The Clone Saga/YMMV
YMMV tropes associated with the Second Clone Saga:
- Author's Saving Throw: A few were built into the story, but they were never used properly as the collection of writers and editors tried to hash one out for themselves. A lot of ideas were bandied around.
- Broken Base: Arguably the entire Saga, except you'll find very few people who thought the whole thing was good, and nowadays most agree that it had some good ideas.
- The Chris Carter Effect
- Complete Monster: This story marks the graduation of Norman Osborn from mentally ill Sympathetic Murderer to complete and utter bastard.
- Dork Age: Pretty much what the Clone Saga as a whole as deemed by many fans. It could also be argued that this was the continuation of an earlier Dork Age or that it simply led into another Dork Age (some of the stories afterward were not received very well). And some people say that Spider-Man has been in one giant Dork Age since the nineties, and this was just a more prominent period of said Dork Age.
- One of the things that aren't that apparent in hindsight is that before the Clone Saga, Peter Parker was going through some changes in an attempt to make him Darker and Edgier. Among other things, he was abandoning his Peter Parker identity and calling himself "the Spider". It's likely that the initial interest in Ben Reilly was because at the time, he was more like Spider-Man than Peter Parker was. No wonder some thought Peter was the clone. Oh, and the event that caused this Darker and Edgier turn was another story that went on too long (the supposed return of Peter's parents) - the trend was already in place.
- It has been alleged that the writers did this on purpose to make people accept Ben as the original and Peter the clone.
- The story also featured one for Lizard. Someone got the bright idea for Curt Connors to be stuck in mutated-Lizard form. No one--not even a lot of people involved in the Clone Saga--liked it, so near the end, it was revealed that Connors didn't mutate and the "mutated" Lizard got Ret Conned into being an experiment that Connors did in an attempt to rid himself of the Lizard.
- One of the things that aren't that apparent in hindsight is that before the Clone Saga, Peter Parker was going through some changes in an attempt to make him Darker and Edgier. Among other things, he was abandoning his Peter Parker identity and calling himself "the Spider". It's likely that the initial interest in Ben Reilly was because at the time, he was more like Spider-Man than Peter Parker was. No wonder some thought Peter was the clone. Oh, and the event that caused this Darker and Edgier turn was another story that went on too long (the supposed return of Peter's parents) - the trend was already in place.
- Ending Fatigue
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The whole thing was an attempt to get an unmarried Spider-Man. If that sounds familiar, you should note that at one point Mephisto was going to be the Author's Saving Throw, via a Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story Stable Time Loop. The editors at the time thought this was a bad idea and abandoned the concept. Then Joe Quesada picked it up again...
- Replacement Scrappy: Ben Reilly was generally well-liked in his Scarlet Spider days, but the moment he was declared the original Peter Parker, the fandom saw him as this. Things only got worse once he officially became Spider-Man. Crashing sales led to a reversal as quickly as possible.
- Tear Jerker: The death of Aunt May. Made less so when it was revealed she was a genetically modified actor after the Clone Saga.
- Wangst: Possibly justified, but a lot of it can also be considered bad writing.
YMMV tropes associated with the Ultimate Clone Saga:
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Fans’ reaction to to changing Doc Ock’s powers from Technopathy to basically making him Magneto-lite.
YMMV tropes associated with the 2009-2010 miniseries:
- Angst? What Angst?: Peter writes off Jackal telling him he’s a clone and Harry saying it’s not as the words of liars and lunatics and doesn’t seem to worry too much about it.