#shenanignas | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

popculturebuffet · 2 years ago

Text

Into The Spider-Verse: Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Ultimate Fallout #4, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1-5)

Hello all you happy wallcrawlers! It's time to once again swing into the Spider-Verse as we cover the various people who've worn the mask across the merry marvel multiverse, all building to a look at Into The Spider-Verse in time for it's sequel.

So naturally after looking at the humble origins of the first spidey as he battled with loneliness, fame, dead uncles and of course Crackers and Milk, it's only fair we look at the actual protaganist of the film, the ultimate spider-man, the one the only Miles Morales!

To properly get into Miles and his origins in the comics though we have to talk about the world he was created for: The Ultimate Universe. The Ultimate Universe was the idea of then editor Bill Jemas, who felt Marvel's massive continuity could be daunting to the new readers the company badly needed after the comics crash and marvel's subsquent bankruptcy.

So he tapped writer Brian Micheal Bendis. Starting with Spidey.. honestly makes perfect sense to me, as while a major part of the marvel universe, his corner is diverse and unique enough to carry itself and to see if this could work, something EIC Joe Quesada had doubts about, doubts he somehow didn't have later for the character when he decided "Huh you know I don't like his marriage because my ship didn't win, maybe I should just have satan break it up eh?", born of a previous attempt, not helped by Bendis famous love of using decompressed storytelling, i.e. spreading a story out over several issues instead of packing it into one or two barring big sagas.

Despite these doubts from Quesada and from Artist Mark Bagely.. the book was a MASSIVE hit. It likely helped Ultimate's stripped down back to basics peter was a RELIEF after the complex shenanignas of the clone saga nad after. It was just what people loved: a down on his luck kid dealing with usual life struggles while also having to fight crime on top of that. It had a bunch of nice updates too that would become a staple of adaptations from here on out: Harry Osborn being a close friend from the start, MJ being a high school friend of peters, and Aunt May being a cool old lady instead of on the precipice of death, something that would carry over. This success helped revitalize the main spider-man with JMS' fantastic run.. that granted petered out into Sins Past and One MOre Day, but both are stories for another day.

Ultimate Spider-Man was such a hit the universe naturally expanded.. and that became a problem. See Bendis' ultimate spider-man really nailed the idea of the ultimate universe, a clean slate allowing the writers to really play around with things, while not threatning the main universe. Death was permenant, the stakes were high and it allowed new fans a godo start. Sure it buitl up it's own complex story, but with graphic novels plentefiul, it was easy to keep up. I read a good chunk of it in my teens and loved it and it seems to mostly still hold up.

The problem is out of the three spinoffs only one really got what you could do with the concept, Ultimate Fantastic Four, which simply made the team all teens connected to a fancy think tank while keeping the tight knit "family of choice" dynamic and adventure, simply in a more grounded context.

The other two were by mark millar

I'm not a fan of his, and these books are a large reason why. Ultimate X-Men is a mixed bag, having good ideas, such as a teenage storm and nightcrawler ala evolution along with a gay colossus, and the more military costumes ala new x-men, and is a book i'd love to review sometime now i'm more deeply entreinched in x-men, especially since I read that as a teen too, on the wohle it's got a LOT of edgelord in it's dna, with Jean sleeping with a 40 something year old wolverine, Wolverine trying to murder cyclops to get to jean, and Magneto being simply a racist dickhead. It has great parts and Brian K Vaughn's run after Millar's is even better, but it's just a bit too edgy for it's own good.

Ultimates however…

Ultimates is fucking awful. The designs and art are top notch, Thor , Cap , Hawkeye and Nick Fury all got their MCU designs here, but the actual story is a bunch of edgelord bullshit. IT's clear Millar at least had SOME respect for the x-men, but he hated the avengers and it shows: Tony is constantly drunk, Thor is a new agey asshole, Hawkeye and Black Widow are black ops murderers, and grossly the scarlet witch and quicksilver are mostly defiend by being a couple.

