Life After Death

Kaine, a clone of Spider-Man, has relocated to Houston, Texas. One night at a bar he overhears a guy bragging about a deal going on at the port that involves a lot of money. Kaine decides to go and relieve them of this money. He easily takes out the men thanks to his new found spider-powers which include organic webbing and the ability to see in the dark.[1]

After taking the duffle bags full of money, Kaine is about to leave when a chirping cricket attracts his attention to a shipping container. That’s when he becomes aware of the smell. Opening the container, Kaine is horrified to see a pile of dead bodies inside. They are people who were being illegally smuggled into the United States as part of a human trafficking operation and they all cooked alive in the hot Texas sun. That’s when a hand pops up from pile of dead bodies. Kaine goes inside and recovers a young girl who is still alive.

Later, at the Park Plaza Hospital at the Houston Medical Center, Doctor Donald Meland is patching up a gun shot wound. Standing over the patient is officer Wally Layton, who explains he shot the patient because he had pulled a gun on him. Layton orders Meland not to give his patient any pain killers because he still has to question him. That’s when Kaine comes running into the emergency room with the young girl he rescued from the shipping container. Officer Layton overreacts and pulls his gun, ordering Kaine to put the girl down. As Meland and his nurses get the girl onto a stretcher, Kaine reacts by shooting webbing at Layton’s gun and yanking him foward. Kaine holds the cop off the ground with one hand and is about to kill him when he stops himself. He then drops the officer and tells him about the bodies at the port before fleeing the scene.

Kaine decides to skip town by hitching a ride on the side of a tanker truck running along Route 59. He has been on the run since the Spider-Island fiasco, certain that everyone from the FBI to the Avengers are after him for his past crimes.[2] However, he has grown tired after running for so long that he decides to stop and rest for the night. He ends up renting a $2000-a-night hotel room in downtown Houston. He figures that paying in cash will attract unwanted attention, but he he ignores his concerns after taking ordering room service and having a hot shower, the first one in a very long time.

He looks at himself in the mirror and is once again surprised to see that all of his old scars are long gone. He thinks back to his past where he constantly hounded Spider-Man and the Scarlet Spider, reminding himself that is who he still is. He reminds himself that he was the first failed clone of Peter Parker created by the Jackal, and how the process that gave him life cursed him with cellular degeneration.[3] Although the Jackal tossed him out, Kaine found new purpose by hounding another Parker clone named Ben Reilly, although his motivations for doing so are not very clear to him now.[4] He thinks about how Ben Reilly died at the hands of another monster,[5] and how, much later, he sacrificed his own life to save Peter Parker.[6] However, he was brought back to life and used during Spider-Island until he was saved by Peter Parker.

Now that he has been cured he feels like a new man and while he cannot forget his past he, for the first time in his life, begins thinking that he can move beyond it and become something better. With that, he begins shaving his face and cutting his hair. After this, Kaine goes up to the roof of the hotel and admits that this is the first time he feels alive. He then leaps off the roof of the hotel and begins web-slinging across town. With a smile on his face, Kaine can understand why Spider-Man enjoys doing this so much.

At that moment, at the port, officers are collecting evidence and bagging the bodies from the shipping container. Officer Layton is telling his superior about the man who tipped them off to this scene when suddenly another large man, covered in tattoos and piercings, climbs up onto a stack of shipping containers. Addressing the officers on the scene, the man tells them to burn as flames appear in his eyes.

Meanwhile, Kaine takes a break from web-slinging as the humid Texas air has caused him to sweat profusely. Considering his options for the future, Kaine decides that he is going to go down to Mexico and find a nice beach to buy with his money. That’s when he notices an old woman crossing the street as a massive sports utility vehicle speeds down the street. Kaine leaps off the building and stops the vehicle by crushing its hood. When the old woman thanks him for saving her life, he berates her for crossing the street when it wasn’t safe to do so. That’s when he becomes aware of the driver, who was flung through his windshield and is in bad shape. As a crowd gathers at the scene, Kaine feels awful for what he has done and, as an ambulance arrives on the scene, takes off.

Kaine returns to the hotel where he gets some drinks at the bar. The bartender tries to strike up conversation with him but he is evasive with his answers. Seeing a news report about the port, he asks her to turn it up. He learns that someone attacked the officers at the scene. When Kaine returns to his hotel room, he tries to convince himself that this is not his problem and begins packing his bags. As he works he catches a glimpse of the stealth Spider-Man suit he wore during Spider-Island and tries to ignore it, reminding himself that he is not Peter Parker.

At that moment, the lone survivor of the human trafficking container wakes up to find hospital staff moving her. They try to assure her that everything is fine. Suddenly one of the doors blows open and the man who confronted the police appears before her. Surrounded in flame this attacker, who calls the girl Aracely, that he has come for her and that there will be nobody to save her. As he is saying this, Kaine is leaving town on foot.

Recurring Characters

Kaine, Salamander, Aracely Penalba, Annabelle Adams, Wally Layton, Donald Meland, (unidentified) Lobo Cartel, Roxxon

Continuity Notes

1. After being healed of his cellular degeneration in Amazing Spider-Man #671, he started exhibiting new spider-powers similar to those that Peter Parker once had from Amazing Spider-Man #528 to 545. It’s later explained in Scarlet Spider (vol. 2) #14 that when Peter Parker rejected the totemistic powers of the other they eventually transferred to Kaine.

2. Kaine was instrumental in ending the Spider-Island crisis. See Amazing Spider-Man #666-673. However, he is a wanted criminal due to his past as a vigilante dating back to the Clone Saga.

3. From more on Kaine’s creation see Spider-Man #61.

4. This is a round about way of saying that the Clone Saga was really confusing at time. It started in Web of Spider-Man #117 until Spider-Man #75.

   • During the course of this event Peter Parker was briefly tricked into thinking he was a clone and that Ben Reilly was the real Spider-Man. They later learned that this was a deception orchestrated by Norman Osborn. For a clear account of what the fuck happened back then I strongly recommend reading Spider-Man: The Osborn Journal #1.

   • At any rate, for more on Kaine’s torment of Ben Reilly see Spider-Man: The Lost Years #1-3, and Spider-Man: Redemption #1-4.

5. Ben Reilly was murdered by the Green Goblin in Spider-Man #75.

6. Kaine disguised himself as Spider-Man and was sacrificed during the Kravinoff family’s ritual to resurrect Kraven the Hunter. As he was a clone and not the original Spider-Man, this botched the resurrection. Kaine survived and was resurrected. At this time, it is believed that the Jackal found some hand in doing this but in reality, it was due to the Other selecting him as the new spider-totem. See Amazing Spider-Man #634-637 and Scarlet Spider (vol. 2) #14.

Topical References

• The hotel that Kaine stays at is identified as the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, Texas. This should be considered a topical reference beacuse Four Seasons is a real world company and it’s entirely possible for it to be sold, change franchises, or go out of business.