Editor's Note: Amazing Spider-Man #609 arrives in stores tomorrow, October 21.

Clones. The word is enough to strike fear into the heart of most longtime Spider-Man fans, many of whom will still remember the damage wrought to the character by the infamous "Clone Saga" storyline of the 1990s. That debacle came close to screwing up Spider-Man continuity completely, and it's no surprise that, for the decade that followed it, the events of the story were barely (if at all) mentioned in the Spider-Man books, for fear of evoking such a dire chapter in the hero's history. All the more surprising, then, that recent issues of Amazing Spider-Man have managed to revisit the Clone Saga without dragging the book all the way back to those bad old days.

The two villains of this issue are both directly linked to the events of the Clone Saga: Kaine is a flawed clone of Peter, created by the Jackal in a sequence of events that was retconned into past continuity by the Clone Saga; and Raptor (we learn here) was once a lab partner of Ben Reilly, the clone who replaced Peter as Spider-Man for a while. Despite such potentially convoluted backstories, Guggenheim keeps things clean and simple, giving readers the information that they need in order to understand who these villains are--and why they're after Peter--but never getting so bogged-down in details that the story feels as though it's become sidetracked by a history lesson, even when the issue takes some time to explore the backstory of Raptor.

In fact, considering the fact that I skipped the last few issues of Amazing Spider-Man, it's even more impressive that I didn't have any trouble following the plot of this one--even though it's a middle chapter of a longer story arc. That's perhaps because the story is relatively simple, with only a few main players to speak of, and a fairly heavy emphasis on action and fight sequences rather than on the internal emotions of the book's ongoing soap-opera plot threads.

The action is well-illustrated, with Marco Checchetto depicting the opening fight between Spider-Man and Kaine with a certain grittiness and darkness without ever sacrificing the clarity of his storytelling. And Luke Ross and Rick Maygar supply a slightly softer style of artwork for the book's flashback scenes, which contrast against the rough (sometimes a little too rough) finish of Checchetto's art well.

This is a reasonably enjoyable issue, and one that pulls off the tricky balancing act of incorporating large chunks of past continuity without becoming so beholden to it that it becomes a barrier to telling new stories. It's also pretty funny in places, with Guggenheim capturing Peter Parker's voice well (I particularly enjoyed Spidey's gag about how hard it is to catch a cab in New York).

Having said that, it's also a fairly simple, straightforward and generic superhero comic that doesn't have any truly memorable scenes or clever hooks to make it stand out as something special or unique. And, if I'm absolutely honest, I'd rather see the book plough forwards with more original creations than spend time and effort trying to rehabilitate the Clone Saga.

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