He also pissed me off personally as a fan of the ant family by making Jan an airhead, and making Hank's abuse and inferiority complex his entire character instead of the worst moment of life and his greatest flaw respectively, and had him ATTEMPT TO MURDER JAN. As you can probably guess i'll also have to tackle this at some point, and I wouldn't be suprised if one of my patrons inflicted this on me at some point via comission. Oh and of course we have Captain America, whose a racist sexist jingoistc asshole because Millar REALLY hates the character and considered the idealistic depecition of him being a progressive "unrelaistic. " It's bad and we'll get to it.

This edgelord apporach to these books worked at first as early 2000's audeinces ate that shit up, but eventually it reached it's apex, ironically after Millar had left. He was replaced by Jeph LOeb, who I don't care for as much these days but HAS made good stories. His ultimate work.. seems to be truly awful, with the confusing mess that was ultimates 3 and the utter nightmare that was ultimatium.

Ultimatium was a crossover event.. that started the universes march to death. Granted it took a while for it to kick in, but this crossover wrecked it so throughly it never really recovered> It was an edgelord mess where magneto killed most of new york, blob ATE the wasp on panel, and dozens upon dozens of characters died, with the x-men and ff utterly decimated and scattered as a result.

It killed Charles Xavier and Magneto which COULD'VE been intresting.. but in practice it just lead to more mediocre stories, a status quo no one liked, and exttra super duper mutant prejudice that was somehow legally legislated.

So why hash all of this out. It's simple, while the Ultimate Universe was in it's slow years long death spiral that would cumilate in the universe being wiped out in secret wars, though it may be making a comeback with Ultimate Invasion, there was one part of it that caught massive attention, did great sales and was critically loved. Just as he was the one to jumpstart the universe, Spider-Man was likely what kept it alive as long as it did, only the costume, and the person inside it both changed.

Miles came from editor axel alonso floating around the idea of a black spider-man in the ultimate universe shortly after Barack Obama won presdiency, though they decided not to introduce him post ultimatium as planned to give them time to work out the story for this. Bendis was further inspired by Donald Glover showing up in spider-man pajamas during the first episode of season 2 of community, a nod to Glover trying out for Amazing Spider-Man and somehow not getting the part. Glover would continue to be an influence on the character, and got to voice him in Ultimate Spider-Man and play his uncle aaron in Spider-Man Homecoming. Artist Sarah Pichelli designed his now iconic costume, smartly giving him the awesome looking black and red look, with the two color sbecome a staple of any version of miles costume while also serving as a nice nod to spider-man's orignal colors.

So now we have the behind the scenes stuff out of the way how did a 13 year old, yes really, from Brooklyn become the Ultimate Spider-Man? What happened to the previous one? And will anyone actually accept miles in the role? All valid questions, so swing with me under the cut as here comes a spider-man.

So naturally for Miles to take over… Peter Parker had to go. In this universe he was still a teen as like most comics despite a decade and change worth of continuity at this point, time moved slowly. But his life was going pretty well: he finally got back with Mary Jane Watson after a long time hinting towards it, Gwen Stacey, his friend and live in roomate, long story, forgave him, and after ultimatium new york loved the hell out of him.

So naturally this being spider-man, this coudlnt' last and soon his precious little life.. came to a tragic and epic end. This Peter was the character who really made Bendis' career, for better and for worse, so if he was going to die, Bendis was going to have him go down epically.

Like in our universe Peter's worst foe was the Green Goblin, only here he was more of a monster man and less a creepy guy in a suit, but no less psychotic or obessive, having attempted to kill MJ, actually killed his own son and peter's best friend, and in general been the worst. So wanting to kill peter once and for all, on his sixteenth birthday he broke out of jail, took the sinister six with him, and went on a rampage, heading straight for peter's loved ones. Peter went to intercept but had to stop the punisher from shooting captain america as a war between Frank's avengers and Captain America's ultimates, which was a thing that happened but I don't care enough to find out why. I have limits.

So while nursing a bullet wound, peter stared down his foes, with aunt may assiting by fucking shooting electro, putting him in a coma and as a result casuing his powers to go hawywire and narrow the fight down to just peter and Gobby. Sadly while Peter won… an explosion and his wounds from botht he fight and the bullet meant he didn't survivie it, but he got to go down defeating his greatest foe, saving those he loved like he coudln't save ben and in the arms of the girl he loved most.

