You know that feeling when you open a letter from your energy supplier, start reading, and by paragraph three you’re genuinely unsure whether you owe them money or they owe you money, and by paragraph five you’ve lost the will to live entirely? That’s what it feels like to pick up a Marvel or DC crossover event for the first time. Except instead of Ofgem-regulated confusion, you’re dealing with forty years of retroactive continuity, parallel Earths, and a clone who may or may not also be the original. I’ve been reading comics since I was about nine years old. I still don’t fully understand the Clone Saga, and I’ve had roughly three decades to figure it out.
These are the confusing comic book storylines explained as best they possibly can be, framed as the kind of small-print decoding exercise that only a very patient, very caffeinated British consumer champion would attempt. Think less “summer blockbuster” and more “terms and conditions you actually have to read before clicking accept.”
The Clone Saga: like a mobile phone contract with seventeen hidden fees
The Clone Saga ran in Spider-Man comics from roughly 1994 to 1996, though “ran” undersells how much it sprawled. It was originally conceived as a tight story. Six issues, maybe. Clean. Done. What Marvel actually published was closer to two years of monthly comics across multiple titles, all of which you theoretically needed to read in order, crossing over between Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Peter Parker: Spider-Man, and several one-shots with names like Web of Carnage that sound like rejected Call of Duty DLC.
The core premise: Peter Parker might be a clone. The man we’ve been reading about for years might be Ben Reilly, a genetic duplicate who has been living in exile. The real Peter might have been living in a bin somewhere. This is either a bold, fascinating identity crisis or an absolute affront to thirty years of storytelling, depending entirely on which trade paperback you happen to have read first. Marvel editorial changed their minds about which version of events was “true” approximately four times mid-publication. Reading it in sequence feels like watching a film where the director’s cut, the theatrical cut, and the version your mate recorded off Channel 4 in 1998 have all been spliced together at random.
A Martin Lewis-style breakdown of the Clone Saga would need a supplementary PDF, a follow-up video, and probably a dedicated helpline. Even then, the interest rate on your confusion would compound weekly.
Infinite Crisis: Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-3, and your brain leaving the building
DC’s 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths was specifically designed to simplify DC’s continuity, which had become a patchwork of contradictory parallel universes. The solution was elegant in theory: collapse the multiverse into one Earth. Clean slate. Simple.
Twenty years later, DC published Infinite Crisis, a sequel event premised on the fact that the original Crisis had created so much new continuity that things were confusing again. So they held another crossover to fix it. Then, three years after that, they published Final Crisis. Then Flashpoint. Then The New 52. Then Convergence. Then Rebirth. Then Infinite Frontier. Each one promised to simplify what came before. Each one added approximately seventeen new complications.
Reading Infinite Crisis without prior knowledge of DC history is like trying to use the NHS online appointment system having never registered with a GP. You click what seems like the right link. You’re taken somewhere unexpected. You try another link. A form asks for information you don’t have. You close the tab and ring up. Nobody answers. By the time you understand what Superboy-Prime punching reality actually means in narrative terms, you have aged noticeably.
The crossover also required readers to buy tie-in miniseries called Day of Vengeance, Rann-Thanagar War, Villains United, and The OMAC Project to fully understand what was happening in the main book. That’s four separate ongoing purchases just to follow a single storyline. My local newsagent in the mid-2000s genuinely didn’t stock half of them. I filled in the gaps by reading plot summaries on a forum whose design language suggested it had last been updated in 2003.
Secret Wars 2015: everything everywhere all at once, but British readers found out six months late
Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars is, to be fair, a genuinely excellent piece of comics writing. I say that upfront because what follows might sound like a complaint, and it’s really more of an awed bewilderment. To understand Secret Wars, you need to have read Hickman’s Avengers and New Avengers runs, which ran for roughly three years and set up a concept called the Illuminati secretly destroying alternate Earths to prevent a universal collapse. Both series were dense, slow-burn, and referenced concepts from his earlier SHIELD miniseries, which itself referenced historical figures in ways that made secondary school history feel surprisingly relevant.
