Biochemist Miles Warren is obsessed with creating clones and experimenting on himself, he becomes the mad scientist known as the Jackal. Well known for his clone creations, particularly Carrion as well as Spider-Man clones Kaine and Ben Reilly, AKA Scarlet Spider, his goals include world domination and cloning the entire human race.
The Art of Cloning
Born into a family with a proclivity for science, Miles Warren grows up with a natural aptitude towards the subject. His brother becomes a science teacher at Midtown High School where Peter Parker is his favorite pupil, but Miles’ talents far exceeds that. After earning his Ph.D. in biochemistry, Miles travels to Wundagore Mountain to assist Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary, in his experiments to evolve animals into human form. Whereas the Evolutionary’s subjects never fully lose their animal appearance, Miles succeeds in creating two “New Men” who look practically human. Miles’ success causes some friction between Miles and the Evolutionary which accelerates when a group of New Men begin to worship Miles. When Miles evolves into a jackal, he exhibits a Jekyll-Hyde personality and then escapes, so the Evolutionary banishes him from Wundagore.
Miles stays in the area where he meets and marries Monica, fathering two children, but he spends so much time with his research that Monica takes the children and leaves him. Unbeknownst to the Warrens, Miles’ jackal-man, envious of his creator’s life, stalks the family. He causes a car accident that kills Monica and the children. When Miles learns of this, he realizes the cause and blames the High Evolutionary. He returns to Wundagore, challenges the Evolutionary and leaves with the New Men faction that worship him, promising to make them human.
He returns there every summer but spends the rest of the year in Manhattan where he obtains a position as professor at Empire State University. There, his brother introduces him to Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, on the same day that Miles first saw and immediately fell in love with Gwen Stacy. Disturbed by his feelings, Miles convinces himself his intentions were paternal and that Gwen was like the daughter he never had, blotting out the memory of his dead children. The following semester, both Peter and Gwen are students in his biology class.
Continuing his New Men research, Miles hires Anthony Serba, AKA Spider-Clone, as an assistant and has him collect cell samples from the students in his class. He creates a serum from these samples and injects New Men volunteers. The serum makes the New Men human but transforms them into living corpses, then kills them. Miles tries to genetically engineer duplicate bodies for the New Men, making his first excursions into cloning which he later continues at ESU with Serba. Back in New York, Miles invites Peter, his best, though occasionally distracted, student, to a science demonstration. When Peter brings Gwen Stacy along, Miles can’t help but voice his approval. When Spider-Man appears, Miles expresses an interest in studying him.
To Peter Parker, Miles was a professor who badgered him about not attending classes. Even after Gwen Stacy was killed by Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin (apparently killed), Miles keeps up this routine, but inside he felt devastation. The day after Gwen’s death, Serba shows him a frog produced by their cloning experiment. Miles then gives Serba tissue samples from Gwen and Peter. When Serba discovers Miles was cloning humans, he approaches Miles and demands their destruction. Hushing Serba up, Miles accidentally kills him. Unhinged by his act, he becomes convinced someone else committed the murder. When he walks past a class discussing jackals, he recalls his jackal-man and creates an evil alter-ego for himself: the Jackal. He designs a green costume with electro-prod claws and begins extensive athletic training.
Scientific Know-How
Originally a middle-aged man in peak physical condition, the Jackal initially relies on his agility, and his talent for manipulating others and his scientific know-how in designing drug- tipped, electro-prod claws to primarily strike from behind the scenes. A genius in biochemistry, genetics and cloning, he uses his knowledge to restructure his body to assume the powers of a human jackal making him strong (Class 10) and agile enough to defeat Spider-Man in battle. However, he still prefers to remain in the shadows, using his clones, lethal genetic virus, and psychological mind games to achieve his ends.
As The Professor, he seems to have none of the Jackal’s new abilities but appears genetically mutated and wizened. An apparently unstable metabolism makes him unable to stay warm no matter what he wears.
Wall-Crawlers
Spider-Man is the Jackal’s foremost enemy, since he blames him for Gwen’s death, and often goes head-to-head with him. Spider-Man often tries to stop Jackal from turning all humans into clones.
While Warren creates clones for his nefarious purposes, some of them turn on him and take their own path, including Kaine and Ben Reilly, AKA Scarlet Spider.
Clone Club
Warren first allies with the High Evolutionary to experiment with evolving animals to make them more human. He also creates his own allies through evolving animals into human form, such as the New Men, and he has success with cloning Spider-Man, clones which he uses against the wall-crawler.
