Nerd Rage: New Spider-Man Unmasked, A Knee Jerk Reaction

When they killed Ultimate Spider-Man, I was cautiously optimistic. They promised someone would take up the web shooters to continue being the friendly neighborhood superhero; Someone they said we’d love as much as Peter Parker. That was a pretty tall order but it had potential.  I figured Ultimate Spider-Man is one of the most consistently good comics and if they killed of Peter. Brian Michael Bendis is more well known for this title than anything else he’s written. If they were to snuff out such a good story, a larger story to should be told because of it. Spider-Man isn’t a job title like Green Lantern, or a national mascot life Captain America. The only way passing Spidey’s mantle on would be if one of Peter’s friends becomes Spider-Man to honor his memory.

Well with a certain degree of spoilers: the new Spider-Man is Miles Morales… wait who? I stated my theory, Spider-Man would be replaced by his former bully then friend Kenny “Kong” McFarlane. The story of Ultimate Spider-Man’s death is a tragedy in a classic sense. A tragety which is lessened when those that love him continue on in his place. Instead the new Spider-Man is a kid we’ve never heard of, and has no connection to Peter Parker as far as we know. This character has never appeared in the Ultimate Comics, so what are they doing inserting him into the mythology? Hell, why didn’t they introduce him prior to death storyline for some semblance of continuity. In the various articles Marvel quite proudly boasts that Miles is half black and half hispanic, and that its about time that a main stream superhero be a minority. When has Spider-Man’s race mattered? Donald Glover would have been a good Spider-Man because he’s a good actor, and would play a big hearted, nerdy, witty and ultimately heroic character well. Not because it was about time an African American actor played a Caucasian hero. Spider-Man wears a full body stocking that covers the color of his skin. Any 12 year old can imagine themselves swinging from webs and saving NYC. If Marvel introduced Miles in the press releases as “a class mate of Peter who’s morning his friend” or “a NYC youth inspired by the webslinger’s noble sacrifice” I might feel a little less irked. It smacks of horrible tokenism and racial pandering. Are we to judge a character by their content of their personality, or simply by the color of the skin. In an attempt to be more diverse, Marvel’s actually is a little bit racist. Instead of writing Miles as a character in his own right, it seems like he’s being shoe horned in because he’s black/hispanic. If they really really wanted a minority they could have made the new Spider-Man Ben Rielly, an African American college science student with a Spider-Man blood sample.

I probably should wait until I read Ultimate Fallout #4, and I’ll be the first to admit I may be jumping to conclusions (see knee jerk in the title of this article). Miles might turn out to be a cool character, but I can’t shake a bad feeling about this. Peter Parker was a character who worked. There were plenty of unfinished stories he could have stared in. With no back story or build up, it seems like we were given a horribly depressing story, showing a heroic teenage taken before his time, all for the sake of political correctness.