>>1085777
>Didn't they pull that exact same stunt with Captain America after they made him a Nazi?
No. You might be thinking of Iron Man. With Captain America, the current guy literally isn't the original, but rather an entirely new person created by the Cosmic Cube, based on what everyone thought the original Captain America was. That includes his memories and such, so he remembers doing all the things we thought he did before we found out he was a nazi, but actually the original one was secretly a nazi the entire time.
Iron Man was murdered by Carol Danvers and then later brought back to life in a clone body. This isn't new in Marvel, it's happened plenty of times, probably most notably with Professor X, and then more recently with tons of X-Men (and the writers surely justify it with it notably happening with Professor X decades ago). However, there is an issue where Tony acknowledges that he isn't even the real one, and that he's just a clone. He says this to Carol Danvers in the process of apologizing to her for making her kill him by not going along with her crazy supervillain bullshit in Civil War 2.
Also notable is that Tony was already in a clone body since back in the '90s he died and was brought back as like a younger clone or something, and I think at that time he didn't even have the original's memories, but later the clone got aged up and the original's memories got put in his body (and he retained his memories from before. It's not like the clone memories got overwritten).
But the most notable instance of cloning in Marvel surely has to do with Spider-Man, and it's always been fucked. There is the (in)famous and years long "Clone Saga" from the '90s, but actually that's a sequel to the original Clone Saga (which is a regular length arc of just a few months) from the '70s. In the original, Professor Miles Warren, who was obsessed with his student, Gwen Stacy, clones her after she dies. Peter then meets the clone, but ultimately the clone decides that she isn't really the same person as Gwen, and goes to another country to live a new life. So we and Peter all have to accept that Gwen is really dead. In this story, Warren also made a clone Spider-Man, but he died.
20 years later, the editors didn't like the fact that Spidey was now married, as everyone knows Spidey is a young guy. But they couldn't have Spidey get divorced, because that would piss off fans and also not really make him feel any younger. Instead they revealed the clone was still alive, going by the name Ben Reilly. Their plan was to reveal Ben was the original the whole time, and the Peter we had followed since the '70s was the clone. Peter, now the clone, could retire with MJ, while Ben, revealed as the original, could pick up from where he left off in the '70s, maybe go back and (never) finish college and stuff, so the main Spidey could be the "classic" version, the age everyone remembers. Even though actually he'd still technically be as old as Peter, but at least he wouldn't have a wife around to remind everybody.
This pissed off fans even worse, though, as it turns out they had grown attached to Peter even more since the early '70s. So after several years and many dozens of issues of backtracking on backtracking, eventually they revealed Peter really was the original after all, and Ben started going around calling himself The Scarlet Spider, but eventually he died too. Everyone was pretty mad, and it was clear the entire saga couldn't be salvaged, so Marvel tried to sweep it under the rug. By the time they decided to have Peter be the real one, MJ was pregnant. To get rid of the baby, they had Norman Osborn (who died with Gwen Stacy back in 1970, but was now revealed to be alive the whole time) kidnap the baby, and despite fighting the Goblin many times after that, the baby was almost never mentioned again.
... except for in the MC2 timeline, which took place a few years in the future. There the baby was since rescued, and the young May Parker was acting as the new Spider-Girl. Though not mainstream continuity, this was relatively popular, and people liked the character. There was always the hope that Peter would rescue her in the main timeline so that she could then grow up to be Spider-Girl. However, about 10 years after the original clone Saga, now in the mid-2000s, the editors got it in their heads again that Spidey was too old and the marriage made him look old. After all, he was in college in the movies, and not married to MJ. But they couldn't have him get divorced, because that's controversial and divorce makes a guy feel old. So instead they had Pete reveal his secret identity in the Civil War storyline, where he sided with Iron Man. He then switched sides anyway, so he's a fucking idiot. All that happened is an assassin shot Aunt May. So Peter then sold his soul to Mephisto, essentially the devil (but there are many devils in Marvel) in order to erase everyone's memories of his secret identity and also save Aunt May. People remembered that they used to know his identity, but didn't remember what it was anymore. However, Peter quickly goes around re-revealing it to many characters.
But anyway, Mephisto's price is Peter's marriage. So he erases Peter's marriage from the timeline, and in the image showing the things that will be lost, such as the happy memories of his wedding day, an image of May, Peter's daughter, is included. So not only did Peter never really do much to try to rescue her after she was kidnapped by the Green Goblin, but now she was officially erased from history. And everything else is practically the same, like Peter and MJ were still dating for all those years, just not actually married. So really the only functional difference is that Marvel was clear to establish that a baby that hadn't been referenced in years, but was a fan-favorite character in a possible future timeline, was officially erased.
And I heard later they brought Ben Reilly back in the 2010s, and I'm sure they ruined him. And they published more possible future stories not in the MC2 timeline but which did include Peter and MJ being married and May being their daughter. I haven't read them because Marvel has been absolutely unreadable for the last ten years.
But I've digressed far from the point about cloning. Look, Professor X has been body hopping and being in clone bodies since forever. You're clearly supposed to always think he's the original Professor X. However, Gwen Stacy makes clear that clones are not the original person. So as far back as the '70s, things were contradictory here. I guess Clone Gwen just decided she was a different person, because the same story establishes that the two Peters don't even know which one of them is the original. They both feel like the original, and we're clearly supposed to think that all of these characters have souls. Iron Man has had at least three bodies that I know of, and Captain America is literally a fictional recreation of the original magically created based on everyone's false memories of the original.
Also, in case it isn't obvious, modern Marvel has inadvertently turned the X-Men into villains, along with other characters like Carol Danvers and others, because they used them to push identity politics, an evil ideology that the writers agree with. So they have the X-Men literally saying Magneto was always right, and having Carol Danvers murder Iron Man because he doesn't believe in locking people up without trial for thoughtcrime. Yet they're the good guys. Then they take Jordan Peterson quotes and put them in the mouth of Red Skull, thinking this makes Peterson a bad guy, not realizing that it just makes Red Skull a good guy. When evil people write morality tales, you end up with evil "heroes."