Miles Morales Turns 300!
And he doesn't look a day over 13!
Hard to believe that at this point in Peter Parker’s legacy we were just getting introduced to Venom! Welcome to the 300 Club Miles!
Hi, we are Dapper Dan Gvozden and Mischievous Mark Ginocchio, co-hosts of the Amazing Spider-Talk podcast. With each newsletter we hope to give you greater access into our thoughts on the world of Spider-Man!
On the past few weeks of the Amazing Spider-Talk Podcast we reviewed the final issue of “Gang War”, but in this Substack we wanted to use this entry to look back on the introduction of Miles Morales in Ultimate Fallout #4 now that he’s reached his 300th issue as the headliner of a Spider-Man comic (however that’s calculated…). Plus, we’ve got reviews of the latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man (vol. 3), the teaser heavy Web of Spider-Man (vol. 3) #1, and the newly launched Jackpot and Black Cat #1. But first, if you enjoy this Substack, please Subscribe!
And, if you want to help support what we do, plus get bonus episodes of the Amazing Spider-Talk, digital artwork, prints in the mail, and early access to every episode of the show, please check out our Patreon. Putting this together takes a lot of time, energy, and funds, so we would be hugely appreciative of your support.
We’ve even got our review of Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 6) #46, for you to watch/listen to! Here’s our humorous recap of the issue that teases the opening of our full review:
Now, let’s get to our discussion of all the latest B-Titles!
Swarm’s B(ee)-Title Reviews
With every new edition of the Amazing Spider-Talk Substack, Dan and Mark will venture to write short reviews of all the various Spider-Man books (and major Marvel releases) that have released since the previous newsletter. Sometimes our arch-villain Swarm might chime in as well. So “bee” prepared!
Miles Morales: Spider-Man (vol. 2) #18 / Legacy #300
Dan: The only bummer about this issue is how it ends. I don’t know how many more chapters there are in the “Retribution” story, but given that this is the 300th legacy issue of Miles Morales comics, I would have loved to have a complete story told in the pages of this comic, or at least the climatic ending to one. For much of the issue, Cody Ziglar’s script operates that way, as one iconic Miles artist after the next interprets his story. Then, right as we get to the climax, the story ends on a cliffhanger with Miles facing down Rabble, as one of his closest friend’s lives hangs in the balance. It’s a dramatic ending fitting of an episode of “Dragonball Z”, Ziglar’s clear inspiration for this run (Miles even goes Super Saiyan here). However, with so much of the story rehashing a big battle with the Cape Killers, of the type that we just got in “Gang War”, I can’t help but feel that most of those fisticuffs could have been reduced to fit the ending of the story in here.
Still, as far as centennials go, this one feels like a significant chapter and potential end to the various threads of stories that we’ve gotten throughout the Ziglar run. There are no backup stories to be found, just a meaty, important chapter in Miles’ story that packs in a variety of tones and emphasizes the elements that make his place in the Marvel Comics Universe special: friends, family, youthfulness, action, drama, and comedy. A lot of it blurs together into a mish-mash of superpowered battles, but where we leave the story off is in a place that has Miles and Rabble literally and figuratively exposing their hearts and I can’t wait to read the resolution.
Mark: First the good. Just from a sheer “financial value” perspective, color me surprised and shocked even that we got a jumbo-sized “centennial” issue of a comic book that was purely story. Not since the days of Amazing Spider-Man #700 (and even that had some B-story filler) have we seen something quite like this in terms of trying to advance a larger story with its titular character. This book, after 18 issues of Cody Ziglar at the helm in terms of scripting duties, is also clearly entrenched as “Ziglar’s book” now. Whereas Saladin Ahmed was able to start the transition away from the Brian Michael Bendis-era, the full transformation of the character, the tone, and just the overall vibe of his universe now feels complete with this comic. It’s a credit to Ziglar, and Marvel, that he got the freedom to do that.
