Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Vol.1 by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hey, this is really good!
[he says 400 years after everyone else]
Spider-Man, Peter Parker, is hands-down my favorite comic book character. And I add the “Peter Parker” there because I think the Peter Parker identity is crucial to loving Spider-Man. I do. Because Peter Parker is a broke-ass fool, perpetual underdog, and a kind of lovable spaz. There are a lot of characters where I don’t think you need to give a hot damn about their alter ego, such as Batman or Deadpool. Characters who are definitely more their super personae than their civilian selves. I don’t think I would notice if I read Batman comics for a couple years and he wasn’t Bruce Wayne even once. Does Deadpool even OWN a pair of jeans?
But Peter Parker is a regular guy. Spider-Man is the superhero. And the two are intertwined. They both build on and improve each other.
What Ultimate Comics does, which I think is really cool, is to build off the ending of Ultimate Spider-Man. Miles Morales is Spider-Man, but he’s not Peter Parker, and Bendis doesn’t try to make him Peter Parker. Side characters in the comics actually criticize the new Spider-Man because he’s clearly not Peter Parker, the Spider-Man they all love. And it’s really interesting, to me, to see the story play out in the panels parallel to the way it does in real life. To see the critiques leveled on the pages that are also leveled in real life.
It’s cool, and it’s a genuine reboot with fresh ideas as opposed to a changing of some minor details while keeping the core character exactly the same, telling the same origin story, and having a guy fight a version of the Lizard who is essentially the same but looks a little cooler.
I DID read an article that had a problem with this new approach because Miles Morales is black, and so, “of course” his father is a reformed criminal, and his uncle is currently a criminal. The premise of the article being, from what I could tell, “Why does black Spider-Man have to have criminal parents?”
I had that critique in my head when I read the story, and I have to say that it didn’t hold a lot of water by the time I finished.
I’m a big fan of stories that have potential for character redemption as opposed to perfect angels remaining perfect angels. I mean, when you have a setup where it’s pretty clear (this is all guesswork, BTW, not truly spoilers) that Spider-Man is going to have to end up fighting his own uncle, with whom he is close, I think what we’re going to see is a situation where BOTH the hero and the villain are black, which is rare, and a situation where right and wrong are a little murky, which is also a good thing, in my opinion.
A good comic book story has conflict where one character is right. A GREAT comic book story has conflict where, to some extent, you can see both sides, and I really feel like that’s where we’re heading, and somewhere that Spider-Man comics haven’t always been able to go. A lot of my favorite Spider-Man stories present villains whose motivations are good. It’s just their methods that are problematic.
And the very idea of a villain being black is kind of interesting to me.
We are seeing more diversity in comic book heroes, but I don’t see the calls for diversity expanding to villains so much. Where’s black Dr. Octopus? Does anyone want that to happen? And if not, why? I don’t really see a lot of cool female villains either. I see the ranks filling with more diversity, and that’s cool, but I feel like the diverse characters (Sam Wilson, Captain Marvel, Lady Thor, Ms. Marvel as superheroes, stuff like Lumberjanes and Bitch Planet on the indie side) fill very aspirational roles. Where are the villains? Where are the heroes who, though ultimately heroic, would not be any fun to hang out with and make some bad choices?
Why are we getting the call for a black James Bond, but no similar requests for black Hannibal Lecter?
To take a different angle, you’ll notice that nearly ALL classic comic villains are white, if they have an Earth-based race. In Batman’s rogues gallery, Killer Croc is probably the only well-known black character, and the question of blackness and identity in a crocodile man is one that I’m not nearly equipped to answer. For Spider-Man, Prowler and Cardiac are probable the most famous black villains, and how many out there know anything about Cardiac?
If you compare the list of black hereos(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…)
to black villains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…)
you can see that there’s a HUGE difference.
The movies showcase a bit more diversity in heroes than the comics, but I can still only really remember 3 black villains. Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin, Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute in Sin City, and Jamie Foxx as Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2. I guess the unfortunate death of Michael Clarke Duncan has slowed the casting of black villains…
This is all a really long way of saying that character diversity, to me (so take this for what it’s worth), means black superheroes, and it also means black villains. It means Asian main characters, and it also means Asian side characters who don’t amount to much. It means strong, powerful women, and it means women who represent our fears as opposed to hopes and dreams. It means white men who are bad guys, heroes, and nobodies.
I recognize that non-aspirational characters are something I read for that not all people enjoy, but I really like characters who aren’t 100% aspirational or who have done something genuinely wrong. Characters who make choices that are different from my own, or that I’d at least like to think are different from my own. Because that’s how I feel life is. I have friends who have lives that are distinctly different from my own, and they make choices that I would never make, good and bad, and we’re still friends. I still like them. And something I have to wrestle with sometimes is the fact that there are people I don’t like who do genuinely good things. And I just plain don’t like them, and when they do something good, it makes me like them EVEN LESS because I’m confronted with the fact that this person I dislike is probably not so bad. That’s the worst. When some jerk does something great, that’s the WORST.
Peter Parker’s life course was set by the death of his uncle. Miles Morales’ life course will also be strongly influenced by his uncle. Peter Parker’s uncle was killed in Amazing Fantasy 15, the first appearance of Spider-Man, and it was really his legacy we had to live on. Miles Morales’ uncle is alive, and that means he can make choices, do things, and be an active character in the story who makes decisions.
Ultimate Spider-Man is an all-time favorite of mine, and so far it seems like Bendis is bringing a lot of the same energy to Ultimate Comics Spider-Man. I feel like this series is gonna be a winner.