recently ive decided to get myself back into comics, namely spiderman. the last thing i really read was the clone saga, and i dont even really recall how it all wrapped up. last i remember it was green goblin (norman, who actually wasnt dead) who was behind the whole clone thing from day one. and i dont remember what happened with mj's pregnancy. i have the first issues of the reboot, but sadly i didnt continue with them. only thing i steadily collected and read was ultimate spiderman but civil war really sparked my interest in the comic world again and now im going to start reading and collecting again. also ive got the set of twelve issues "the others: evolve or die" coming from ebay now so i can catch up on that, because peter seemed to have organic webbing in his civil war comics and im thinking thats why. so if someone could bring me up to speed about the end of the clone saga and the reboot (without spoiling the "others" for me please) it would be much appreciated. thanks!

bump?

he had organic webbing before the Other, from the arc where he turned into manspider. iirc, it was just a one panel shot of him discovering it and thinking "huh. that's new"

I think the organic webbing was from Strazinky's run

*Sigh*

Basically, after the Clone Saga, Osborn kidnapped the child, and send her away 'to be dealt with'. As of this moment, that means it's dead. Later, he was referring to a May-package, which turned out to be Aunt May. Eventually, Spidey saved her.
Strazyncski's run provided new material considering Spidey's Origin. A creature called 'Morlun', I think, hunts Spider-man. Spidey finds out that there is another person with similar powers like him in New York. He proposes that Spider-man was a totem, taking his power from the animal the Spider. "Did the spider bite you, and did its radioactivity cause you to gain the powers, or did it bite you, because it wanted to tranfer the powers to you, before the radioactivity killed him?". In the end, it didn't matter, because Spider-man's powers are partly now radioactive anyway. He uses that to defeat the Morlun guy. This part is significant for The Other, because it relates some continuity you need to be aware of, to fully understand what is going on.
Shortly later, Spidey has an adventure with Cap. and gets captured by a villian named 'The Insect Queen', or something. She tranforms him from man with sppider-powers, through the Man-Spider stage, into a fullgrown giant spider. At a certain moment in the story, it breaks open, and a full-grown nekkid Peter Parker is standing within the body of the spider, looking around. From that rebirthing Spider-man got his Organic Webshooters, plus, he can now communicate with creatures bearing the Insect-gene, which is a special gene, which a fair amount of humans also carry, though I'm not 100% sure about that latter statement. He does have the powers, though.

so then when aunt may died in issue 400 it was an actor or clone right? and the man spider event was "disassembled"? oh man.... this whole getting caught up thing is going to be costly. thanks zakath.

Checking wikipdia would probably get you caught up faster for free.