With that out of the way, is this current book for me? I’m not so sure. I clearly understand that this is all very high stakes stuff for Miles, and I have a great amount of respect and admiration for the fact that Ziglar has pushed so hard to really entrench Miles in his own universe, with his own adversaries, while simultaneously occupying the same universe as “mainstream” Peter Parker. But do I actually find myself getting invested here? Not really. And I think a lot of that is tied-up in the idea that nearly a decade after bringing Miles into the 616, Marvel still can’t quite figure out what is truly unique or interesting about this CHARACTER. Hint, the two animated movies have done it masterfully. But until I become invested in Miles’s journey in becoming his book’s “true” version of Spider-Man, this status quo just feels like another character in a Spider-costume running around the 616, and it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish any of these characters from each other in a meaningful way.
Ultimate Spider-Man (vol. 3) #3
Dan: This issue of Ultimate Spider-Man repeatedly tells us, both in the context of this story and as readers, that when anticipating the events of this story we shouldn’t trust the typical tropes of comic book literature and our knowledge of Spider-Man’s history. The people we assume might be “bad guys” or “good guys” may not be either thing, but something more complex in the unfolding world that writer Jonathan Hickman has established. These ideas are exciting to read as dialogue on the page, but I’m still waiting for the book to show me what they mean in practice.
Yes, Hickman has established some of the core differences between the world of this Spider-Man and those of the past: a terrorist attack killed Aunt May and Norman Osborn, Pete didn’t receive his powers until he became an adult, he’s married with kids, Uncle Ben is alive, and Kingpin has taken over The Bugle while working deeply under the watchful eye of The Maker. But, I still don’t quite get how any of these things have fundamentally changed the world of Spider-Man. Three issues in and this book is still running through a gauntlet of alternate Spider-Man tropes that we’ve already seen in the initial volume of Ultimate Spider-Man: specifically, learning how to use his powers, designing his costume, and learning about the complex world of superpowered crime that exists outside his window, while figuring out the best way to oppose it.
The final page of this issue is full of potential, and artist Marco Checchetto frames it as if we are on the outside looking in, peering through rubble at two people we know intimately in another place and time. The book is asking us to consider what this iteration of them will bring, all while keeping in mind Uncle Ben’s advice that we not jump to any conclusions about anyone’s motives. So, I’m willing to continue to be patient, as I hope for this book to define itself more clearly in the space of the almost infinite number of alternate Spider-Man stories. I hope pages like this, pregnant with possibility, and paced as if they have something they aren’t quite ready to reveal, are soon exposed to contain all the exciting, genre-busting ideas that I come to expect from Hickman and aren’t just gaslighting me.
As a matter of critical practice, I refuse to judge this book on its hype, because almost no story could live up to all the desires that have been placed on this. What’s there is enjoyable enough to stand on its own as a handsome comic with warmly written characters and a central mystery that, while overly reliant on nostalgia and previous familiarity with its characters, is starting to get its hooks into me. The best elements are the witty banter between the characters, particularly between Peter and May as they design his new costume. The inclusion of a familiar hoodie appearing as a commentary on what an older person would think is still “cool” is one of the few moments that leans into what could set this older Peter apart. But what continues to keep me at a distance is that Hickman’s world relies heavily on our history with its characters as its core appeal, even in this humorous moment, but thematically is telling us not to trust our instincts.
I know that very few of you readers are going to agree with me on this, but until Hickman can show me what that means through action, rather than words, this version of Ultimate Spider-Man feels like a safe, well-executed rehash on the Spider-Man mythos we already know. I’m ready for it to feel dangerous and unexpected, both for its characters and as a reader, and to read another work from Hickman where he’s not afraid to break a few of the toys by playing with them in novel ways.
