Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1
Hello True Believers! Miles is finally back and with a whole new creative team! How will Miles stand up now that there is a new writer for the first time in the character’s history? Is the new issue worth the months of waiting? Let’s find out!
Title: Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1 (Really guys, we couldn’t get a cool title?)
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Javier Garrón
Color Artist: David Curiel
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Cover Art: Brian Stelfreeze
Editor: Nick Lowe
Published: December 12, 2018
Overview:
Miles is now writing a journal for a creative writing class and he begins to recap what happened during the Bendis run. Miles gets a date with Barbara, a love interest, and goes to the park with her and her little cousin Eduardo. Eventually Miles gets into a fight with the Rhino after the Rhino stops Miles from fighting some weird robot dudes that are robbing a place. As it turns out, the weird robot dudes kidnapped the Rhino’s daughter and he’s following them to their hideout to get her back. Just as the robot dudes are surrendering, Miles takes off one of the masks and SURPRISE its Eduardo! Fade to black.
Highlights:
It still felt like Miles. I was very worried going into this issue that the new writers would mess up my favorite comic book character, but Ahmed did a fantastic job of keep the character dynamics the same.
I also loved that we actually got a good fight scene in the FIRST ISSUE! WOW! Under Bendis it would’ve taken 5 issues to get to the first fight.
I also enjoyed that when Miles encounters the Rhino, he gets referred to as Kid Spider. As much as I’m not a fan of Miles constantly being in Peter’s shadow, we’re at the place where that’s part of the world now and having regular Spider-Man villains not take Miles seriously just makes sense. Miles and Peter’s chemistry whenever they’re together usually makes the show worth it anyway. And Miles even writes in his journal that he’s been endorsed by the original Spider-Man which i thought was a nice touch. Miles is a kid and I know that if I got spider powers and was endorsed by the OG Spider-Man, I would be ecstatic as well.
We also get to see more of Miles’ friend Judge. I always thought he was an interesting character that never got explored and now we’re getting that opportunity.
Rio was also fantastic in this issue. It’s clear that she is going to take on more of the Aunt May role in this series except she knows that Miles is Spider-Man which has an interesting dynamic.
What was lacking:
There wasn’t enough Ganke. Ganke says only two lines in the whole issue and none of them are the typical Ganke jokes. Ganke’s visual design is pretty different in this issue and while Miles and Judge are laughing at an online video, Ganke is by himself on his phone, which doesn’t seem like him. He definitely looks more mature, so that could be a reason for the character change, but I really hope they keep him his light, funny self.
Can I also ask whatever happened to Miles being trained by Cable? I thought it was a kinda dumb idea in the first place that didn’t mesh with the rest of the series, but it should at least be addressed, even if it’s a flashback where they didn’t get along and Miles and Cable agree that it just didn’t work out. It makes no sense why Bendis was pushing that so hard right at the end of his run.
I am so happy with the direction this is going. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable to read. It’s Spider-Man. It will be interesting to see how misleading the covers are (hopefully they will finally reflect the issue). This issue’s cover didn’t really show anything about the issue, but it was good art and it didn’t mislead as to what the issue was about. If you have any ideas of a section I can do in place of “Misleading Covers” leave it in the comments!
Final Grade: A
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Good review, Grant! I liked the issue OK. It gets a solid B from me. I didn’t like Judge. I must have missed a bit at the end of Bendis’s run. I don’t remember the Judge character or the Cable training at all. I thought this Judge guy was a new character. I agree that we need more Ganke. He was the heart of the old book, in my opinion. In this issue, he looked more like Gold Balls than Ganke. If he wasn’t specifically referred to as Ganke, I would have said that he wasn’t in this book. One other nitpick – Miles’s webbing is the same webbing as Spider-Man, right? Last I checked, Rhino can’t break that much webbing! But the strength of Spider-Man’s webbing has always differed from writer to writer, so I’ll go with it. I do like that Miles struggled against Rhino and that his venom-touch now taxes his strength to use it. ————– @ Chris – I think that journal will fall into the wrong hands before it is all said and done.
I mostly enjoyed this read. beautiful art, the Rhino appearance was fun, main thing that bugged me was: “My name is Miles Morales. This is my journal. The journal of SPIDER-MAN.” Doesn’t it seem like a terrible terrible idea to keep a written confession lying around?
Thanks Grant. I actually did read Spider-Men and enjoyed it when it was released. I’ll track down the TPBs for the 2011 USM and play catch up.
Loved into the Spider Verse too so Miles is definitely growing on me.
@Franz29 Welcome to reading Miles! Ultimate Spider-Man (2011) was Miles’ start and that series was a very good read. I also recommend Spider-Men. Miles and Peter work very well together there.
Enjoyed this issue, even if it does kinda spoil the end of Spider-Geddon (not that we didn’t all know the Spiders would be triumphant) and for now I’ve added it to my pull list.
I’ve not really followed Miles before now, I’d dropped Ultimate long before he came along and was out of comics for a long time due to TPW on ASM, but I liked his characterisation in Marvel’s Spider-Mna (PS4) and I’m looking forward to into the Spider-Verse so I’d like to catch up. Can you suggest some defining issues/arcs I can take a look at to get a feel for comic Miles?
Well written and enjoyable to read!