#Think I might like parkers characterization outside of the degree to which they made him a techy

[somegirlblr]

-

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Strap in as I dissect this one.

I'm gonna be brutal here...Miles is a charcter with some merit and a lot of potential but his merit stems from the fact that relatively speaking he's been portrayed in a way that doesn't do a bad job capturing the feelings of a young biracial poc in modern day NYC and his relationship to his identity as a POC.

I think there are much better examples out there and there have been times where you could at least argue Miles has dropped the ball.

But overall it is Miles' greatest strength as a character.

In other aspects though....not so much.

Because as much credit as you can Miles in regards to handling race and identity...his personality outside of that, his career as a superhero and his general status quo are laughably bad.

Miles suffers from the exact same problems most of Bendis' characters suffer from (including the Ultimate versions of Peter Parker and the other Spider-Man chaacters).

That is to say he is mostly bland as bread but he is handed praise simply because Bendis is associated with him. In a similar (but not as largescale) a way Stan Lee is revered because he pioneered a new way of doing comics Bendis' name automatically makes readers and observers praise his work because when his comics career began at Marvel he pioneered a brand new way or writing comics.

Problem is a lot of the time in pop culture people confuse novelty with quality.

Because Bendis and Stan Lee both, from a creative writing point of view, tended to miss way more than they hit.

Oh sure Bendis' Daredevil and Alias runs in most respects deserve the acclaim they get as does Stan Lee's Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four runs.

But if you bother to really read most of Stan's OTHER Silver Age work...it's a billion miles away from those runs. Stan's Avengers, Iron Man and Thor stories are NOT stories that come anywhere close to the brilliance of his ASM and F4 work. They have great concepts behind them for sure but they are NOT executed very well.

And yet ALL of Stan's Silver Age work is held up in reverence.

The same holds true for the majority of Bendis' work. Most of it is garbage but is revered because he pioneered a new way of doing comics and readers of the early 2000s mistook the novelty of his work for genuine quality writing.

I mean when you honestly think about it for 2 seconds the decompression style he employs is financially and creatively toxic because it literally means readers need to spend more money to get ONE complete story and the pacing of it is destroyed. Reading in trades might be satisfying but the month-to-month sales get fucked in the ass.*

But people don't see that. They see decompression and they think it's goo because bendis does it and Bendis is the best writer around right so that must mean the way he writes is he best way to right.

Except it isn't.

Because Bendis is the guy who on Ultimate Spider-Man tookt he character of Peter Parker who's whole point is that he's the every man superhero motivated by the death of his Uncle ben and decided that his biological Dad Richard parker should be like massively important to the ongoing narrative along with his pseudo father figure Nick Fury the head of the super duper secret spy organization that runs the world. And then on top of that decided that instead of having J. Jonah Jameson be you know...an important character like he has been in....oh yeah EVERY iteration of Spider-Man's story he'd rather Jameson be rarely seen or heard from.

That's not even getting into what he did to the villains. Using just one example Ultimate Venom is objectively speaking a worse version of Venom than the 616 iteration of the character.

At his worst 1990s Venom was an over the top caricature embodying everything wong with the 1990s. He was a mindlessly violent grimdark anti-hero complete with a slavering tongue and idiotic catch phrase (I'll eat your brains!).

It was godaweful personality for the character....but at least it WAS a personality.

Ultimate Venom had ZERO personality. He was nothing more than a gnarling, gnashing mass of goop, teeth and tentacles. Which is NOT what Venom is supposed to be. Venom s supposed to be a evil version of Spider-Man. He's supposed to look like a warped image of Spider-Man and have all his powers, except he doesn't in this version.

When you look at the entire point of that character and of the Ultimate version of Spider-Man overall it was a colossal failure from everything other than a financial point of view. It's job was to do a modernized and more realistic take on Spider-Man but it failed because it fucked up the fundamental points of Spider-Man's story and characters.

But people PRAISED that which underscores my point. People praise Bendis' work because it's Bendis regardless of the quality of the content.

Miles is no different except he ALSO gets handed automatic praise because he provides representation for marginalized people again regardless of the quality of the character. This isn't unique to him because the SAME thing occurs with Riri Williams who is aggressively poorly developed from a characterization POV. I mean for goodness sake we're talking about a character who doesn't seem to care about her Dad dying to the same degree she cares about her BFF. Like...what the fuck. We're talking about a character who asks her teacher to marginalise her.