Mark: While I share many of Dan’s criticisms of this series, I am firmly entrenched in the “buy into the hype” faction with this book. Not because I think it necessarily does anything new and exciting with the Spider-Man mythos, but because it is the only Spider-book on the market that seems completely unburdened by all the weird, self-inflicted baggage of every other 616 (and adjacent alt-timelines) Spidey book. For whatever it’s worth, it’s also the only Spider-title currently not being overseen by the Spider-Office proper. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that factoid.
As a result, this book makes me feel more like a fan than a critic when I’m reading it. I’m going on the same journey of discovery that everyone else who is reading this is, and without having to focus on such things as “what inorganically integrated reminder of Peter’s tortured status quo am I going to get this issue,” or “how can we possibly decompress this story further to create 10 more issues of fluff,” or “how many tie-in issues am I going to have to buy before realizing that this isn’t actually a Spider-Man story?” Are any of Hickman’s variations to the timeline groundbreaking? No. Was it damn fun to see the Green Goblin unmask here and reveal he’s not who or what we expected him to be (for now)? Absolutely.
And at the end of the day, shouldn’t that be something to celebrate as comic book readers? Books that make us want to be a fan. I’m not trying to dismiss how Dan is deconstructing this title, but bluntly, I’m having far more fun turning the pages of Ultimate, and surrendering to Hickman and Checchetto’s storytelling, than I am with any other Spider-Office book at the moment — where almost a sense of dread kicks in with every page turn as I wonder, even in moments that are seemingly well executed, how we’re all collectively going to get knocked three steps back again. Meanwhile, Ultimate is getting the hype it’s getting at the moment because I’m sure other people share in the joy of a book that seemingly lacks editorial drama and meddling. It’s a book that provides a permission structure to the idea of, “just tell fun Spider-Man stories of Peter doing Spider-Man stuff and people will like it.” As opposed to the current Spider-Office offerings that need to push the idea of something being “so great” or “so traumatic” or “so whatever.” Honestly, I’m “so over it.” Long live the new Ultimate Spider-Man.
Web of Spider-Man (vol. 3) #1
Dan: I feel like the only way to truly assess this digest of teasers for future stories is to respond to them with how much they make me excited to go and purchase each of the books they are advertising. On the whole, most of these made me feel exhausted by the direction of the Spider-Office’s plans for the line. The stories that I care the most about are happening in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man: Spidey and Tombstone’s next confrontation, the reemergence of the Green Goblin, and hopefully some closure for whatever is going on with Chasm. Of these, the Wells’ helmed micro-stories were the most coherent and enjoyable, but offered only mild updates on what we’d otherwise assume was occurring in the background of this world. The Chasm story had its thrills, including an appearance from Freak (last seen in Ruins of Ravencroft: Dracula #1) and the return of Kaine (!), but its last second swivel into the murky mires of the world of Eternals has me anxious. What has me most confused is that Steve Foxe wrote the story. Should we expect an announcement of a Kaine/Chasm series after the upcoming Chasm-focused two-parter in Amazing Spider-Man #47 and #48?
The B-title tie-ins offered less sizzle, opting instead to just tease the next story arcs that we can expect from each title: Miles will be fighting R’my’r again during his Blood Hunt tie-in, Spider-Woman is randomly moving to San Fran and will brush up against a superteam called The Assembly (snore), the Spider-Men seem to have some sort of secret cabal coming after them and are still wildly overwritten, and Gwen is plucked from Earth-65 by the TVA to fight against some sort of bird-like enemy. As a tease for the upcoming Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider series from writer Stephanie Phillips, this short tale shows that Phillips has a decent grasp on the character and will, at least, be doing something wildly different with her by involving the TVA.
