Ahmed, Saladin

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

4 out of 5

(1 book)

Miles Morales: Straight Out Of Brooklyn

(Art by Javier Garron)

Book 1.  Trying to keep his school life and his life as Spider-Man separate becomes more complicated for Miles when his girlfriend's cousin disappears and then resurfaces, apparently in the thrall of a supervillain.  Teaming-up with the unlikely duo of the Rhino and Captain America, Miles investigates the disappearances of numerous immigrant children.

Marvel has long had a problem with the Peter Parker Spider-Man in that he had naturally grown, developed and become an increasingly important figure in the Marvel Universe, all of which took the character away from the school-age friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man that was the easiest to market to a mass audience.  Miles Morales allows them to have their cake and eat it.  Whilst Peter can be the mature, big-time Avenger, Miles is free to do all the things that make a Spider-Man appeal to a young contemporary audience, without having to resort to the idiocy of some sort of reboot of the character.

So what we get here is Miles dealing with the threats to the neighbourhood he grew up in whilst also trying to balance his studies and his personal life, just like Peter did back in the iconic Stan Lee days.  But Miles isn't just Peter 2.0, but instead brings some unique elements of his own which add some interesting elements to his character, in particular the facts that whilst he's tech-savvy, he's not a science whizz like Peter and needs a friend's help to formulate his web fluid, and the fact that he's a person of colour.  The latter is used as a tool here to highlight the injustices meted out to immigrant families under the Trump administration and it's nice to see the book taking a moral stand on that, again echoing the clear civil rights stance that Spider-Man comics took in the 60s.

Finally, I'm always a fan of a mismatched team or unlikely team-up, so seeing Miles, Rhino and Captain America working together was a lot of fun for me.

4 out of 5

Collaborations & Anthologies:

Miles Morales: Bring On The Bad Guys (here)

Read more...

Marvel Comics (here)