Ben Reilly’s new web-shooters were a much-needed upgrade to face the U-Foes, and highlight how he approaches being Spider-Man.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #76, available now from Marvel.
Ben Reilly’s latest tenure as Spider-Man is only just getting underway as Peter Parker recovers from an attack by the U-Foes, a group of powerful Hulk villains. But despite his suit having given him the advantage he needed to survive the U-Foes’ initial attack, Ben was not going back into the field without some reinforcements.
And in Amazing Spider-Man #76 by Zeb Wells, Patrick Gleason, Marcio Menyz, VC’s Joe Caramagna, these came in the form of some truly bulky web-shooters that were specially designed to handle the U-Foes. But his possession of them continues the trend of Ben wearing highly visible web-shooters for his costumes, both as Spider-Man and the Scarlet Spider.
After returning to the Beyond Corporation, Ben’s web-shooters were outfitted with some additional tech, like lead chaff to handle X-Ray’s radioactive abilities and vacuum bearings to dispatch Vapor. It’s not terribly surprising that Ben would need some extra support for this particular battle. The U-Foes are a Hulk-level threat, capable of going toe-to-toe with the Green Goliath and even having the power to revert him to Bruce Banner for a time. These are people who tried to mimic the accident that created the Fantastic Four, and they are exceedingly dangerous.
Ben’s new equipment proves to work incredibly well. The vacuum bearings in the web-shooters quickly took Vapor off the field and the lead chaff knocked out X-Ray, eliminating the two enemies that Ben would have had the hardest time dealing with in a matter of seconds. That just left the remaining two members of the U-Foes; Vector and Ironclad. But the kinetic protection in Ben’s suit allows him to take them down in the usual fashion. It is the bulkiness of his new gear that draws attention at the moment though.
Every time Ben has suited up, whether it is as Spider-Man or the Scarlet Spider, his web-shooters have always been very pronounced and impossible to miss. This characteristic more than anything else usually denotes when it is he who is behind the mask and not Peter. Granted, the identity of Scarlet Spider is separate from Spider-Man, but the massive web-shooters are a trademark that he can never seem to pass up.
This might be by design though. It is as if he’s trying to show that, while he may stand for and believe in the same things Peter Parker does, Ben still wants to make be his own man. A little cosmetic change can help distinguish himself from the original just enough to be distinct without being over the top. This time around though, the tech in his web-shooters has taken his gear to new heights of girth.
It’s not as if this is going to be a permanent part of his costume going forward though. The web-shooters with their add-ons look like he could club people with them instead of swinging a punch. But it also shows that Ben is a man who comes prepared for the job. Right from the start, his web-shooters were more pronounced because they had more advanced triggers than Peter’s did. It was Ben who introduced the concept of impact webbing, justifying the need for the web-shooters to be bigger than usual.
So really, they’re a testament to the kind of Spider-Man that Ben is. He is more tactical than Peter, trying to go into a fight with every advantage possible. That’s not something Peter can do often, his life throwing him unexpectedly into the thick of it most of the time. But now Ben has near-limitless resources to aid him in protecting the city and until Peter recovers, the original wallcrawler can rest easy knowing that a worthy Spider-Man is on the job.
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