4 issue test #28 - Spider-man

This is probably the best of these variant covers, although who thought putting the word Miles over the image made it look any better? 

Miles Morales is in the main Marvel Universe! They collected a lot of his stuff in trades recently and I’ve found them highly enjoyable. Will the latest in the line of Brian Michael Bendis’ books impress or should he have stayed in the now defunct Ultimate Universe? Let’s take a look.

Spider-man swinging through the city - I can dig it

We open with a splash page with panel dividers for no reason. Captain America (Sam Wilson), Iron Man, Thor (Jane Foster), The Vision, the Scarlett Witch, Hawkeye and She Hulk are unconscious and in a 2-page spread we see our villain is ‘Blackheart,’ son of Mephisto.

We cut back to earlier where a girl Miles had asked out storms away after being stood up for an hour whilst he was fighting Shocker as Spider-man. Miles’ best friend, Ganke, who is also in the main Marvel universe somehow, tells him she probably wasn’t the girl for him anyway.

“I really, really wanted to make out with her”

Ganke suggests he look for another super-hero date, like bombshell (who is actually a supervillain in the main Marvel universe, although things will get confusing in #3) Miles responds that they’re like brother and sister, Ganke responds

“No, we are like are like brother and sister” I… we’re getting off to a bad start here folks.

Miles gets a phone call from his mother, who was dead but because of Secret Wars, she’s alive again. She’s just received his midterm reports and they’re not that good. She asks if he’s on drugs, which just confuses him. His father, Jefferson takes over and talks reasonably straight to Miles(he’s aware of Miles being Spider-man) he responds to his wife's criticisms by saying that yelling won’t get his grades better.

In class, their teacher asks about the first chapter of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and Miles clearly shows that he hasn’t read it. His spider-sense alerts him to trouble and when his teacher won’t let him out he just storms out.

He swings to find flying traffic and uses his webbing to save some civilians from them. He heads to confront Blackheart and we get a sort of repeat of the intro (nice to know the intro was pointless). He grabs Cap’s shield and charges at him, his venom sting has a painful effect on Blackheart and he retreats. Parker Spider-man arrives asking ‘what did you do?’

Spider-man carrying Cap's shield - AMERICA - F*CK YEAH! Shame about the generic background

Peter continues to be an idiot and assume Miles knocked out the Avengers or something… I dunno anyway, Miles fills him and we get a reference to Mephisto because f*ck you Joe Quesada. He says they need to talk about them both being Spider-man. Miles recalls a time when everything is chibi animation and Peter gives Miles his blessing.

Despite his costume being ripped and Peter still being a moron, Miles elects to stay as Blackheart makes his return. Peter is knocked out (rather easily, actually) and Miles uses his venom sting several times to knock him down for good.

Everyone conveniently begins to wake up, allowing for Miles to swing away (with some bullsh*t about the Clone Saga because f*ck the early 90s Marvel marketing department) Miles geeks out over these events back in his student lodgings with Ganke and erm right, so a geeky internet webseries girl (who would be dumb enough to post things on the internet?) reviews footage from the fight where a torn piece of Miles’ costume shows that he’s a man of colour. If this is going somewhere, I haven't seen it yet.

As the Black Cat (who is apparently the Kingpin of crime now) does some push-ups, newscasters debate whether or not the appearance of a new spider-man is a good thing. Miles returns home and finds his dad warning him. He didn’t reveal his secret but with his grades so low, Miles’ grandmother has been called in to straighten him out. She has this line

“Face it, Tigre, you’re about to get s big ol’ kick in the culo” – yes that is a Mary Jane reference

A sweet little image showing who our guest star is, fortunately she's not stealing the show like in the cover

Miles tries to sweet talk his way through this but she mentions Uncle Aaron, who if you’ve not read the old Ultimate Spider-man titles, you wouldn’t know who that is, this doesn’t please Jefferson any. She starts by confiscating Miles’ phone, despite protests from Miles’ parents that they need to keep in contact whilst in boarding school. She sends him to his room to do homework.

Miles isn’t happy, although relieved his phone is locked and his super hero compatriots are under code names. He’s also concerned about them calling him, and also that his father wasn’t standing up for him. Miles’ grandmother tells them to check his phone for potential drug dealers. Lana Baumgartner (the Ultimate Universe Bombshell who is here because reasons) calls and instantly is accused of being a drug dealer, when she has no idea what they’re talking about she gets a door to the face, giving the grandmother the thoughts that maybe Miles is dealing drugs (I don’t know what the point of this sub-plot is, just end already!)

Jefferson has had enough and storms out, with the grandmother (I don’t think she’s referred to by name in the entire issue) calling him a hot mess. Ms Marvel is waiting outside and shrinks down and appears on Miles’ window, apparently they were going on patrol together despite clearly not living in the same area.

She relates to his situation, given her own family dilemmas. She convinces him to try and go with her but his grandmother arrives just at the wrong time. This time she’s more compassionate, telling him he needs to get himself together and let Jesus be his guide (*incoherent mumbling*) Ms. Marvel already leaves, saying he should study.