Then Secret Wars proper collapsed the entire Marvel multiverse into one planet called Battleworld, divided into regions governed by alternate versions of established characters, and told about eight simultaneous storylines across thirty-plus tie-in series. The main series was also delayed repeatedly, so the tie-ins concluded before the main book did, leaving readers knowing the ending of the story whilst still waiting to read it. Imagine watching the last episode of a drama before episodes three through six have aired. That was Secret Wars. Navigating it felt about as intuitive as trying to find your way around a video game map with only a tatty road atlas for company.
Why does this keep happening and why do we keep buying it
Here’s the thing that nobody in comics publishing likes to say out loud: crossover events exist partly to sell more comics. Not entirely. Some of them genuinely contain brilliant work. But the structure, the “you need sixteen issues of four other series to understand this” architecture, is very much a commercial model dressed up as storytelling ambition.
According to the Comics Professionals Guild, the UK comics retail market has contracted significantly since the 1990s peak, with specialist shops bearing most of the weight of maintaining an audience for ongoing serialised fiction. Those shops, and the readers who support them, deserve storylines they can actually follow without a wall chart and a free afternoon.
And yet. I’ve read all of these. Multiple times, some of them. Because buried inside even the most labyrinthine crossover is usually something genuinely thrilling. A single issue of the Clone Saga, the one where Peter and Ben just sit on a rooftop and talk about identity, is lovely. One chapter of Infinite Crisis, where the original Superman from Earth-2 confronts modern DC’s compromises, is properly moving. These stories go dark in ways that would feel right at home in a Sunday night BBC drama, which is both their greatest strength and the reason they need a seventeen-step reading guide to access.
A genuinely helpful (sort of) reading order for the uninitiated
If you want to read any of these without losing your mind entirely, here’s my actual advice. For the Clone Saga: read the Spider-Man: The Complete Clone Saga Epic trade paperbacks in order, accept that issues 1 to 3 and then 7 to 9 contradict each other, and treat the whole thing like an unreliable narrator situation. For Infinite Crisis: read the OMAC Project tie-in first, then the main series, then pretend the Superboy-Prime scenes are a separate short story. For Secret Wars 2015: read Hickman’s Avengers run first, then New Avengers, then the main Secret Wars series, and only dip into the tie-ins if a specific one gets recommended by someone you trust.
None of this is as complicated as it sounds once you’re actually in it. Comics, like open world games with suspiciously British town planning, reward patience and curiosity. The layout only makes sense once you’ve wandered around in it long enough to find the shortcuts. And honestly? Even the confusing bits are usually more fun than they have any right to be.
Martin Lewis would absolutely produce a comparison table. He’d probably rate Secret Wars 2015 as Best Value, penalise the Clone Saga for hidden costs, and give Infinite Crisis a warning for excessive small print. He wouldn’t be wrong on any count.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Clone Saga and why is it so confusing?
The Clone Saga was a Spider-Man crossover event that ran from 1994 to 1996, spanning multiple monthly titles simultaneously. It became confusing because Marvel editorial changed the intended ending several times mid-publication, meaning plot points contradicted each other across issues. The best way to approach it is via the collected trade paperbacks rather than individual issues.
Do I need to read every tie-in comic to understand Infinite Crisis?
Ideally yes, but realistically no. The four main tie-in miniseries (The OMAC Project, Villains United, Day of Vengeance, and Rann-Thanagar War) add context, but the core story in the main Infinite Crisis series can be followed without them. The OMAC Project is the most essential if you’re only picking one.
What reading order should I follow for Secret Wars 2015?
Start with Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers (2012) and New Avengers (2013) runs, which set up the Incursions storyline that Secret Wars resolves. Then read the main Secret Wars series. Most tie-in miniseries are self-contained and optional, though series like Thors and Weirdworld are worth it if you enjoy the setting.