So as a result the ultimate world was left a world without spider-man, and the ultimates themselves shook, paticuarlly cap who, as is his nature, was a massive dick to peter right before peter took a bullet for him. But it wouldn't be too long…

Miles was first intorduced at the tailend of ultimate fallout, a mini dealing with the fall out of this and setting up the three comics for the ultimate comics relaunch: ultimates by jonathan fucking hickman, which would end up vitally important ot his future works, x-men by nick spender and later sexual harassment brian wood and this very comic.

Miles part of it is very brief but well done: post peters death he shows up in the costume, battles d-list villian in any univers kangaroo, and admits the costume probbaly is in poor taste while taking it off to reveal a fairly young kid. and that spider-man is black. Which naturally isn't the shocker it should be after years of the character being rightfully promoted to hell and back.. nor was it then as it got revealed in the press ahead of time and was a big deal and put a LOT of expectation on the book.T here was also of course stupid racist idiot backlash about WEH THEY MADE SPIDER-MAN BLACK and your standard "people dont' get there's multiple versoins of this caharacter' misreporting, but it's best to plug your ear. My faviorite part of this coverage is that when I was binging it a while back, the comic strip baldo naturally comented on there being a prominent latino spider-man (again but we'll forgive cantu and costelanos for not knowing 2099 existed)

Tia Carmen being judgemental aside, it showed just how big a deal it was and thankfully the book was high quality enough to match thehype. So now we finally come to ultimate comics spider-man itself.

We open issue 1 with Norman Osborn citing the myth of arachne a while ago, back when he was a respectiable industrialist. This is how ULtimate Spider-Man #1 started though it almost feels like Bendis parodying himself as this time the guy listneing to osborn is bored and then thrown off when Norman threatens to kil lhim if he tells anyone this is how spider-man got his powers. Classic norman.

Anyways they do manage to make a new spider using peter's blood, as in this universe the oz serum was used on the spider, and then on norman himself instead of radioactivity and such. One of the spiders gets loose though with no one noticin

We cut to.. some time later as the Prowler, a masked thief in purple, breaks into Ozcorp.

Yeah it took a bit of googling to answer all of this, as I was confused both by Ozcorp still being around even after it's CEO publicly turned into a monster man and killed a bunch of his own employees, and by the spider somehow being ALIVE.

The former..was shockingly easy. It's nightmarishly hard, nay impossible to peg most comic universes into hard and fast years, with character ages being "whatever we need" and holidays being thrown around, not to mention countless time skips for story reasons to start off a run (Both Spider-Man and Fantastic Four just did this for their latest volumes). At this point i've just given up and say "it takes place because shut up" Granted I still peg peter parker as over 30 as anyone should, same with the original x-men and co, but that's not really the takeaway. So while a lot of stories have happened probably not a lot of time has passed.

Adding to that spiders live up to two years average according to a quick google and can live up to 20 in captivity… and of course this is a genetically altereted super spider, so in hindsgith I have to ask myself why that was one of my questoins to begin with.

Finally as for Ozcorp it's SOMEHOW still running. I mean a ceo's bad behavior not tankin ga company isn't unheard of: Papa Johns fired their racist as hell ceo and are doing just fine, and Tesla somehow manages to function despite it's ceo being Elon Musk. Really the questions I have say mroe about me than they do abotu the actual writing of htis comic.

Point is Prowler steals some neat stuff and accidently takes the spider with him. As for who he is.. well under the mask we'll naturally meet. As for overal the Prowler is new to this universe but is an old foe turned friend of spidey's in the main universe. Inventor Hobie Brown created a super villian persona in order to commit a crime, then return the money as himself to get funding. He fought spider-man about once, but the two became friends and Hobie wore the costume on and off. Prowler is also specail to mne as I had a guide to spider-man as a kid and the costume, backstory and intresting status as a former villian when most of spidey's foes really .. dont' stay reformed for long, comic books and all, have made him a faviorite of mine, and I ended up loving this version even more.

We then cut to our hero, Miles Morales, a kid about to enter middle school… and having to rely on pure chance to get into a good one. Miles is going with his parents, Jefferson and Rio to a charter school raffle something I still can't honestly belivie is a thing. A charter school is a fancy, private style school outside of the regular school system, that will have raffle for those in poorer areas and thus a child's future can literally be determined by a plastic ball. America everybody!