But, the thing that made me roll my eyes and groan, was Alex Segura and Salvador Larocca’s “Spider-Society” story. Look, I love Alex Segura, he’s an accomplished writer with a solid grasp on Spider-Man 2099 and Araña, from his time writing a book about them, but to saddle him with kicking off the fourth major Spider-Verse event story in ten years, directly in the wake of something called “End of the Spider-Verse” is setting him up for failure. Maybe I’m just a miserable cynic (maybe…), but the once novel Spider-Verse concept has long since worn out its welcome and just feels like a blind cash-grab at this point. Even a new(ish) idea like making Spider-Man fight against an army full of alternate Gwen’s has me exhausted, given that we’ve just got a bunch of alt-dimension Gwen miniseries over the past couple of years. If the Spider-Office wants to lean into the perception that they are out of ideas, as many on the Internet claim, I can think of no better way to do so than to go down this route again.
Mark: When Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 6) #31 came out last year and included a main story, and a bunch of backups that hyped the next few months of Spider-office stories, I was admittedly a fan of Marvel’s approach. The comic was a (legacy numbering) #25 issue anyway, so by mandate of the Marvel marketing gods, we were getting a jumbo-sized overpriced comic — might as well get some bang for my buck and get teased about some other books while we were at it.
I’m sure other fans complained, “Why am I paying $10 for an issue of ASM that’s two-thirds backup stories?” I feel that. But the result of trying to meet in the middle is this monstrosity of a comic — this Web of Spider-Man one-shot is just a glorified collection of preview pages for future comics, none of which I’m particularly excited about.
We can start with the ASM previews, since Amazing Spider-Talk is a podcast focused on that title. And in both cases — another Chasm/Hallow’s Eve story and the “conclusion” of the Spider-Man/Tombstone beef (we promise this time, for real, for real, we’re not just pulling another Kindred here by dragging out a character arc that should have had its rightful resting place after “Gang War”) — I was underwhelmed by what’s in store. At this point, any story involving Chasm just feels like an awkwardly-recorded, snuff film geared towards further outraging Ben Reilly fans, while, as I alluded to parenthetically, another Tombstone story to create a “conclusion” that should have been made months earlier feels incredibly tired to me as a reader.
As for the non-ASM books, as Dan describes, we’re getting a lot of Spider-Verse-related schlock geared towards bending the timeline to bring more popular characters like Spider-Gwen into the 616, and teaming up other Spider-variants who will inevitably appear in future Sony animated films. I mean, sure, I like those movies too, but not a single Spider-Verse story from the comics has lived up to the potential of those two movies (and to be fair, the second one, while visually more arresting, was lacking some of the verve of the first in the storytelling department).
With all that said, I’m not sure this new Web of Spider-Man, as a concept, is going to move the needle for me if Marvel intends to use a disconnected one-shot to hype it’s line. So if you haven’t picked this one up yet, it’s an easy pass from me unless you can grab it in a $1 bin at a con.
Jackpot and Black Cat #1
Dan: I suspect this is meant to be a sort of end of a trilogy of team-up stories between Mary Jane and Black Cat, with the other two written by the busy Jed McKay, and just like “Star Wars”, “Back to the Future”, “The Mummy”, “Blade”, “X-Men”, and the Raimi “Spider-Man” movies, it should come as no surprise that the end of the trilogy is the weakest entry yet. The story itself, a sort of superhero version of “John Wick” or “Nerve”, sees Jackpot and Black Cat being manipulated by an app that asks them to commit crimes or face the manipulated retribution of all of the app’s other users. It’s a solid premise for a story, one that forces the two heroes to engage in activities that utilize their skills for villainy, but where the story falls apart is in its characterization.
From the outset of this story, neither MJ or Felicia are written like they have historically behaved. Let’s start with MJ, whose dialogue reads like she’s Rorschach surveying a crime scene. While flying over the city, she expresses this deep understanding of the rhythms of the city and how it works, a sort of god’s eye perspective of the nature of crime, etc. “Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me.”
