Good But Spinning In Circles: Reviewing ‘Miles Morales: Spider-Man’ #35
by Scott Redmond
Overview
Miles Morales’ solo title remains one that hits some of the right notes but is seemingly content to mostly riff on the character’s greatest hits rather than forging forward into bold new realms. While there are new aspects to be found within, the reliance on the same few elements is proving to be far more harmful than beneficial for the character and series as a whole.
Overall
7/10Miles Morales has been through a lot over the last decade that the character has existed, first picking up the mantle in the Ultimate Universe following the death of Peter Parker. Switching universes, joining the Avengers, helping form the Champions, traveling the multiverse many times, and being the focal point of many giant events and even a cinematic adventure.
Yet at the same time, his solo adventures seem to always end up revolving around some of the same elements time, and time again.
Overall, Miles Morales: Spider-Man is a fine to good title as it moves from issue to issue or story arc to story arc. Saladin Ahmed writes a pretty solid Miles Morales, sometimes the Spider-Man portion leaves one wanting a bit and has had some really good character-focused issues. Unfortunately, they are too few and far between sometimes, as focus keeps turning back to the same foes (like the Assessor) or teases of the Ultimate Universe connections or back to his Uncle Aaron again. Sometimes you get all three at the same time.
That’s where we are currently with the title. Overall, the battle where Miles and Shift take on the Assessor and manage to get his tortured associate Quantum to assist them is solidly done. Tons of action but also a lot of Miles using his brain more than brawn to figure out how to find the Assessor’s power source and take him down.
In the end, though everything comes back full circle as Miles is back into the Multiverse to find Uncle Aaron and likely will end up on the Ultimate Earth again and highly likely will run into Ultimatum (the “original” 616 Miles Morales). There is tons of untapped potential for things that Miles could be doing in a solo adventure but unfortunately, the series is too focused on replaying the ‘greatest hits’ of Miles with some remixes of Peter’s adventures thrown in for good measure (like The Clone Saga).
As mentioned, there are a number of great action sequences brought to life by Michele Bandini, Luigi Zagaria, Elisabetta D’Amico, and David Curiel. Their work together is very smooth but has all the right weight and depth to bring every corner or aspect of this world to life. Even with masks, the emotion of the heroes and Quantum are clear as are the increasing frustrations of the Assessor as things move forward. With the darker aspect of this story, the colors are not overly bright, as there are a good number of shadows, and there is a sort of hazier tone filter that works over everything.
Cory Petit handles all the lettering wonderfully, with immersive and bombastic SFX that add to every scene they are part of as well as the ways that the dialogue and captions shift to fit characters perfectly.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man #35 is now on sale in print and digitally from Marvel Comics.
