Underrated Superheroes: The Scarlet Spider

You know who I like? The Scarlet Spider.

That's right. The clone of Spider-Man.

I'm willing to concede that the clone saga never should have happened. Clone stories really seem like an artificial and silly way to induce drama into the series by having a "Who's who?" question thrown out there combined with the fact that you do eventually have to kill off the clone, because as much as every fanboy wants to see 2 Spider-Men flying around New York, it ends up getting pretty messy after 5 or 10 years.

This is exactly what they did to Ben Reilly, Peter Parker's clone, in the end. However, prior to his death, they gave him this really cool costume and identity as The Scarlet Spider. He had the same powers and personality as ordinary Peter Parker, but with a few key differences that make him cooler.

1. Being less experienced as a superhero, he was forced to be more resourceful in order to accomplish his goals. He took Parker's formula for web shooters and developed it into impact webbing - super strong balls of webbing that pack a wallop as well as some spider stingers that have a low dose of toxicity. Badass.

2. Many will disagree with me, but personally I think his costume looks cooler. It looks much more like a homemade costume, with it's solid fill red and blue instead of the intricately stenciled web designs. The external web shooters look nice, too.

3. Treading carefully with his extra inventions, the Scarlet Spider did something Spider-Man could never do: he beat Venom in an all out brawl.

All that, and he brings his own booyah.