Warren as the insane Jackal, modifies a virus with his genetic material and as such creates a clone of himself known as Carrion—the living embodiment of the Carrion Virus—with the Jackal’s desire to get revenge on Spider-Man for the death of Gwen Stacy.
Lab Report
Believing Spider-Man was responsible for Gwen’s death, Miles sought revenge, but his evil side also yearned to be a crime boss. So, the Jackal convinced Frank Castle, AKA Punisher, to kill the web-slinger. He then murdered the Punisher’s colleague, the Mechanic (Reiss), hoping to blame the Punisher for the crime. When this failed, he arranged to bring Hammerhead, Otto Octavius, AKA Doctor Octopus, and Spider-Man together, hoping to pick up the gangland pieces, but this scheme also fizzled.
Meanwhile, Miles’ clones were not developing properly, degenerating quickly into genetic waste. He hired a new assistant, Seward Trainer, and put his clones in stasis. The Jackal began spying on Peter Parker in search of a link to Spider-Man. He spotted Peter tossing a web-bundle on his apartment building roof, which contained a spare Spider-Man costume and web-shooters. Stealing this, the Jackal was almost certain Parker was Spider-Man but he wanted absolute proof. He hired Maxwell Markham, AKA the Grizzly, to lure Peter into a trap. He then attached a metal harness to Peter’s arm, telling him the device was a homing beacon that would explode if removed. This was a ruse to induce Peter to go to the ESU labs where he disposed of the harness. Peter then changed to Spider-Man with Miles secretly watching, confirming his suspicions.
During this time, Norman Osborn, still alive, had established himself as a criminal mastermind in Europe, leading the Cabal of Scrier. He stepped in to help Miles’ cloning, via his Scrier representative. The Scrier caught Seward Trainer stealing secrets and demanded a future favor in exchange for his silence. Together, Miles, Seward, and the Scrier birthed the first successful Peter Parker clone. However, the clone began to exhibit cellular degeneration. Learning this, Miles planned to kill his flawed creation but the clone escaped, later calling himself Kaine. Other failed Parker clones followed until Miles refined his technique and somehow created stable Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy clones as well as clones of himself. Warren made a deal with the Gwen Stacy clone, who became known as Abby-L, as long as he wouldn’t create any more clones, she wouldn’t kill him.
Miles briefly returned to his New Men, this time in his costumed identity, inspiring the Cult of the Jackal. He vowed to fulfill his promises but never returned. Back home, he used drugs and hypnosis to bend the new clones to his will, then began tormenting Spider-Man by sending the Gwen clone to Peter Parker’s apartment.
Before continuing his plans, Miles combined his cells with his genetic virus to create a clone intended to destroy the human race, but the creature awakened too early to have full powers and became Carrion. Eventually, with Anton Miguel Rodriquez, AKA Tarantula, in his employ, Jackal revealed his identity to Spider-Man, then pitted him against his Spider-Clone in a fight ending in an explosion that seemed to kill both Miles and his creation. In reality, the killed Jackal was a clone. Miles stepped out of hiding, found both Spider-Men alive and injected what he believed was the real one with a drug to simulate death. His plan was to later retrieve the body, revive him, and brainwash him into thinking he was the clone. Convinced by this, the “real” Spider-Man took the name Ben Reilly, and later Scarlet Spider, and left the city.
In reality, Miles’ tests had been manipulated by Seward Trainer, following Norman Osborn’s secret agenda, and Ben Reilly was the clone. Miles moved to a lab in upstate New York where he spent five years in a genetic regeneration chamber, reshaping his body to resemble his jackal-man, creating clones by long-distance and going totally insane. The High Evolutionary, thinking the Jackal dead, forced his Cult into hiding, then forged and planted a diary in Miles’ handwriting to discredit his clone work by claiming the Parker and Gwen clones were Serba and a woman named Joyce Delany, who had been genetically reconstructed by the same genetic virus Miles previously tried on the New Men. The Evolutionary also planted Miles’ genetic virus, which turned student Malcolm McBride into another Carrion. Believing all this, the superbeing Daydreamer transformed the Gwen clone into Joyce but she reverted back, later meeting and marrying Warren Miles, a Professor Warren clone who eventually degenerated.