Meanwhile (finally that sub-plot is over) Black Cat heads to the Bronx and finds the criminal hammerhead. One of his men tries attacking her but he pays for that stupidity with a major headache when he wakes up. She tells Hammerhead she respects him enough to pay him a visit in person. She tells him she’s putting a bounty on this new spider-man and he should consider rounding up some of his super-powered cronies.

Back at school, the teacher gives the school a lecture on mutants and oh my god, a person in the Marvel universe being reasonable about mutants, they introduce Fabio Medina aka Goldballs, which has Ganke freaking out.

OK, no! Black Cat and whoever that green guy is do not appear in this issue, and Hammerhead only at the every end, also, another case of generic background

Issue 4 opens with Ganke asking for Miles’ help in asking out Fabio (he’s homosexual – if you a problem with that a) get over yourselves and b) I don’t give a sh*t) anyway, Ganke was hoping they could use Miles’ being Spider-man as a point of conversation. Miles is against this. Ganke says that being a large, Asian homosexual he has trouble finding dates. Miles refuses to compromise his secret with him when a gold ball lands on their table and covers them in spaghetti sauce.

Fabio goes over to apologise and Ganke says straight out that Miles is Spider-man, in a public building no less.

They’ve made me use the same joke twice in this review

  

I need to find a new leading meme

Ganke points out he told his secret to Ms. Marvel (which he did) but Miles responds that they’ve been in life or death situations together. Ganke replies that he’s been a hot mess for the last 8 months and Miles storms off. Fabio asks if the two of them are a couple, not the first time that’s been brought up but… Ganke asks if he wants to room with them and he agrees.

Miles swings off in anger but spider-sense alerts him to heat-seaking missiles heading in his direction. He tries to avoid them but it’s no use and the blast knocks him out, the crowd is dispersed by some gunfire and Hammerhead says they’ll call Black Cat and ask her to open her checkbook.

So that was Spider-man #1-4, what’s right and wrong with it, let’s take a closer work.

I’ll say straight off, the artwork is by far the best thing about this comic. Sara Pichelli knows what she’s doing with this art, she’d done artwork on a lot of Miles’ spider-man titles at one point or another. It looks gorgeous, just realistic enough for the Marvel universe.

There are positives to the writing. As much as I’m a little unsure about how it fits, I like that they’re trying to use classic spider-man villains for this title. Black Cat makes an interesting antagonist at this point (she wants revenge for Superior Spider-man stuff and doesn’t care who’s under the mask) and it’s nice to see Hammerhead, who I remember off The Spectacular Spider-man. Also, whilst I don't care for the 'bad grades' subplot I did get to like the grandmother - pity they don't tell us her name.

OK, I won’t lie when telling you this series has some serious flaws, and the first one is classic Brian Michael Bendis playing complete disregard from continuity. Aside from there now being 2 bombshells in a move that’s rather out of nowhere we have the issue of the Avengers team unconscious at the beginning of the issue. All New All Different Avengers had been out for months prior to this book’s initial release, there’s no excuse for not knowing what the line-up was. What the f*ck are Hawkeye and She Hulk doing there? Also, on a similar-ish note, we have the issue with Goldballs.

Mutants in the Marvel Universe are suffering from what’s known as the M-pox, caused by the release of terragin gas in the Inhumans title. I covered this briefly when I reviewed Uncanny Avengers. Goldballs should be sick and infertile, he appears to be neither of these things and is really only there so Bendis can make use of a character he invented (for the record, there are about 300 million X-men these days) this would be fine in the Ultimate Universe but here this is a major continuity error.

The pacing of this book is all over the place, issues 3-4 are ridiculously slow paced, proven by the fact that Spider-man is not even in #3 in super-hero form and in #4 is only 2 scenes long. That’d be fine but this ‘bad grades’ plot-line is so boring.

Miles has a large supporting cast that seem to have been moved over from the Ultimate Universe, that’s fine but he’s the only one of them that absolutely should have knowledge of what the old universe was like. How about having him get used to an Iron Man who doesn’t drink, a Maria Hill who’s a complete b*tch, a Steve Rogers who’s an old man (until they turned him into a Nazi), or a J Jonah Jameson who's a complete jerk (he had mellowed in the Ultimate Universe) there’s a lot of potential out of just Miles adjusting to a new world. I suppose the 8 month time skip was supposed to skip over that but I’d like more of how Miles’ ended up being a ‘hot mess’

#1-2 have problems too. Blackheart is generic, uninteresting and easily defeated considering how he managed to defeat so many - how did he defeat She-Hulk. There is some pretty bad dialogue and unnecessary references. Peter Parker shows up conveniently and acts like an idiot. It’s not very well paced either, the flashback bit was entirely unnecessary. If there’s on positive I’ve always liked the imagery of Spider-man with Cap’s shield.

Rating

#1 4/10

#2 5/10

#3 5/10

#4 3/10

Average: 4.25/10

Recommendation: I like Miles Morales as a character but the great art doesn’t make up for the cr*ppy writing in this instance. I can’t recommend this and I don’t think I’ll be picking up further issues without something exciting down the line.

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Images/clips used in this review are from Spider-man and Ratchet and Clank. and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use