Three Supers And A Baby — Reviewing ‘Miles Morales: Spider-Man’ #20

A day out on the town, with family, never stands a chance of average or normalcy when Spider-Man is involved. With all that great power, great responsibility, and ill-timed luck that seems to come attached to the web-head life.

Miles Morales and company sure give it a good try though in the mostly stand-alone Miles Morales: Spider-Man #20. An artistically inclined adventure from Cody Ziglar, Federico Vicentini, Bryan Valenza, and Cory Petit.

Gosh, I miss day-in-the-life-style comic book stories.

Big multi-part story arcs that are built towards big line events or tidy trade collections tend to be most common in modern superhero related comics. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of books that have made their identity on great uses of done-in-one or stand-alone type issues. The current Fantastic Four run is a great perfect example of how well it can be done. So too is this issue.

Ziglar picks up threads from the recently concluded story arc and weaves in some threads for the next one to come (a Blood Hunt tie-in). Yet, the crux of the story stands apart from those arcs and gives the character and the audience time to breathe a little. Some lower stakes hero/battle situations wrapped up in just some good banter, character development, and family (both biological and found) bonding.

All of the Kamala and Miles content we’re getting here has me giddy. Their best friendship (where the hell is Sam Alexander/Nova Marvel!!!) from the All-New All-Different Avengers through Champions days are some of my favorite times. They and the aforementioned (missing) Nova are my favorite Marvel trio of heroes. Despite all the mess around Kamala these days, Ziglar gets her and writes their dynamic spot-on perfect.

Vicentini and Valenza are just so great on this series together.

Once upon a time I felt like the comic art styles that were closest to ‘photo-realistic’ as possible were the way to go. Any art style that used ‘too much’ exaggeration was one that I sort of pushed away from. What a ridiculous young person I was.

These days I devour and love artwork on comics period (with notable exceptions), from the more realistic to the very stylized. Vicentini hits that great spot where things have tons of depth, presence, and weight in a grounded way while having the right touch of exaggeration and roughness. Most notable are the ways that the panels work to the very chaotic energy that is natural to any of the spider-heroes. Those who swing around, flipping every which way, bouncing around like there is no tomorrow. Capturing that means having very fluidic feeling pages, where action actually feels like it’s in true motion.

Being a lighter tale, compared to the bloody personal drag-out-brawl of the previous issue, Valenza brings a shifted palette into play. Overall things have a more natural middle-of-the-road approach to them. Letting the costumes, powers, and super things be the brighter eye-catching colors on the page. Other things from the clothes to the backgrounds are closer to realistic grounded color tones, fitting the looser fun approach to this issue.

That’s not to say that darker colors don’t factor into things. Plenty of shadows do appear, but they have more to do with the types of lighting and thought of how that would work in various spaces. Creating cooler or softer feeling spaces, like during the art show taking place in the shadow of so many tall buildings.

Characters have a lot to catch up on and to say as they spend time together, which Petit brings the right life to. Allowing words to flow around the page, giving little flairs of personality and energy to various speech bubbles or fonts. Shifting things just right so that the version of the voices created in our minds feels better, able to capture the volume and tone so easily.

Can’t wait to see how this book works during the Blood Hunt event tie-in issues. Especially since this book always keeps its own particular flavor, no matter what else is happening.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #20 is now available from Marvel Comics.