I love the choice by bendis to do this: Peter got to go to a pretty nice school simply by luck and where his grandma was, if a public one. For Miles to have a better chance.. he has to simply rely on luck and HOPE he gets it, and even fi he does.. it's at the expense of other kids who didn't quite make it.

You'll also have likely noticed the "Enter middle school part", especially if your more familiar with into the spider-verse, where he's 17 (even older than his 616 self), or most adaptations where he's a year or two older , usually to match peter. Yeah Bendis decided to further crank things up by making Miles way younger, forcing a child into this. I'm entirely used to this as most cartoons use 13 as the default age for their heroes, but it , like the ultimate universe did at it's best, uses htis realistically: this is a child thrown into this. Peter was only slightly older.. and the comic pulled zero punches showing how much this fucked with him. And now we'r ethrowing a younger chlid into an ultimate universe.. that's frankly only gotten worse; at this same time the goverments being torn down, more on that if I ever do any of the followup arcs, mutants are hunted and thrown into camps that are somehow legal, and new york just got flooded b y magneto 6 months ago. And i'ts only going to get somehow WORSE from there. A child is going to have to face all this.. and starts having to just wait for pure luck to get school.

While fate isn't on Miles side in inevetibly throwing him up against super villians, a collapsing us goverment and the end of the fucking world, TWICE, it is in getting into the Brooklyn Visions Academy. What I like is that artist Sarah Pichelli takes time to focus on two kids who DIDN'T get in and miles face after. It's simple but i'ts the clear guilt of a child who simply feels bad his getting a nice school means other kids didn't. HIs parents try to ease his guilt, but he ends up instead going later that day to visit his uncle Aaron. Uncle aaron.. both has solid advice.. and looks like this

Yup for whatever reason they decided to base Aaron on Snoop Dogg, and I for one loved his duet with kirby so i'm entirely for this

So i'm fully on board with this. Naturally Aaron is the prowler, and while he swipes whatever he stole from a curious miles, the spider bites his nephew, causing him to pass out. Naturally Aaron calls his brother.. who then accuses him of drugging his own nephew, yells at him, and is generally a dick, especially since while he told him to "stay away from my family".. MIles came here of his own free will and is ONLY here because Jefferson didn't tell Miles WHY he dosen't like his brother anymore. This naturally causes the small child to flee…., and to find out something new about himself.

Next issue Miles discovers he can also jump good and zap people, doing so when some idiots try to rob him.. but we also get a sense of WHY unlike both Peters, who were naturally excited to have dope new powers, Miles.. is fucking terrified. He thinks he's a mutant, and while we know he isn't, I was NOT joking about the camps thing. Since Magneto destroyed new yorks mutants are turbo hated and feared and if you've watched or read ANYTHING x-men related, you know the regular hated and feared is bad enough.

Miles goes to one of the best parts of this book and his best friend Ganke, a loveable chubby lego loving lad. It's a funny sequence at first as miles tries to do the invsiblity thing but instead looks like he's about to take a dump (Ganke's words) and then displays his other power by destroying.. something Ganke had been hard at work on with Ganke begging him not to try it again on something that took him three weeks.

Ganke thinks the powers are dope.. and is the rational one here, realizing that mutant powers wouldn't manifest overnight, and that he got bit by a spider with the bite suddenly disappering. They don't have time to figure things out as Jefferson tries to prove to his son he's a calm reatoinsal indivdual.. by barking at him to come with him and then asking him this

