I hate Miles Warren. I absolutely loathe him. He is a completely irredeemable character whose actions make me nauseous, he makes terrible grooming choices, and his costume and alter-ego make zero sense. He’s also inextricably linked to Ben Reilly, so it’s impossible to discuss one without the other.
I think I’ve dunked on the Jackal enough for now. Let’s dive into who he is and why he’s so important to the Ben Reilly legacy.
The character of Miles Warren dates back all the way to Amazing Spider-Man #31 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, but he didn’t feature prominently in the story until Gerry Conway and Ross Andru took over the title in the 1970s. The villainous Jackal first appears in Amazing Spider-Man #129 where he tricks another brand new character calling himself Punisher (slightly more well known than Jackal) into tracking down and trying to kill Spider-Man. Needless to say, Punisher does not succeed in killing Spider-Man and ends up realizing a guy dressed in a green bodysuit calling himself the Jackal may not have been entirely trustworthy.
The Jackal would continue to vex Spider-Man throughout the 1970s as a figure manipulating circumstances from behind the scenes in an effort to either kill Spider-Man or at the very least cause him some stress. He employs the services of other villains like Grizzly and Tarantula to torment and harass Spider-Man, but his motives up to this point are unclear. That all changes at the end of Amazing Spider-Man #144 when the previously deceased Gwen Stacy pops up at the end of the issue. This understandably causes a bit of confusion for Peter Parker who is still devastated by the death of his girlfriend only to find her seemingly alive and well. While characters coming back from the dead in comic books is a time honored trope today, this was not the case in the 1970s. When a character died, they tended to stay dead. Having Gwen Stacy appear to have risen from the grave would have been quite a shock to any avid Spider-Man fan at the time.
It’s in Amazing Spider-Man #146 that we first get an inkling as to how the Jackal fits into all of this. The issue opens with the villain doing his best Hamlet impersonation as he monologues about getting revenge on Spider-Man for the “murder” committed two years ago. The plot thickens later in the issue when the Jackal sends Scorpion after Aunt May. It seems clear at this point that Jackal somehow knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Jackal continues to torment Spider-Man from behind the scenes in the following issue when he springs Tarantula from prison. By the end of the issue Jackal reveals he is responsible for the return of Gwen Stacy, and his hatred for Spider-Man stems from blaming him for Gwen’s death. It’s in issue #148 that it’s revealed that this new Gwen is a clone of the original, and Miles Warren is the Jackal. Somehow a professor at Empire State has not only developed the capabilities to clone human beings, but he has also been dressing up in a skintight bodysuit and calling himself the Jackal. It’s all a bit puzzling, but the 1970s were a wild time. Best not to dwell on it too much.
Amazing Spider-Man #149 is where things really take a turn. Warren reveals that he was obsessed with his student Gwen Stacy in an extremely inappropriate way. Not only that, but he resented Peter Parker (also his student) for being her boyfriend. After Gwen’s death, he became consumed with finding out a way to clone her and bring her back. He eventually succeeds not only in cloning her but in also developing a way to hypnotize her so that she will…do…whatever he wants. What I’m trying to say is Miles Warren is a bit problematic. Anyway, Warren does what any villain would do in this situation: he drugs Spider-Man, clones him, drugs the clone, puts both of them in Shea Stadium, and has them fight each other as neither one knows which one is the original and which one is the clone. Very standard stuff. Eventually the clone of Gwen convinced Warren that maybe he’s the bad guy here, and he dies (“dies”) in an explosion while trying to disarm his own bomb. Unfortunately, one of the two Spider-Men also dies (“dies”) in the blast leaving the survivor wondering if he is the clone or the original.
Amazing Spider-Man #150 deals with this predicament by having Spider-Man go to Curt Connors for assistance in determining if he’s a clone or not. By the end of the issue Connors has written a report on his findings, but Spider-Man decides he knows deep down that he couldn’t be the clone and tosses the report off a building content with never knowing what it said. The following issue concludes the arc by having Spider-Man scoop up the lifeless (“lifeless”) body of his clone and sticking it in a smokestack to be “cremated.” Fortunately none of these decisions could possibly ever come back to haunt Spider-Man in any way, shape, or form.
In part two of our Ben Reilly deep dive, we’ll take a look at how all of these decisions definitely came back to haunt Spider-Man in pretty much every way, shape, and form a couple decades later.