Saturday, June 11, 2022

Scarlet Spider (Marvel) | DEATH ANALYSIS

 

Background

“I am the shadow that’s always behind you. I’m the breath on the back of your neck. You’ll never know peace so long as I live. And when I die… you’ll burn in hell beside me.” 



Step into the Spider-Verse and you’ll find no shortage of web-slinging heroes of all shapes, colors and sizes. From Spider-Gwen to Spider Ham, the extended Spider-Family has grown exponentially over the years. Back in the 90s, however, we had the infamous Clone Saga. Thanks to the nefarious schemes of the Jackal, Peter Parker found himself facing down an exact physical replica of himself, Ben Reilly. And yet, Ben Reilly was not the first attempt at a clone of Peter. The first? That would be the man known only as Kaine. 


In the beginning, Kaine’s life was relatively normal. He believed himself to be Peter Parker, and was treated well by his creator, Miles Warren (the Jackal). That all changed when Kaine’s body began to degenerate on a cellular level, a byproduct of Warren’s flawed attempt at creating a perfect clone. Disgusted by this failure, Warren cast Kaine out, leaving the ‘newborn’ Kaine alone. Contrary to the state of his body, however, Kaine wasn’t actually getting weaker; he was getting stronger. Faster. And after this newfound power surge, he became aware of his successor, Ben Reilly. Kaine had become a volatile weapon, and found a target to aim himself toward.


Kaine's two objectives were pretty straightforward. First, he had to make his ‘brother’ Ben’s life a living hell in every way imaginable. And second, he wanted to ensure that Peter Parker would live a happy, safe life, free of that shitter Ben’s influence. Along the way, Kaine tangled with the assassin's guild, ruined Ben's life a few times, and even killed some notable Spider-Man rogues. His path seemed destined to forever be stained in blood, but Kaine eventually found it in himself to hear Ben out. And despite everything Kaine had put his brother through,  Ben forgave him, ending their feud and prompting Kaine to reconsider his trajectory in life.


The failed Parker’s mind had been unwell for many, many years, and he had struggled with some immense self-loathing and guilt over his actions. It would take an act of penance to wash away these mental blocks… and that’s exactly what happened when Kaine sacrificed himself to save Peter Parker from the vengeful Kravinoff family. At last, it seemed Kaine’s story was done.


…Except it wasn’t, because Kaine had been revived, with an entity called The Other now inhabiting his body. After some Anti-Venom (it’s a long story), Kaine emerged with a clean slate, a second chance at life. And so, Kaine found himself in Houston, Texas (Represent!), against all odds, and suited up to become the Scarlet Spider. It was here that Kaine met a young girl named Aracely, through whom Kaine learned what it meant to protect something. He made friends, got a girlfriend, and became a beloved city hero. And although his path forward would never be easy, Kaine would prove time and time again that he truly has what it takes to be one of the best Spider-Men in the Spiderverse… even if he’ll never admit it.

Equipment & Arsenal

Regeneration Suit

Kaine wore a suit specifically designed to combat and slow the rate of his body’s cellular degeneration.

Scarlet Spider Suit

Originally Peter Parker’s Stealth Suit, the Scarlet Spider suit retains its ability to bend light and sound to become completely invisible. Not only can Kaine cloak himself, but he can apparently extend this invisibility to webs he creates as well. Additionally, the suit has demonstrated regenerative capabilities, requiring the wearer to simply think about it to activate it. Possibly as a side effect of this power, the suit is completely fireproof. 

Spider Tracers

Given to him by Peter, Kaine carries a handful of Spider Tracers that allow him to track the whereabouts of anyone he tags with them. When used in conjunction with his listening device, Kaine can track down just about anyone if they’re unaware of a Spider Tracer attached to them.

Spider Watch

Kaine utilized a Spider Watch in the fight against the universe-hopping Inheritors. Fittingly, the Spider Watch allows Kaine to traverse the multiverse via his connection to the Web of Life and Destiny.

Sleeping Gas Grenades

Kaine once used a sleeping gas grenade to incapacitate Stunner, a superhuman on-par with the likes of Spider-Man himself. 

Toxin

Kaine briefly carried a toxin while being controlled by The Jackal. This toxin was apparently potent enough to contaminate a cure produced by Anti-Venom. 

Cellular Degeneration Formula

Developed specifically to subject Ben Reilly to the same cellular degeneration that Kaine has lived with his whole life. 

