine, fist-pumping-in-the-air awesome. The primary reason, however, is because there are a few Clone Saga stories I want to talk about that involve another character we haven't gotten to yet, and one character who we've only scratched the surface on... mostly because there isn't much else to him but surface.

(A montage of comics leading up to today's story is shown)

Linkara (v/o): We'll get into him a bit later, but first, let's recap a bit. I've talked about this briefly before, but for a time in the Spider-Man books, Peter Parker's parents were supporting characters... sort of. Richard and Mary Parker had a backstory that explained that they were CIA agents, presumed either killed or missing in action from a plane crash. That backstory has always felt kind of iffy to me, since it kind of removes Peter's status as an everyman if it turned out his parents were super-spies. However, the two showed up one day, claiming to have been held captive in Algeria for the last twenty years. However, this all turned out to be an elaborate scheme by the Chameleon to find out Spider-Man's true identity and the two were actually androids. In turn, the Chameleon had been commissioned to do this by Harry Osborn, then the Green Goblin, as part of a very elaborate revenge scheme for the death of his father. Comic books are weird and kind of confusing. Needless to say, this incident, along with several others, including Aunt May falling ill for the hundredth time, and without Mephisto in sight to make a deal, pushed Spidey into becoming darker and edgier, even pretty much shunning his secret identity and going around talking about himself in the third person as... The Spider. Shock of all shocks, readership wasn't exactly on board with this idea. Along with some other creative decisions behind the scenes that weren't popular in some segments of fandom and the creative teams, including Peter's marriage to Mary Jane, there was a desire to create a storyline that would shake things up for the book in a similar way that the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline had done for the X-Men. The idea of bringing back the Clone was then conceived, and since they didn't have any better ideas, that's what they ran with. Unfortunately, there was the problem of Ron Perelman. You may recall him being briefly mentioned in the "Marville #1" review. He had purchased Marvel Comics in 1989 and helped to fuel the speculator boom in the early '90s, transforming comics into commodities to be valued instead of stories to be enjoyed. The name of the game was making money, and Marvel was restructured to reflect that, with the marketing department actually possessing veto power over the creative decisions. Thus, the Clone Saga was stretched out as long as it was, long past reader interest.

Linkara: But let's get back to how the story all began by digging into (holds up several Spidey comics at once) "Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility".

(AT4W title theme plays, followed by title card, which has "Something's Always Wrong" by Toad the Wet Sprocket playing in the background. Cut to a closeup of the first comic's cover)

Linkara (v/o): Because we're covering four comics, we're gonna skip the covers. Not much to say, aside from some nice, shiny, pointless holograms on them that, of course, don't show up in the scans. It should also be noted that, like "Youngblood", the four-parter contains a flip book, wherein you can go to the back cover and read another story. In this case, it shows some of the early days of Ben Reilly. We've already got a lot to cover and we really don't need to see this stuff, so I'm skipping that, too. One thing I will say about the cover to "Web of Spider-Man #117", which is our official beginning, it has this quote: (reads dramatically) "Beginning the saga that will ROCK the Spiderverse!"

Linkara: Oh, my, yes. It rocks it, rolls it, ties it up, beats it up with baseball bats, then shoves it in a dumpster and tosses it off a pier!

Linkara (v/o): We open where the previous comic had left off, with Spider-Man on the rooftop of a hospital, discovering... Peter Parker.

Peter: Wait! This is a mistake...

Linkara: Oh, Benjy, like you would not believe.

This guide is not complete. Please finish.

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