While Jefferson.. has good reasons… what I like about this is while he is sympathetic, something bad could've happened to miles.. and nearly DID had he not found out he has spider powers.. Jefferson is also an asshole, often far too stern and gruff at this point for his own good. It takes him a minute to get why maybe accusing his brother of hurting him, yelling at his son, then yelling at his son AGAIN and yanking him out of somehwere he feels safe might be rattling, and as we'll learn right after this.. Jefferson is a racist towards mutants, blaming them for things. What makes it work though is that he's complicated… his reason for being so hard on aaron.. is that both of them used to be criminals, which gives nice weight ot what Aaron said earlier: NEITHER of them want Miles to end up like them and to have a better life, not having to steal and do worse just to get by. The diffrence is Aaron stayed in the game while Rio convinced Jefferson to turn his life around. Granted his whole understandable speech about "You shoudl feel you can open up to me" gets ruined by his bigoted statments towards the all new all ultimate x-men a second later I hinted at, but it still shows Jefferson is'nt just an asshole or in the case of pre-character development 616 aunt may, an obstacle just so Miles can't easily reveal his identity. Instead Miles has good reason as his dad hates superheroes and may not have a heart attack but as we've seen can be quick to rash decisions. He'd come around eventually but to a 13 year old kid already scared at what he's becoming, this may not be something he wants to risk dealing with.

At any rate the next night Ganke texts miles with a bunch of message board bits that can basically be summed up as "Your a spider-man, spider-man, genetically altered spider-man" and a bit of celing crawling confirms this to Miles horror. Onto issue 3 as Miles naturally goes to Ganke again and I like the continuing contrast, likely mirroring the two types of reader this would hit: Ganke sees the escapism element and the awesome: MIles has fucking spider-man powers and now can be a spider-man. This is so cool! Miles… is the more realistic reaction, not wanting to throw himself in danger. Ganke also easily figures out that the spider was an experiment: miles mentioned numbers, normal spiders dont' have that, case closed. While Ganke is clearly operating off of a 13 year old nerd's perspective, he's not exactly wrong. He's also got a howard the duck shirt, which adds nothing to anything, I just think it's neat.

Ganke also convinces miles to go visit Aaron. Miles is reluctant given well.. everything that just happened yesterday, but Ganke has a point: he's the only one who'd know what the hell is going on and might be able to help them, sketchy or not. Naturally though after brothegeddon, Aaron has bugged out, pun not intended, as he had other buisness to attend to...

youtube

So Miles is on his own in figuring this out and finding a way to try his powers out

Cue plot convience as a fire has broken out and Miles charges in there to help… and once again we get a nicely realistic reaction: While Ganke is , like us an observer and sees what miles did as cool.. Miles is still a 13 year old that just charged into a burning buildling so while he did good and saved some people… he also is scared out of his mind, seeing the current spider-man as having action as his reward and loving it , not getting that peter was also scared out of his mind, but hey , that's part of why you wear the mask. He cries and decides not to do it and Ganke reluctantly agrees. It shows not EVERYONE would be super hyped to do this and not everyone has to: at the time there is STILL a spider-man. Ther'es no reason for miles to use these. .yet.

Our heroes get moved in, as naturally Ganke is Miles roomate along with Judge. He's mostly around to make hiding Miles identity difficult. He's alright. He likes legos. At any rate we get a nice montage of Miles having nice classes and being encouraged to read… before a not so nice nightmare of electro killing him…. and this turns out ot be prophetic as news of peter being shot has hit.. and his death is in progress.

Taking a moment between issues , i'd like to take a moment ot discuss how much I love the pacing here. While decompressed storytelling can be bad, there have been event comics that coudl've easily been a few issues shorter and didn't need tie in one shots and shit, this comic shows why when Bendis or others using it are at their best, it works well. We're three issues in and HAVNE'T seen miles really be spider-man yet. We saw it in ultimate fallout, but that was a jump foward and maybe a few pages, pages many readres probaly don't see. Yet everything here is important: it defines who miles his, who his family is, lets us meet hima nd get to know him as a shy, inquisitive, smart young man whose DEEPLY terrified of what he's been thrown into. Some comics would try to jam in flash fowards as him as a hero to get more action in.. but Bendis gets that's not really wha'ts important. It's awesome and the superhero stuff matters, it's why the comics called ultimate comics spider-man and not ultimate comics: miles morales, but who this character is, why he's doing this and why he does things matter> He's a kind, empathetic boy unsure of his place in the world. It's the key to a good superhero comic: you have to care about the hero or heroes at the core as a person, or it just dosen't work. And this.. this works.