It is unclear if this formula works on non-clones as well, but Kaine also used an unspecified formula to incapacitate Ben’s girlfriend for a time. 

Forms

The Other

Chosen by the universe itself to become its host, Kaine contained within him The Other, an immensely powerful being unique to all realities. The source of all Spider-People’s powers, this mystical beast appears to be a bloodthirsty monster that will stop at nothing to see its foes slain. 

While inhabiting Kaine’s body, The Other passively kept his cellular degeneration at bay and changed around some of his established powers.

Powers & Abilities

Superhuman Physiology 

As you’d expect from a Spider-Man, Kaine possesses heightened superhuman strength, durability, and speed. Actually, he even takes it a bit further than usual thanks to his cellular degeneration, which somehow made him even stronger than Peter Parker. 

Organic Web Creation

After becoming the host of The Other, Kaine gained the ability to create organic webbing from his body. Think Tobey Maguire Peter, just amped up to eleven. Though he technically didn’t have any webbing in his classic era, Kaine quickly adapted to them thanks to his being, well, a Peter Parker clone. 

He has demonstrated certain specific applications of organic webbing, including the following:

Web Cocoon

Kaine has embedded himself in a protective cocoon of webbing to defend from hazardous surroundings like fire. He can also wrap his foes in similar cocoons to restrain them. 

Web Shield

It’s exactly what it looks like! The shields that Kaine strings together are surprisingly dense, able to shield him from bullets.

Web Trap

Obvious jokes aside, the usefulness of web trapping can’t be understated. Organic webbing doesn’t dissolve as quickly as Peter’s web fluid, and other characters like Ben Reilly have demonstrated how useful trapping a target in place with a web trap can be. Kaine is no stranger to using and being caught by this exact technique. 

Wall Crawling

I mean, yeah, duh.

Mark of Kaine

While Kaine obviously has the power to stick to any surface like the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, his powers have gone a bit further into brutal territory. See, Kaine has the ability to supercharge his adhesive hands, somehow igniting his hand on fire, for the sake of ripping skin off his opponent’s faces. In the process of doing this, the victim’s cells explode on contact, leaving behind a blazing symbol of the man responsible: the Mark of Kaine. 


While Kaine usually used this to ‘mark’ his victims, he’s also used it as a regular attack, to break free from dangerous foes, or to burn away restrictive bondage like Spider-Man’s webbing. 

Spider-Speak

Kaine takes the Spider-Manning to a whole new level. Yes, he can actually talk to spiders. Okay, well, he doesn’t ‘talk’ to them, but he does display the ability to control them to some extent, bending them to his will. These spiders have strength in numbers, able to destroy steel wires quickly, and even a single one can be invaluable aid in escaping physical restrictions. 


Additionally, Kaine can also ‘sense what they sense’, granting Kaine the ability to see across an entire city through any spider he connects with. Wherever there’s a spider, the Scarlet Spider could be there, watching, waiting, following. 

Night Vision

It’s exactly what the box says. I got nothing for this, and apparently neither did the writers! Like actually, this gets mentioned literally once and never again.

Stingers

Following his revival from The Other, Kaine gained dual stingers protruding from his wrists. These are, as you could probably guess, very sharp and make lots of ouchies when used as weapons. These barbs are long enough to completely impale people, and thin enough to precisely slide in-between a ribcage and target vital organs.

Mental Protection

When hosting The Other, Kaine was protected from Carrion trying to enter his mind. This can stun or temporarily immobilize whoever tries to enter Kaine’s mind, leaving them open to counterattack. It’s unclear if The Other can mentally damage invaders as well.


Shapeshifting

Only when in possession of the Other, Kaine was able to morph his limbs into spiked spears, capable of impaling foes multiples times over. Since this is directly tied to The Other and was able to harm Inheritors, this method of attack likely scales off The Other’s strength and not Kaine’s own. 

Revival

During his time as The Other’s host, the Totem creature was able to bring Kaine back from the dead multiple times, though at a cost. Each time, Kaine would be revived as a mindless, bloodlusted spider-creature, though with enough effort, Kaine could break free and return to himself. In doing so, his body would be completely healed and placed back in prime condition. He can even revive from The Other’s corpse, though this would obviously bring Kaine’s redos to an end. 


It’s worth noting that this revival takes time. After being killed by the Kravinoffs, an unknown but likely lengthy amount of time passed until the Jackal found his grave, and after being eaten by werewolves, an entire chase sequence ensued before Kaine re-entered the fray. 