Since when has MJ become a veteran superhero? This dialogue style might work for Electra, but for a citizen who has only recently turned hero… this reads as strange and discordant with the awkwardly, inexperienced hero we read about in Zeb Wells’ Amazing Spider-Man (specifically issue #45 from a couple weeks back). Plus, writer Celeste Bronfman does a poor job of executing creatively on MJ’s powerset. In Amazing Spider-Man, it is established that the symbols on the slot machine gauntlet Mary Jane wears are specifically what establishes her powers. So, when she rolls gold bars and an octopus, the result is that she grows octopus arms made of gold. Here, Bronfman makes no attempt to connect the powerset to the imagery, and as such removes the uniqueness of these new powers. If there is nothing tangible here, MJ can just keep retooling and get whatever insane powers that she wants with no connection to the device she is wearing.
On the other hand is Felicia, who after being threatened by the “Obscure” app cowers in fear to protect her new lover. I won’t make the argument that Felicia has been coherently written since her first appearance, other than that her motivations are typically fairly selfish and that the “ends justify the means”, but even then this stands out. For example, several decades ago, she went to Kingpin to give her a new powerset so that she could date Spider-Man safely, all while jeopardizing his safety and betraying his trust. But, in regards to this week’s comic, I don’t see her as one to buckle under threats or operate out of cowardice, especially in the face of an anonymous phone app.
Emilio Laiso’s pencils are attractive and sell the sort of sexy, spy adventure we’ve come to expect from these two characters teaming up. The adventure itself is completely competent and handsomely packaged, but if I don’t quite recognize the two main characters in a book that bears their names, it’s hard for me to recommend this title. Also, one last nitpick: Why is the Human Fly on The Palace when he’s also in Ravencroft over in Amazing Spider-Man?
Mark: I give Dan an incredible amount of credit for putting forth the effort to elegantly break down everything about this comic that doesn’t remotely work. I’m going to treat this far more simply: as the two of us bantered about a month or so ago in this newsletter, I think the premise of Mary Jane, a citizen-turned-superhero named Jackpot, is among one of the most uninspired concepts Marvel has introduced over the past two decades. I hate being overly critical of newer voices on books like these, especially since today’s B-book writer could be tomorrow’s lead writer of ASM, but Celeste Bronfman has no sense or feel for either of her two lead characters. Honestly, this feels like a (very) poor man’s Batgirl knockoff that is just driving a further wedge between readers who want some semblance of the “old Mary Jane” back in their books (even if that Mary Jane isn’t romantically linked to Peter). It’s just immensely disappointing for me, after several fun variations of this team-up courtesy of Jed McKay, that this is the book we have seemingly landed on.
Mark’s Comic Book Meditations
When Mark launched Chasing Amazing in 2010, the blog chronicled his “quest” to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man and featured a series of posts that recalled memories and meditations around specific comics he came to own. As part of this newsletter, we’re resurrecting these remembrances with some new wrinkles, and will also occasionally chronicle some other comics Mark has purchased since completing his ASM run in 2014.
Ultimate Fallout #4
It’s all so innocuous how one of the modern era “grails” of comic collecting came into my possession. Or maybe mundane is the better word. In either scenario, if not for me starting Chasing Amazing, and being early enough in my blogging career that I was still trying to find my voice and my “edge” as a pop culture critic, I probably would have never picked this comic up.
My very first entry on Chasing Amazing was dated November 2010, but I really didn’t settle into a groove of posting with any consistency until that March and April. At that point, I was still trying to stay true to the premise of blogging about picking up back issues of Amazing Spider-Man as part of a larger quest to collect every issue of the series. But as a professional writer, and someone who was attuned to the fact that if I ever wanted to build some semblance of an audience, I would have to actually, you know, entertain people, I realized early on that my blog needed to be more than just navel gazing about walking into a con or winning an auction on eBay for a comic. So I started writing about the new issues of ASM. And I also liked writing about trends in the comic book industry.
