the Amazing Spider-man #608 - Marvel

It looks like Peter has all kinds of people crawling out of the woodwork now. Remember in ASM Annual #36, Damon Ryder attacked Peter up in Boston when he was there for Aunt May's wedding? Well in this issue he comes to the offices of the Front Line looking for Ben. Peter tries to play him off as the rantings of a mad man, but . . he's also brought a copy of a West Coast paper with him. In it is a police sketch of the man they think is responsible for burning down Professor Ryder's house, and killing his family in the process. The sketch looks just like Peter, which leaves him with a lot of explaining to do. While all of this is going on, we're also getting the background story of how Ryder and Ben Reilly came to know each other. Professor Ryder hired Ben as a lab assistant. Damon is trying to prove the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and modern man. He ends up proving it, kind of . . but what Ben or anybody else doesn't know is that he's been experimenting on himself. And I think it's starting to change him. We'll get some more on that next issue. The one thing we really don't know during all of this . . where exactly is Ben Reilly? And at the end of the issue, after Peter tries to track him down with a tracer . . which by the way he left behind while he's out hunting Michelle, Peter's roommate . . he's sitting in Damon hide-away when he's confronted by, actually physically accosted by . . Kaine. As Kaine lifts him off the ground by his neck, Peter's thinking . . 'This is going to hurt!' Well . . now we're going to see how Marc Guggenheim handles this whole 'Clone-saga'. Hopefully it won't be as long and drawn out as it was previously . . in the 90's. But we'll have to wait and see. I'm guessing that it's probably going to cover at least 6 issues. Which is cool. I just hope it doesn't stretch out into a year long thing. Marco Checchetto does the art, and Adi Granov does the cover. All in all I thought it was a pretty decent book. We covered a lot of the background this issue, but . . we've still got quite a bit more to go. How does Damon and Ben go from be lab partners, and buddies . . to Damon's family getting killed and him having a serious hard-on for Ben? I guess we'll have to wait until next issue to take that next step.