Here’s an interesting revelation that I’ve come to recently!
A common critique of the Spider-Man: Clone Saga is that Ben Reilly’s internal narration expressing his angst & self-doubt over being a clone instead of a normal human feels extremely repetitive & overly drawn out. However, as someone who personally struggles with anxiety & obsessive compulsive disorder, I can’t help but heavily relate to Ben’s mental struggles. Similar to Benjy, I too often find myself constantly doubting my own self-worth, overly fixating on what-ifs in to an emotionally draining extent.
In essence, one can easily draw parallels between Ben’s constant fixations on his shared memories with Peter Parker (as well as the latter’s unique status & relationships in life), to the unhealthy & circular intrusive thoughts which are a common symptom of OCD.
At the same time, however, just like Benjy I too always strive to maintain a positive & optimistic attitude on life, continuously doing my best to help others simply because it’s the right thing to do. For all of Ben’s dwelling about the past & the what-ifs, he repeatedly makes the conscious decision to not give into his anxieties. Even when he’s directly tempted with the prospect of taking Peter’s life & memories for himself, Ben instead chooses to embrace his own unique identity & experiences as Ben Reilly, regardless of how much he continues doubt the value of his existence.
It’s these characteristics that make Ben Reilly such a deeply relatable & human character despite his status as a clone. So even though it was definitely unintentional on the part of the writers for The Clone Saga, Ben can easily be interpreted being coded as having OCD, which makes his struggles & triumphs all the more relatable & inspiring to me respectively!
From adjectiveless Spider-Man (1990) #55 by Howard Mackie & Mike Manley, and Web of Spider-Man (1985) #123 by Terry Kavanagh & Steven Butler.
