New Beginnings Aren’t Always Good Beginnings — Reviewing ‘Miles Morales: Spider-Man’ #1

Characters get handed new number one issues at Marvel Comics like the number is part of some new youth fad. Just like those fads, these runs have their time limit and can either be kind of cool or ready cringy.

There’s a thin line between the two. Unfortunately Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1 dances far too close to the wrong side of the line. Another volume reset for the arachnid hero comes from Bryan Edward Hill, Nico Leon, Valentine De Landro, Bryan Valenza, and Cory Petit.

-Spoilers Follow-

For the moment I’d like you to pretend. Envision something for me. Picture if you will the oft-used gif featuring actor Steve Buscemi wearing a “music band” shirt, a backward cap, and red hoodie with a skateboard over his shoulder asking “How do you do, fellow kids?” while walking down a school hallway. Just hold that in your mind for a moment. Really let it sink in.

That gif describes how this issue feels as a whole.

Hill is a writer that in my book is quite hit or miss. I only made it to the teen issue numbers of reviewing his previous Marvel series, Ultimate Black Panther before having to give up. There was a lot of cardboard character stuff happening there that eventually started to iron out. It just took three quarters of the run to actually get to that point. So, seeing his name attached to this run made me groan quite a bit.

Chiefly because we just sadly had to say goodbye the extraordinary run led by writer Cody Ziglar. That run understood the character. It had authentic voice and spirit from start to finish. While Hill is trying something here, it feels very hollow. All the kids 100% feel like they are being written by an adult, rather than feeling like teens that happen to be written by an adult. It may not seem like it but that is a huge, noticeable, and cringe-inducing difference.

Even the captions feel stilted and bland here, as Miles drops a bunch of out of nowhere slang that feels like your dad trying to stay relevant.

Also, having Miles’ previous relationship to the Black hero Starling end off panel, just so that Miles, who is Black and Puerto Rican, can go ga-ga over a White girl sure is something. Not a great thing, I’ll tell you that much right now. I say this as a Biracial person who is the product of a Black man and White woman falling in love. I’m all for biracial relationships. Because of my lineage, I’m always in one, no matter what. This just feels like the tropey kind of thing over anything else.

Leon’s artwork is very slick with quite a bit of energy to boot. It’s not as chaotic-energized as some of the previous runs, which is bread and butter for Spider-Man. It’s got it’s own organic beats. Some of the direction does feel a bit static at times, more like a screenshot more than something in true motion. Overall, it’s still very superhero fitting artwork that has the juice to do more, if the story didn’t feel so disjointed.

At least the characters and their emotional energy and such is on point.

We get a brief flashback bit from De Landro  that is full of his typical sort of rough aesthetic. Very street feeling which is apt fro what this moment is detailing; Jeff Morales tougher years alongside his brother and how he got to be involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury.

Colors are similar yet quite different across the two artistic styles. Valenza and Petit are the throughlines or the series, having been here for the last run. Each of the color tones is very light and splashy for most of the issue, matching the slicker sort of feel that Leon’s artwork evokes, while dipping into more natural and darker tones for De Landro’s pages. Each is very texturally different but there are small elements that give way to showcasing the colorist style is similar at it’s core.

By golly, Petit does his best to make the dialogue and such work for this go around. He takes the cringe inducing words and at least making them presentable and poppy on the page, even if they are falling flat from the overall content of the dialogue. It’s a lot going on here but it never feels like too much from a visual standpoint.

As noted, there is a lot happening here. I didn’t even get into the cliché new villain with ties to a parent’s past, the “mystery” of them shouting about remembering without just saying who they are, and Miles talking about trying to find balance again. You’re Spider-Man. Balance is just an illusion.

I’m also so glad that Miles and Jeff didn’t give one thought to mother and wife Rio Morales or baby sister Billie in their worry about the villain maybe coming for Jeff at home. Surely the villain won’t come for the family if Jeff goes into hiding. Additionally, can we please stop acting like Miles is still relatively new to all of this. Dude has been Spider-Man now for fifteen years in real time, and at least four or five or more years in universe.

I wanted to like this more, but it’s gonna be a real uphill battle situation. Ugh, hate that, cause Miles Morales is my boy and I want more of the kind of epic we were having.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1 is now available from Marvel Comics.