And despite that, she's praised by the comic book press in general.

Because they aren't bothering to look too deeply at her personality or her characterization or her development or any of the important shit that goes into evaluating writing. They just see a black woman in the role of a prominent white male superhero and that's all that matters.

Which is exactly how the author of this article looked at Peter Parker and MIles Morales.

Peter and Miles aren't people. They aren't characters.

Those aren't the most important things.

The most important things are that one is a white person and the other is a poc.

That is the primary capacity in which their characters and their very identities are to be viewed. That's the 'right' way to view them.

Except it's not and doing so is immeasurably stupid and in fact harmful to the cause of equality.

Saying ANY given instance where a black person or a person of colour is deferring towards a white person in the way Miles does is equitable with racism is as fucking stupid as saying Boys from the Hood is prejudiced towards white people because there are very few of them in the movie.

It divorces fucking CONTEXT.

So let's look at the scene from an in and out of universe perspective with the context applied shall we?

If you bother to read up on Miles Morales goddam history you'll KNOW he has routinely defined himself in contrast to older more established heroes, trying to live up to their legends. You could even argue it's part of the core concept of Miles Morales so having Miles state Peter is the real deal Spider-Man is not just 100% in character but not doing that in this context could be argued as being the height of dishonesty for his character.

It's like complaining that Spider-Man felt guilty over Aunt May's illness in this storyline. Him NOT feeling that way would be bad writing. Because of his established characterization he is OBLIGED to react that way.

But that's an in-universe thing.

Out of universe this is saying Miles lives in Peter's shadow and Peter is the one true Spider-Man.

Yeah.

That's 100% accurate. And to explain why we need to do a little history lesson on the very foundation of the Marvel universe.

Once upon a time in the late 1930s Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster invented the first ever superhero, Superman. The hook for the character was that he was a guy with powers beyond those of ordinary men and used them to fight crime and save people. it was a hit and soon shittons of other characters were created with every name, costume and super power gimmick you could think of being canvassed.

Times changed though and supeheroes fell out of fashion and most of those characters disappeared. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman however hung around because they were the most popular. Why were they the most popular?

Simple, of all of the various characetrs created they were the ones with the most substance to them relative to everyone else. Every other superhero more or less was a costume and a set of powers and a flashy name and little more than that. Batman had a compelling origin story and gharish supervillains. Superman was the ultimate embodiment of childhood wish fulfillment and Wonder Woman was the definitive female power fantasy.

In contrast the Flash and Green lantern were about a due who was fast and a dude who had a ring that made glowing green shapes. Riveting.

These characetrs were so unimportant that DC comics in the 1950s revived them by basically creating all new characters to replace them. And so we got Barry Allan and Hal Jordan amongst others.

And it was fine because nobody gave a shit about the old Flash and Green Lantern because again...they were superficial. So long as someone could run fast and had a green ring they were good enough. The superficial aspects of both superhero identities was actually so foundational to them that they were replaced AGAIN by Wally West and Kyle Rayner. Because again, the Flash was about a guy who was fast and GL was about a guy with a green ring. That was the POINT of them.

But in the 1960s some guys called Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko (along with others) struck upon the idea that....maybe they should NOT make superheroes who's main hooks were their flash names, costumes and powers.

MAYBE instead of their powers the point of these characters should be their personalities, their relationships, their personal lives in general and the struggles they face day to day like most of us.

Spider-Man wasn't the first experiment with this idea but he was the most successful.

The point of Spider-Man is objectively NOT that there is a guy called Spider-Man, with web spandex and spider powers running around fighting crime.

The POINT is the life story of Peter Parker. The point and the thing that made Spider-Man popular was Peter Parker's SPECIFIC personality. His SPECIFIC relationships with his SPECIFIC friends, family and colleagues. His SPECIFIC jobs. His SPECIFIC life stauts quo in general.

It wasn't the case that ANY given character with ANY given set of friends or personality could've been plugged into that role and would've been as successful because if that was true Daredevil and multiple other Marvel characters would've been as successful too.

Hell NOVA, Speedball and other characters who were deliberate attempts to be the Peter Parkers of their generations never came close to that level of success.

Because the entire CONCEPT and APPEAL of Spider-Man is rooted SPECIFICALLY in Peter Parker.

Now with all of that said let's look at MIles?

