Sit down boys and girls and let me tell you the sad, sad tale of professor Miles Warren.
Once a distinguished professor of biology at Empire State University, things took a decidedly despicably downward turn from the minute you met
Peter Parker. It was bad enough that the gifted but lazy young man didn't take your classes seriously, but on top of that, he was dating the brilliant and beautiful Gwen Stacy—your star pupil. Your Gwen. Yes, I know, it's completely inappropriate for you to be hopelessly infatuated with one of your students (and doubly so considering the age difference), but in all your years you've never met anyone who captured your heart the way she has. Gwen was different from all the other girls—she was special.
Until
Spider-Man killed her.
That's right, Gwen's life was cut short by the foolishly arrogant and dangerously reckless would-be-superhero. In one of his many battles with the Green Goblin, Gwen would be used as a hostage atop the Brooklyn Bridge. Instead of protecting her interests and luring the Goblin away, Spider-Man attacked, and in their fighting, Gwen was knocked off the top of the bridge. The fool then tried to catch her with his blasted webbing and ended up snapping her neck.
Your Gwen. So young. So beautiful. So much wasted potential.
Spider-Man must pay.
Something in you snapped that day. When Gwen Stacy died atop that bridge, in a way, Miles Warren died too. From that point on, you were the Jackal. A twisted supervillain bent on bringing Gwen back from the dead by any means necessary and destroying those who had wronged her like her boyfriend Parker and especially Spider-Man. You began devoting your vast intelligence toward these single-minded tasks...
You had already been working with an associate professor on Anthony Serba on cloning experiments as part of a research grant from the university, and in fact, you had managed to successfully clone a frog in a lab. Inspired by this, you decided cloning would be how you could bring Gwen back from the dead, and also how you would punish Spider-Man for murdering her. You immediately set to work using the equipment to create two test clones of your students... One of Gwen, and one of Peter Parker. When Serba discovered what you were doing he tried to destroy the clones, and you accidentally killed him. Unable to accept what you had done you dove further into denial and the bridge between Miles Warren and the Jackal's separate personalities grew ever wider.
Your first human cloning experiments were partially successful. The clones were brought to life, but they both suffered a form of cellular degeneration that would soon destroy them. You'd have to work hard to correct that in future batches. You ended the life of the failed Gwen clone, but something happened when you tried to do the same for the failed Parker clone... He fought back with incredible strength and dove out the window to escape, climbing down the wall and leaping into the darkness below. Suddenly it all made sense. Peter Parker
is Spider-Man! Of course, how could you be so dumb? The reason Gwen was atop that bridge on that day was that she was Spider-Man's girlfriend! And so, Spider-Man was now doubly responsible for her death. Your hatred for both Parker and Spider-Man were one and the same.
Soon after you corrected the clone degeneration—or at least found a way to put it off for longer—and set to work creating a new batch of clones. This time, you cloned not only Gwen and Parker again, but also yourself. This put you on a path toward facing the real Spider-Man in Shea Stadium, and your first death.
Spider-Man against Spider-Man, while you and Gwen watched from the sidelines and reporter Ned Leeds's life dangled in the balance literally below a bomb. Neither one of them knew which of them was the real Spider-Man and which was the clone. Your revenge was complete, for whichever one won the fight, one Spider-Man would lose.
You weren't actually in attendance that day. No, you watched it all from a monitor. The Jackal who goaded the Spiders into fighting one another was your clone. You figured, in case things went wrong, better to play it safe. Of course, the one thing you didn't count on was the Stacy clone intervening and convincing your clone that what he was doing was wrong. Your clone freed Leeds before the bomb went off and seemingly killed you and one of the two Spider-Men. The other disposed of the bodies and went home to his new girlfriend, Mary-Jane.
That was 5 years ago.
Flash forward to today. You've been living in a secret lair (nobody knew you were alive), waiting, biding your time, building an army of clones as you planned your ultimate revenge. You have a new body, stronger than ever before and genetically engineered to be the Jackal you've always pretended to be. No more Miles Warren behind a mask. You
are the Jackal now, and you will have your revenge!
Somewhere, out there, your near-perfect Gwen clone is still alive, having survived the Shea Stadium blast. And the other Spider-Man from that day? The one Parker thought he disposed of? He lived too and was calling himself Ben Reilly now to differentiate from Parker. The time was coming when you would step back into the center stage. Kill the Spider-Men once and for all, and steal your happily ever after with Gwen. You've poisoned Parker's aunt May to lure the Spider-Clones from five years ago back to New York, where your Spider-Clone-Army awaits them. And at the end of it all, the ultimate revenge awaits... The revelation of who is the true Peter Parker! And boy will the uncertainty of that question confuse and confound your opponents until it is too late.
The trap has been set. All that's left to do is spring it.