Can Miles Morales Be More Than Just A New Peter Parker?

Can Miles Morales Be More Than Just A New Peter Parker?: "

Over at CBR, Tom Brevoort responds to many people’s concern over Miles Morales – including my own – that he’ll not just be a generic Marvel superhero:

Obviously you need to do a certain amount of research to make sure you’re getting things right. That having been said, just as not every blond haired, blue eyed, white character comes from the same place and the same life experiences, so too is that true for every character of every shade or ethnicity or religious background. You want to speak to the universality of the demographic as a whole, but not to the point where you’re doing a caricature… I think Brian has shown over his years in the business that he can write with sensitivity and insight into the human condition regardless of the background of the characters he writes about. He’s covered a broad spectrum of people, types, ethnicities, sexual orientations and what have you in all the work he’s done. Given that, would you not expect that he’d be up to the challenge of developing a character of this particular ethnic set? And again, if Brian didn’t think there was something legitimately worthwhile in telling the story of this character, we wouldn’t be doing this. It’s his story, his character and an exciting thing to do — to try and bring a little more multiculturalism to the Marvel line in a big, big way.

Spider-Man is the quintessential Marvel character, the image most closely associated with Marvel. So taking a character like that and changing him in the Ultimate Universe to reflect the broader world around us I think will be effective, and sends a very clear message. But it is a challenge that anybody writing about a character with a different background than their own has to cope with. They have to find those common touchpoints of humanity that are common to all people, as well as some common touchpoints specific to the background or life experience of the particular character they’re writing. My expectation is that Brian will do this because he’s always done this.

The problem with Miles’ first appearance in Ultimate Fallout #4, for me, was that it was so short and (by its very nature) didn’t really give you enough idea of who Miles actually was. A wisecracking, insecure superhero? Sure, that seems very Spider-Man-esque, but that was also a drawback: What made Miles anything more than Peter Parker 2, outside of his skin color? So it’s good to see Brevoort addressing the issue, and I hope his faith in Bendis’ skill is well-placed.

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