In concert with my writing about trends, I also have a significant interest in comic book nostalgia — more specifically, nostalgia about the era of comics that I felt really came to define me as a collector, the 90s. And as Dan and I have discussed numerous times, the 90s were filled with chromium covers, polybags and major “events” that included things like killing off a hero and replacing him with someone very different. And like a lot of nostalgia from that era, in terms of comic books, in 2011, I felt like much of that was coming back into vogue. And that’s where Ultimate Spider-Man and ultimately, Miles Morales, came into play.
In mid-April, Marvel solicited Ultimate Spider-Man #160, entitled “The Death of Spider-Man.” Up until that point, I had only read a handful of USM comics. I briefly subscribed to the book during the J. Michael Straczynski/John Romita Jr. era of ASM and just found myself uninterested in reading an “alternate” version of Peter Parker, who was the same, and yet “different.” So when I read that Marvel intended to “kill” off the Ultimate Peter, I decried the storyline as a 90s-esque “gimmick.” The fact that they were going to sell the thing in a black polybag made it even worse. With all that said, I fully intended to buy the comic when it came out. In my mind, buying, reading and then reacting to this comic — from a universe/timeline I had absolutely zero relationship to — was just going to be another layer to the Chasing Amazing voice I was trying to identify. I don’t know who I thought I was going to win over with this approach, but 14 years later, I must have been on to something.
For the record, I thought USM #160 was pretty well done, despite having zero context or emotional attachment to any of it (we discussed it on our show in detail). But by the point it had come out, I was in too deep to stop there. Because Marvel was going to release a post-“Death of Spider-Man” series that explored the ramifications of Peter’s death called Ultimate Fallout. And then a few issues into that series being solicited, we learned that in Ultimate Fallout #4, Marvel was going to introduce a brand new Spider-Man to replace Peter — a half black, half latino teenager named Miles Morales.
I mean, this was like the motherload of 90s gimmicks for me. A replacement hero? Isn’t this like when Superman died and there were like four other Supermen vying as the “true” one? Or Azrael replacing Bruce Wayne? And on and on and on. Maybe Marvel would put this new Ultimate Spider-Man in shoulder pads like he was Daredevil in “Fall from Grace.”
And of course there was the furor behind this new Spider-Man — primarily because of his race. Despite the fact that I thought replacing Peter Parker with another hero was on its face “gimmicky,” I actually thought the idea behind making Miles half-black, half-latino was inspired. One of the true virtues behind the concept of Spider-Man going all the way back to 1962 was the idea that it could have been ANYONE under that mask. The fact that it was a white teenager from Forest Hills, was just one potential outcome. Who’s to say it couldn’t have been a black latino kid from Brooklyn?
But the usual suspects (who, in retrospect, are not remotely as obnoxious in their cries of victimhood as they are today) were outraged by this turn of events — both in the comic book industry and beyond. How could Marvel possibly “tokenize” one of their flagship heroes in Spider-Man? Clearly, this was because Barack Obama was president, and apparently, writing comics for Marvel (while Michelle Obama forced our children to eat vegetables). As I’ve possibly alluded to both on the podcast and on social media, in a past life, I was a newspaper reporter, so these kinds of pop cultural absurdities always fascinated me. At this point, purchasing Ultimate Fallout #4, wasn’t just a curiosity — it was an inevitability. The fact this book became such a collector’s item (though not because of “Into the Spider-Verse”, but because of a video game, if I understand it correctly) is the cherry on top of the sundae.
While I wasn’t surprised that we got so little of Miles in Ultimate Fallout #4 — even from an solicitation perspective, it was basically advertised as a cameo — I was disappointed enough that I didn’t buy his initial ongoing solo book. I guess the stink of Ultimate still being an “alternative universe” was too much for me to ignore. But as time went on — and I started a certain podcast — Miles became a fixture of my pull list. I haven’t missed an issue of the “alternative” Spider-Man since USM #200. And when ‘Into the Spider-Verse” came out, I feel like we got the ultimate incarnation of the character. Miles Morales needed to be a mainstay in my collection.