As Miles’ regeneration approached its completion, he summoned Ben Reilly, now known as the Scarlet Spider, and Peter Parker to his lab where he tormented them with clues about their true identities and subjected them to clones, which degenerated rapidly, even revealing a third Peter Parker whom he claimed was truly the original. His real goal was to get inside Ravencroft Institute to steal a sample of his Carrion Virus contained within the body of the villain Frances Barrison, AKA Shriek. While Seward Trainer’s switch resulted in tests proving Ben Reilly was the real Spider-Man, Miles teamed up with the third Parker, who was a combination clone/genetic construct he named Spidercide, to unleash his improved Carrion Virus on Springville, Pennsylvania, killing nearly everyone in town, a first step toward killing the entire human race and replacing it with clones.
The Jackal planned to set off his next virus bomb at the Daily Bugle but faced opposition from Spider-Man, the Scarlet Spider, Mary Jane Watson-Parker, and the Gwen Stacy clone. When Gwen fell off the roof, Miles’ love resurfaced and he attempted to save her but fell to his own death instead.
The Jackal later resurfaced as “the Professor,” apparently without his regenerated abilities. Posing as Hammerhead’s lieutenant, he arranged incarceration in Salamanca Federal Prison from which he ran his own crime organization. Whether he is the same Jackal who fell rescuing Gwen, whether he is a clone or whether his predecessor was a clone is not currently known. Meanwhile, an alleged son of Miles Warren, actually the former Jackal Man, became the new Jackal but was quickly defeated by Beta Flight.
Kaine was eventually killed by the Kravinoff Family, so Warren collected his “son’s” body only to suffer an attack by his first clone of Gwen Stacy, known as Abby-L who could degenerate living beings. Abby-L had discovered that he hadn’t held up his end of their bargain, but found herself in a battle with Kaine who had become the monstrous creature, Tarantula. In the battle, the lab was destroyed and Kaine saved Warren. He then teamed up with Adriana Soria, despite discovering she led Abby-L to him as a test before sharing samples of Peter Parker’s cells with him. Their goal was to turn everyone into spiders that they could control and amplify Soria’s powers since she had a direct connection to the Web of Life and Destiny.
Warren then infected bugs with a Spider-Virus which endowed those exposed with similar spider-powers to Spider-Man. But the plan failed and Soria perished in the process. Warren sent one of his clones to collect cells from her dead body. His next endeavor was to use Soria’s clones, known as Spider Queens which he created from her cells, and create an army at his disposal by mating them with clones of Andy Maguire, AKA Alpha, who possessed many different powers resulting from an accident. But the Alpha clones didn’t retain his powers so they were useless. One of Warren’s clones then destroyed all the Alpha clones, including himself and that was the end of that.
The Jackal later stole some of Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister’s genetic material and created a girl by splicing it with the DNA of a human, a spider, and a mutant and dubbed her Gwen Warren, AKA Spider-Girl. She was monstrous spider who Warren released in New York where the X-Men and Spider-Man (actually Otto Octavius) faced off with her rampage through the city. She was subsequently subdued by a concussive shockwave provided by Spider-Man, and reverted to her human form. Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, carried her to safety and the X-Men took her under their wing, puzzled that she showed signs of being a mutant but had no memories whatsoever. Then the Jackal sent Carrion and more clones into a battle with the Avengers and other heroes in an effort to obtain Spider-Man’s DNA. His lab was again destroyed mid-battle but the Jackal was able to save Kaine’s DNA.
Warren then resurrected Ben Reilly with a different cloning technique that passed on old memories. The process was arduous since the clone degraded quickly, leading Warren to kill and resurrect Ben over and over. Ben at one point escaped and tricked Warren into believing he was the clone and successfully bartered pills from him to keep the degradation from happening again. Ben then took on the Jackal’s identity and started using Warren’s cloning process to do good by creating New U Technologies. But Warren soon attacked Ben resulting in Warren’s defeat and apparent demise.
But of course nothing stops the Jackal. Recovering, he attempts to restart his cloning efforts by using a stolen neural net created by Dr. Yesenia Rosario. Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel, defeated him, but the Jackal didn’t give up. He attempts to steal Rosario’s data but again suffered a defeat at the hands of the heroes.
The next time the Jackal made a public appearance, he showed up at Empire State University but disguised as a Professor Guarinus and this time added jackal DNA to his body which morphed him into something resembling his costume. To his utter shock, he then ran into Gwen Stacy but it was actually Ghost-Spider from Earth-65 who had started classes at ESU. He tried to get close to her only to end up following her to her reality and allying with his counterpart. With his help, Warren captured her to profess his love, and killed his counterpart. Though he was soon defeated by Gwen’s band, the Mary Janes, and made their escape.