So next issue, Miles has Ganke cover for him to go see what's going on and arrives just as Peter smashes norman's head in and collapses, being happy he could save those he loved as htey all sob. Miles saw peter's death and it was likely planned by Bendis he'd been there the whole time, but it's a nicely done retcon, if you can even call it that, as MIles is angeld off camera and the only thing we see from him is asking Gwen who he was.

And the next day… Miles blames himself. In a nice twist of fate… Peter is his uncle ben and his reasons for not having acted are way more undrestandable.. but it's understandable why Miles feels this way: he could've done something, he coudl've helped. Ganke does help again though.. this time not with wide eyed fanboying but again showing that while Miles is emotonally and empathetic and thus blames this on himself, Ganke his logical and thus uses the logic to help miles; He could've helped.. or he could've died too. He did get these powers for a reason.. but it wasn't to pitch in not knowing his powers and to die… but that with Peter gone… Miles can take up the mantle. It dosen't come off as wide eyed as before either but just one friend helping another realize both what he can do with his powers.. and that this death isn't his fault. Peter died a hero.. and while Miles could easily share the same fate he can also do what was right.

Miles isn't convinced though and they go to peter's funeral the next day. We do get a nice moment with Gwen Stacey. In this continuity Gwen was a close friend of peters, being his best friend besides MJ. They dated very breifly in the previous volume.. but it was clear Peter was still hunt up on MJ and only lasted to just before his death, and was never really something fans liked. Still she was close to him, a major supporting character.. and will continue to be here eventually. Not during this arc, she and Aunt Man, her legal guardian and surrgoate mom hence why the romance thing also felt kind of eugh, are going off to france for a bit to mourna nd do some work for tony stark (his mentorship of peter, while breifer and less involved, was taken from this universe), Miles does have a question: Why did he do it? and her answer.. is one of my faviorite moments int he book:

It sums up Spider-Man perfectly: He does it because something that wasn't his fault he still felt responsible for, it's the right thing to do and the mask is both because he wants to protect those close to him.. and because it looks fucking cool. As are you gwen, as are you.

That night Ganke brings Miles something from home: his halloween costume from last year.. the bombastic bag man@!

No of course it's spidey and this leads into the scene we saw earlier, miles first outing where he does beat the kangaroo if barely.. but everyone thinks him doing this is in bad taste. Aftewords Miles is understandably freaked given being told your disrepsecting the dead man your TRYING to honor isn't a great start, and the boys discover they can't lock the room as it isn't policy and the dorm guy's a real dick about it. Like.. did you tell them this at orentation? and if so WHY did you put locks on the rooms? I mean I get it if a shooter comes in or something but why not have electronic locks then. Also why would Miles being seen be an issue just say he was doing some cosplay, most people arne't going to connect the dots. What i'm saying is this scene, while necessary to set up the unique challenges miles has, is very dumb.

MIles decides to try again the next night though, and we get a nice bit of internal monologuin as he enjoys this… right before a bad case of boot to the head

It's obviously spider-sense. This isn't Funky Winkerbean.. but whose boot it is… isn't good for Miles

Okay so while the comic itself dosen't explain it, i'll explain who Spider-Woman is. In the Main Timeline it's.. a lot to unpack: She's a private eye whose dad experimented on her. It's a very long story ill get into more another time, possibly next year when we do this all again for Beyond the Spider-Verse with the spider-men and women from Across. I love her and her solo series which is on my very giant to do list.

This Jessica Drew has the same name.. but is actually a clone of peter complete with memories but as a woman, woh works closely with shield and has joined the ultimates. I don't know much about her, just that she saw peter like a brother for understandable reasons.. and that she's naturlaly very pissed at the small child wearing his costume without realizing it's a small child. So we've come to our final issue for today, and the confrontation.. goes how you'd expect. Jessica demands to know who Miles is… Miles not knowing there was a spider-woman or WHY she's taken this personally refuses, and it's a comedy of errors as she webs him up , he tries to go to the cops and she takes him to the Triskeleion, headquarters of the Ultimates and finds himself in a cell.. and in front of the ultimates, or at least Nick Fury, Jessica, Iron Man and Hawkeye. Cap is missing and that's a good thing. We'll deal with him, much like gwen, if we pick this up again another day.