Spider Sense/Future Sight

In his early years, Kaine’s Spider-Sense was one of his defining traits. Unlike Peter and Ben, Kaine’s Spider-Sense was basically amped up to 11, going well beyond a ‘sense’ and practically being future sight. That might sound great, but…

Kaine could not anticipate these visions, and they often didn’t even relate to him. He foresaw Mary Jane’s death more times than I could keep track of, for example. Nothing to do with combat like you’d expect out of a Spider-Sense. These visions also came with some serious mental and physical trauma, often causing Kaine to literally keel over in pain. 

Skill & Intelligence

Kaine is an exceptionally skilled fighter. While Kaine himself hasn’t learned The Way of the Spider, he has studied Peter’s moves, which allowed him to counter Peter in battle. Apparently Kaine has some knowledge of swordplay, as shown when he won a single-stroke duel against a ninja. The Scarlet Spider has combined his webbing with raw strength to simultaneously beat someone up and trap them in a web cocoon. Heck, he can even perform feats that seem like he’d have a Spider Sense, when in fact, he's just really observant and quick to react. And even against skilled fighters like Wolverine, Kaine is able to precisely target vital organs with his stingers to land a fatal blow. Compared to other Spider-Men, Kaine’s fighting style is described as vicious and devastating,  though lacking in finesse.


Despite that, though, Kaine isn’t dumb. Far from it, in fact. He may fight savagely, but according to Ben Reilly, Kaine actually overthinks and strategizes, partly to compensate for his lack of Spider-Sense. This strategizing and acute awareness of his surroundings is how Kaine was able to counter a teleporter. Kaine is generally a pretty quick and pragmatic thinker, who knows when to dip out of a situation and sets things up ahead of time to bail him out later. According to Kaine, he's not as bright as his brothers Peter and Ben, but evidence has been shown to the contrary. Kaine developed a formula to subject Ben to the same cellular degradation he himself suffered from, and then made a cure to that exact same thing for once he’d gotten his point across. Kaine also performed dissection on… himself, and has shown knowledge in the field of genetics. Rather fitting, all things considered.

Feats

Power & Strength

Speed

Durability

Scaling

Simply put, there are a lot of instances throughout Kaine’s history that confirm he is outright superior to Spider-Man in every physical way. That includes the likes of Ben Reilly and Superior Spider-Man, as well as a multitude of Spiders present during the Spider-Verse events like Miles Morales and PS4 Spider-Men.

Additionally, Kaine has been stated to be faster and stronger than Wolverine, and has fought people like Beast, Carnage, Venom, and Kraven, all of whom would be drastically inferior to Kaine when he’s serious.

This basically means that you can scale Kaine to any feats of speed, strength, or durability the characters mentioned have performed, and logically, to any feats performed by characters comparable. (A collection of scaling statements and fights here)

However, at his maximum potential, The Other has proven to be superior to Solus, who himself has withstood and consumed the power of Cosmic Spider-Man. This would imply that The Other can scale to characters and feats on this level as well. 

Some notable feats to consider scaling to and above are:


(Base Kaine)


(The Other)

Weaknesses

Despite being one of the most powerful Spider-Men in the Spiderverse, Kaine has quite a few flaws, even more so than his peers. For starters, he has always lacked a particularly useful Spider-Sense. He’s either been completely inhibited by his future sight, which has led to him becoming distracted in the middle of fights (this was the cause of one of his deaths), or his lack of Spider-Sense has left him vulnerable to surprise attacks.


Kaine’s greatest physical shortcoming used to be his Cellular Degeneration, which, when present, constantly but slowly killed him. This extreme pain could only be slowed by his special suit, though it no longer persists as an issue after his revival in Spider-Island.


Even with his Spider-Person physique and the boons that come with it, Kaine is just as susceptible to gas attacks and poisons/drugs (which the Kravens REALLY like to use) like anyone else, though he can fight them off better than a normal person. He’s also been afflicted by Mysterio’s hallucigen gas.


Additionally, Kaine’s stealth suit is incapable of masking perspiration, which means an opponent with an acute sense of smell can still track him down despite his cloaking technology.


Perhaps Kaine’s greatest weakness, however, is his own mentality. The Scarlet Spider has always struggled with keeping a clear head, from his inception as a villain to his redemption as a hero. Kaine constantly struggles with his inner demons and self-guilt towards the people he’s killed. This moral struggle between his vicious instincts and his desire to wash away his sins has led him hesitating in the midst of battle, and has thus been the cause of one of his deaths.
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