And I guess I was able to find my voice in a way that didn’t involve constantly complaining about 90s gimmicks in today’s comics.
This Week in Spider-Man History
Several iconic Spider-Man stories celebrated milestone anniversaries over the past month. Here are a couple that really stand out:
35 years ago in March, Gerry Conway and Alex Saviuk created the original graphic novel, Spider-Man: Parallel Lives. This standalone story adds new context (and introduces some new retcons) to the Peter Parker/Mary Jane relationship-turned-marriage, and while Conway swears to this day that even after killing Gwen he never intended for Peter and MJ to get married, it’s hard not to see the two characters as soulmates after this graphic novel.
60 years ago in March, one of the ultimate Stan Lee/Steve Ditko rogues was introduced in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #13: Mysterio. Mark, of course, is on the record for Mysterio being an underrated favorite of his (though contrary to our Amazing Spider-Talk 400th episode, he isn’t necessarily Mark’s FAVORITE FAVORITE). Anyway, what’s not to love about a guy wearing a fishbowl who is the master of illusion?
30 years ago in March, Amazing Spider-Man #389 marked the beginning of a fan-favorite creative run in J.M. DeMatteis/Mark Bagley. After having previously appeared in ASM as both a fill-in writer and of course, the writer of the iconic “Kraven’s Last Hunt”, JMD took over from David Michelinie for a sustained run that immediately took the tone of the main book to a darker, more cerebral place. That in turn led to the “Clone Saga,” and … we can dissect that another time. For you Amazing Spider-Talk fans back when we were the SUPERIOR Spider-Talk, JMD was our very first creator guest back in 2013.
What’s New for the Amazing Spider-Talk?
Since the previous Amazing Spider-Talk Substack we’ve been playing catch up in our public feed on the end of “Gang War”. We just publicly published our review of the final issue of that story:
We hope you enjoyed this fourteenth edition of the Amazing Spider-Talk Substack and that you’ll consider subscribing for our future newsletters.
And, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to our various podcasts, comment below, and consider joining our Patreon:
Plus, if you are a fan of these Miles Morales comics, be sure you are subscribed to our podcast because we’ve got a huge surprise coming your way soon!
My take on Ultimate is that it’s really well written and beautifully drawn. But it reads like a great elseworlds. Would this book work as an introduction to Spidey? I’m not sure as a lot of the fun is in “what’s different”.
Again I’m really enjoying it, but I’m honestly enjoying Zeb’s run more (but it’s close and not dealing with events really gives ultimate an unfair advantage)
Another newsletter showcasing how much I dig the different viewpoints that you guys bring! I note in particular your commentaries to Ultimate Spider-Man #3. It’s fun to see Dan leaning heavily on the critical side while Mark was on the fanboy side this time around 😂
On another hand: Speaking of Miles, Mark mentioned about Miles’ journey towards becoming his “true” version in comics and how we’re still waiting for its actualization. These are just my thoughts but instead of waiting for that to happen, perhaps it’s time we refer to Miles’ “true” version of his CHARACTER as the one found in today’s popular storytelling medium: in the animated films (ITSV ATSV) and video games (Insomniac). 🤔
Maybe we should start recognizing that the “true” version of Miles is in the modern medium where we consume his stories, in the same way that Peter Parker’s stories were popularized and consumed in the popular storytelling medium at the time which were comics. Furthermore, Peter’s stories even changed the comic industry landscape as a whole. And isn’t this what we’re seeing with Miles’ stories as well in the animated front (i.e. with Miles’ story comes a new form of doing animated films).
I still understand the need for this to happen in comics as well as you and Mark so eloquently flesh out in the podcasts and newsletters. For me though, I just try to find peace with the fact that Peter and Miles’ respective stories are fully realized and appreciated in the current medium of storytelling of their times.
Keep doing what you do guys and all the best!