For now Nick questoins what he actually DID, while Tony finds out he's enhanced to everyon'es shocked.. and Clint rightly points out Jessica could've asked him instead of laying in screaming. While it's understandable why she opened the coversation with boot to the head… it also meant MIles tried to you know run and get the police instead of actually talk to her. Nick Fury shoes everyone out. Nick is a bit more of a bastard here, and given 616 Nick Fury (the older one not the one resembling this nick whose that nick's son because comics everybody) tried to buy out Tony Stark's company to force him to make weapons again and once lead a bunch of heroes on an unsanctioned black ops mission he didn't tell them was unsanoctioned, that's a low bar to clear but manipulating other universers and basically telling Peter "When your 18 your ass belongs to me" before easing up into "Okay we'll just train you and stuff), he clears it.

He's more sympathetic here, clearly having grown a bit and thus is gentle with miles. While he's frustrated with miels just kind of nervously spouting off whatever, the humor in this book is really good and makes me question why Bendis is so awful at it not long after this, he's gentle asking if his parents want to let him know, letting him know he knows aaron was the one who gave him the spider.. and it turns out while Jefferson coudl've handled things better… yeah Aaron is an fbi wanted criminal not just a small time one so.. good call on keeping his son away. Or trying to anyway. Nick understands though: With great power comes great repsonsiblity. He also gets i'ts you know a child.

But naturally things can't go easy as Electro is under sedation..a nd the nurse gave him 10cc's instead ofa 100 meaning he's awake and pissed and starts rampaging through the triskelion, easily taking out iron man and hawkeye since… well Tony's suit runs on energy and Tony gets super cocky when facing electro instead of you know.. .readying a countermeasure, while Hawkeye.. didn't think to go get any arrows or equipment. EARTH'S MIGHTEST HEROES PEOPLE.

Jessica does slightly better but still gets jobbed out and Nick Fury, no matter the universe.. is still nick fucking fury and tries shooting him. It dosne't exactly work.. but ti's clear he's more trying to distract the guy and get his people clear than actually win. Unfortunately their in the chill of the night at the scene of a crime.. and while he may not be in a streak of light.. he's certainly arrived just in time

While obviously Miles isn't really on the skill level to beat electro normally, the combination of Electro thinking h'es peter and having a breakdown over it and a Venom Blast, the electricty thing hinted at earlier, powered punch get him weak enough for Nick Fury to play count the bullets with him. Electro is down and the next day Nick Fury says they'll talk.. and MIles finds out what that means that very conversatoin as jessica shows up with a new costume for him.

It's a nice parting and with that Miles now has his iconic costume, his one shot… and as Ganke puts it as his friend swings off having finally achieved his destiny

As you could probably guess I fucking love this arc and this run on the character in general. But this story well sets up who miles is, what the stakes are him for, stealthy sets up the big bad and miles first real threat for the next arc, and is an expertly crafted story about honroing legacy. While Into the Spider-Verse's story is mostly it's own, a LOT of the dna of who miles is was there at the start. As i've hinted at I do not like Brian Micheal Bendis, his writing took a hit and it was while writing several properties I loved with no regard for how to actually do that and he's only recently thankfully stepped away from the big two. But while he was there I can't deny he created two of the best spider-man runs of all time, one total if you count both spidey tenures together, and one of the best additions to spider-man period. Part of spidey's popularity is anyone could be behind the mask.. but this story made it a glorious reality, creating a spider-man just as compelling as one with a long storied history and tons of adaptations in 5 issues.

Will I return to Miles Story? Will you guys someday see what's up with his uncle, the country disolve, venom cost miles greatly, the rise of a new group of ultimates and so much more? Probably. When I can't say, that's up to either you guys to comission or me to fit into my schedule once this arc is done. But after reading this I was reminded how great this run was and how it deserved to be shared with webslingers all across the spider-verse

Next Time, we tackle our tritagaonist of this film series, as we look into the punkstastic origin of Spider-Woman, aka Spider-Gwen! Oddly not spider-punk, totally diffrent person we'll get to in that sequel I mentioned. Thanks for reading true beliviers.

#into the spider verse #miles morales #spider-man #marvel comics #brian michael bendis #ultimate comics

10 notes · View notes