Chasm's History
Ben Reilly is a genetic clone of Peter Parker, the super hero Spider-Man, who went on to determine his own identity as the Scarlet Spider. Ben was created by Miles Warren, the super villain known as the Jackal, to torment the hero, and seemingly died in their first encounter. The clone survived and exiled himself for five years, only returning to New York after learning that Parker's Aunt May was sick. After making amends with Peter, Ben fought alongside him as the Scarlet Spider.
After many adventures, lives, deaths, and resurrections as Spider-Man, Scarlet Spider, Spider-Carnage, and The Jackal, Ben took a part-time job as a night shift security guard for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During this time, he was one of several off-the-wall heroes recruited into a makeshift team by Iron Man for his mission to defeat the resurgent villainous android Korvac. The team, which would earn the sobriquet of the "Space Friends", raced Korvac to Taa II to stop him from acquiring the Power Cosmic. After both Iron Man and Korvac imbued themselves with the Power Cosmic and ascended to godhood, the "Space Friends" returned to Earth. Following his return home, Ben was approached by the Beyond Corporation to become Spider-Man once again as part of their initiative to privatize super heroes. Ben's boss was Maxine Danger, the head of Beyond's Hero Department. As part of Ben's employment, Beyond arranged the release of Janine Godbe from prison, resulting in the rekindling of their romance. Reilly also counted with an improved suit, gadgets, and a support team headed by his handler, Marcus Momplaisir.
Ben eventually reached out to Peter, who was ill-disposed to him taking up the mantle without asking. Beyond secretly had their own plans for Ben's predecessor, and they arranged for a fight between the two Spider-Men and the U-Foes, which resulted in Peter being hospitalized due to acute radiation poisoning. Before Peter fell into a coma, Ben received his blessing to be Spider-Man. During Ben's subsequent period as Spider-Man, he confronted Morbius the Living Vampire, and Kraven the Hunter. One of his earliest disagreements with Beyond came when the company intended for him to fight Miles Morales, another holder of the Spider-Man mantle which was seen as unacceptable by Ben's superiors due to Beyond's holding of the Spider-Man trademark. Ben also teamed up with the Black Cat to attend to the unfinished business of the deceased Doctor Strange, which ended with her warming up to Ben in his role as Peter's replacement.
Around this time, Ben had a brush with the law after New York City's Mayor Wilson Fisk outlawed vigilantism as part of his vendetta against Daredevil. Ben was one of many super heroes arrested by the government-enforced Thunderbolt Units, but he was quickly rescued from police custody by The Thing and the Human Torch. Fisk's son, the Rose, set his sights on Spider-Man and used a kidnapped Marcus to bait him, but ended up being defeated. Ben's trust in Beyond was subsequently shattered after Doctor Octopus targeted the company for their use of his technology. After being defeated by Ben on behalf of Beyond, Octavius entrusted him with a hard drive containing the company's secrets, as well as the revelation that Ben's employers had picked him because they saw him as psychologically compromised and easy to manipulate. When Maxine discovered that Reilly had learned Beyond's secrets, she forced him into a device to scrub his mind, which unwittingly erased most of the formative memories that Ben had inherited from Peter.
Ben quickly became aware of the missing pieces of his mind, and went on the run from Beyond. By this time, Peter had recovered from his major injuries, and suited up after Beyond unleashed a new villain named the Queen Goblin. He helped Ben break into Beyond's Staten Island super villain facility, but with Reilly's moral compass compromised, he set free a monster called Creature Z to cause a distraction while he went after Maxine Danger. Once Reilly stormed Beyond Tower, Maxine enticed him into trying to use the memory-extracting device on Peter to take back his memories from their original source. When Peter caught up with Ben, they fought viciously as the building became flooded with a quantum-shifting polymer intended to cover Beyond's tracks. After Peter destroyed the device, Ben let himself become submerged in this substance, and the building exploded. Reilly was left for dead, but Janine returned for him and discovered he had become mutated by the polymer. Tormented by his missing memories, Ben fled from Janine, taking on the alias of Chasm.