Is his personality as vibrant and fleshed out as Peter's? No, he's bland and talked up as 'just a good kid' which is to say he lacks flaws in his personality (which was you know, part and parcel of the entire fucking POINT of all the Marvel characters)

Does he have a compelling motivation and concept powering him such as the guilt and sense of responsibility stemming from his Uncle's death which he blames himself for? No, not anymore. His core concept was that he was the legacy Spider-Man who picked up Peter's role when he died, something Miles feels he could have prevented. Now though that version of Peter came back to life and MIles is in a universe where Peter Parker is alive, has never died, is still active and Miles merely co-exists with him rather than adopts his role and tries to live up to the legend of a fallen hero.

Is his powerset a fine balance of making him a formidable fighter but also far from invincible? No, he can literally win any given fight by turning invisible, sneaking up on someone with his wall crawling powers and spider sense and electrocuting them. And we know it'll work because apparently his electorcution powers are strong enough to knock out Blackheart who is literally evil incarnate and the son of the Devil...and Electro who's entire body is a living electical battery. Miles Morales has plot convenience powers up the wazoo. And if somehow none of those things do the trick it's okay...because he can like make his body explode with electricity and blast everything in his path. And on top of that (if you read the arc where Ultimate Peter Parker returns) Miles can ALSO come back from the dead. That is literally one of his powers. My...how relatable?

Does he struggle with balancing the responsibilites of life alongside the responsibility of being Spider-Man, including the immense burden of guilt, supporting his chronically ill mother, dealing with serious grief, having shit from his peers and the general public mistrusting him which makes earning money extremeley hard? No. In every way other than the fact that he must deal with the immense burden of institutionalized racism Miles' life is 100% better and easier than Peter Parker's. And he has people who can at least support him and help him through personal crises he endures. Peter for the longest time was entirely alone and had to deal with all the stuff you see in this issue and more. THAT is what FORGED him into the hero we know and love today.

He endured all this crap in his life but wasn't destroyed by it, in fact he rose above it and helped people.

THAT is what made him connect with millions of people across the world generation after generation since 1962.

So when Miles in the story, and Bendis through MIles outside of the story says Miles lives in Peter's shadow and Peter is the real deal he's 100% right.

Miles can be the best Miles Morales Spider-Man ever.

But he is NOT the measure of Peter Parker either as a hero in universe or as a character outside of it.

Because Spider-Man was never a name, a set of spandex and spider super powers.

Spider-Man WAS Peter Parker and his life.

To be Spider-Man is to be Peter Parker.

It isn't a mantle to be passed down like Cap's shield or Batman's cowl.

Spider-Man isn't a symbol or a mantle or a legend.

Spider-man is a specific person called Peter Parker and the life he leads.

So no.

It's not 'racist' for Miles or Bendis to acknowledge that or Miles place as NOT being ont he same level as Peter int he role of Spider-Man.

Because it's the truth.

*Bendis' USM work managed to survive that only because

a) It's Spider-Man, Spider-Man automatically guarantees certain baseline sales no matter what

b) At the time that deompression style had the novelty factor going for it

c) Early 2000s Spider-Man was in a state of collapse. Basically until JMS' run began it was bleeding readers badly so any vaguely decent Spider-Man felt like an oasis in a desert, even if the water wasn't exactly clean

e) Mark Bagley's art. Bags is a master artists at the best of times but more importantly his rendition of Spider-Man had been the definitive version used on most merchandise throughout the 1990s, even influencing the highly influencial 1990s cartoon that was back then very recent in people's minds. I mean is it any wonder the quality and sales dropped once Bagley left? If it was all about the writing then it wouldn't have mattered much but it 100% did

f) It was remaking old concepts. At the time that was a new thing so the idea of seeing a moderization of Spider-Man's origin or of the origin of Venom or of Spider-Man first working at the Bugle seemed enticing to readers

g) Whatever you say about Bendis as writer because he was the lone author of USM and because USM the one and only main book for that version of Spider-Man there was a consistency lent to the work that wasn't alienating people and it was easy to catch up because you just needed to follow from issue #1 then issue #2 etc. the same applies for the trades. Much like Japanese Manga USM regardless of the quality of the content was very accessible because you could just start at the beginning and gradually catch up without having to figure out that you needed to read this mini-seires over here or that crossover over there and then in your head explain any contradictions that cropped up because of it.