There’s a crazy wave of self-cannibalising nostalgia going on at Marvel, which seems about as recklessly insular as any comic has dared to be since X-Men: The Hidden Years. And yet, the problem with all these very bad idea for comics is that they’re actually turning out to be pretty decent. X-Men Forever has Claremont writing some of his best material in years. X-Factor Forever looks fantastic. And even Spider-Man: The Clone Saga has turned out to be, well, reasonably entertaining. Especially for a comic with Howard Mackie’s name attached.

Of course, on its own terms, Spider-Man: The Clone Saga has completely discarded its original premise of “telling the Clone Saga the way it was supposed to go”. The final issue has a few twists which are nothing short of complete madness – particularly in a Marvel Universe where Norman Osborn has been nothing but the world’s most amoral, psychotic villain for a good year and a half now. And it’s well documented that the Clone Saga was supposed to end with Ben taking over and Peter retiring to raise his child. That isn’t remotely the situation that we’re left in here.

In fact, the issue ends with a status quo that couldn’t reasonably have existed in the Spider-Man comics – Peter and MJ have their baby, and Ben rides off into the sunset as the Scarlet Spider. It’s never definitively established which is the clone – not in a way that’s sufficient for me, and not in a way that would be sufficient for the characters. Peter doesn’t quit being Spider-Man. May doesn’t die. It’s all gone a bit wrong, really.

There are some good moments – Kaine gets his redemption, the twist of who was masterminding the entire plot wasn’t entirely unsuccessful, and there is a level of coherence to the entire plot that was completely missing from the original. Overall, though, it’s hard to know what to make of it. There’s a suggestion that it could turn into some kind of “Scarlet Spider Forever” spin-off, and based on the events of this series, it’s likely that the series wouldn’t be entirely terrible either – but it brings us back, once again, to the question of these comics’ origins. Who, precisely, are they for? Spider-Man: The Clone Saga has been technically competent but also creatively bankrupt. A nice nostalgia trip, perhaps, but one that went on just long enough. Let’s hope this is the last of it.