Powers/Abilities: Anthony Serba was a skilled
scientist.
ANTHONY SERBA
Real Name: Anthony Serba
Identity/Class: Normal human
Occupation: Lab assistant, Empire State University graduate student
Group Membership: Empire State University graduate students
Affiliations: None;
formerly Miles Warren
Enemies: Miles Warren
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: A factory loft in Midtown East, Manhattan, New York
First Appearance: Amazing Spider-Man I#148 (September, 1975)
Powers/Abilities: Anthony Serba was a skilled
scientist.
History: (Amazing Spider-Man I#148 (fb) ) - Workaholic grad student Anthony Serba was Professor Miles Warren's lab assistant. During one of Warren's classes, Serba collected cell samples from the students, including Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy.
(Amazing Spider-Man I#149 (fb) ) - Serba assisted Warren in his cloning experiments
and successfully cloned a living frog. Warren, increasingly
unhinged by the recent death of Stacy and his discovery that
Parker was secretly Spider-Man, gave two cell samples to Serba to
clone; although Warren told him they were from a rat, they were
actually from Stacy and Parker. Four weeks
later, Serba
discovered the growing clones were human, and rushed to see Warren in a
panic. He wanted to destroy them, but Warren snapped and grabbed Serba by the throat to shut him up, accidentally snapping his neck and
killing him. Even as Warren dumped Serba's body in the school's
incinerator, he convinced himself that someone else, and not him, had
killed Serba - when he wandered past a classroom where the jackal, "the
most cowardly of predators" was being discussed, he decided that the
Jackal was the killer.
(Amazing Spider-Man I#148 - BTS) - When Peter Parker asked Warren about the cell samples, he claimed that Serba had stolen them; as Spider-Man, Parker went to Serba's loft, where the Tarantula (Anton Rodriquez) ambushed him.
Comments: Created by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito, and Dave Hunt.
Anthony Serba was part of Gerry Conway's attempt to retcon his own story, years later, so that Warren never created clones at all. Spectacular Spider-Man II#149 had Peter Parker discover Warren's journals, which revealed that he had infected Serba with a virus that transformed him into a duplicate of Spider-Man, thus making him the Spider-Man clone who appeared in, and died in, ASM #149. However, Scarlet Spider Unlimited #1 revealed that those Warren journals were fakes, planted by the High Evolutionary, and thus, that Warren really did just kill Serba.
So which Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy clones did Serba create? In ASM #149, it's made clear that Warren and Serba only created two clones, but later comics added some more. Much, much later, in Spider-Man #60, Kaine claims to have been "the first clone", meaning Serba would have created him. But then, in the Spider-Island: Deadly Foes one-shot, we meet Abby-L, an earlier, flawed Gwen clone, who Warren says is his "very, very first successful living attempt to clone another human being", implying that his first clones had been stillborn. Scarlet Spider II#2 confirms this, with a flashback of Kaine fleeing the Jackal's lab and landing on a pile of dead, discarded Gwen clones. There may also be some dead Peter Parkers in there, although it's hard to tell. Thus, both clones Serba created probably died before they could mature.
Warren apparently told his subsequent assistant, Seward Trainer, what had happened to Serba, as Trainer revealed that knowledge to a Scrier in Spider-Man: The Osborn Journal.
Big thanks to Jeff Christiansen for providing images!
Profile by Minor Irritant.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Anthony Serba has no known connections to
images:
(without ads)
Amazing Spider-Man I#149,
p6, pan6 (main image);
pg.7, panel 2 (with Parker & Stacy
cell samples);
panel 3
(upper body);
panel 4
(death)
Other Appearances:
Amazing Spider-Man I#148 (September,
1975) - Gerry Conway (writer), Ross Andru (pencils), Mike Esposito and
Dave Hunt (inks), Len Wein (editor)
Amazing Spider-Man I#149
(October, 1975) - Gerry Conway (writer), Ross Andru (pencils), Mike
Esposito (inks), Marv Wolfman (editor)
Last updated:03/17/13
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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