Spider-Man peeled his webbed mask back on Wednesday to reveal a new face — the friendly neighbourhood superhero is now a black hispanic teenager called Miles Morales.
In a revolution for one of the most enduring superheroes to grace the pages of the funnybooks, Marvel Comics introduced to its Ultimate comic book line a revamped Spider-Man whose alter-ego is a mild-mannered half-black, half-Latino teen from New York.
The new Spidey is called Miles Morales and he lives in Brooklyn with his parents — at least when he’s not in his famous red and blue costume, battling crooks and villains.
The previous incarnation, Peter Parker, was Caucasian, an orphan and came from New York’s borough of Queens. He was killed off in the Ultimate line — a rebooted continuity launched in 2001 — in June, during a fight with his nemesis the Green Goblin. In the regular Marvel universe, Parker is still Spider-Man.
“The superhero genre has been dominated by Caucasian (white) superheroes from Superman to Batman,” Axel Alonso, Marvel’s chief editor, told AFP.
“When Spider-Man peels back that mask, there will be a whole new demographic of kids who we’ll be reaching.”
Alonso said the idea of a black Spider-Man first came up when President Barack Obama, whose father was African, ran for the White House, becoming the first president with African-American roots.
But Marvel needed the right occasion to make the switch and that came when the story ended up in Peter Parker’s death. “In order to kill Spider-Man, we needed to know who to put in his place,” Alonso said.
The decision to have a non-Caucasian wallcrawler fill such prominent shoes was important to the creative team, on a very personal level.
Alonso said his own father is Mexican and his mother British, while Spidey writer Brian Michael Bendis is Jewish and has two adopted children from Africa. “So I know for him it was definitely personal,” Alonso said.
Spider-Man is one of the most hallowed characters in the world of superheroes. In March, a copy of the inaugural 1962 comic book sold at auction for $1.1 million. Originally the comic sold to fans for just 12 cents.
In the inaugural adventure of the new Spider-Man, a slender Miles Morales takes on a fearsome thug, ultimately delivering justice, then climbing in spidery fashion up onto a New York rooftop where he pulls the mask from his sweating face.
Crowds gather to watch the fight, which leaves windows and one car wrecked as the neophyte superhero struggles to overcome the much larger villain.
There’s no love from the public either, as bystanders accuse the blue-and-red suited stranger, wearing the dead superhero’s costume, of being “in terrible taste.”
“I — I thought you died,” one says. “How is Spider-Man alive now?”
In the final frame, when Morales takes off the mask where there is no one to see him. “Maybe the costume is in bad taste,” the heavy hearted-looking teen says to himself.
And although overcoming self-doubt was ever one of Spider-Man’s biggest challenges, it remains to be seen whether Miles Morales will become everyone else’s favourite neighbourhood Spider-Man.
Readers are already divided over the switch, with many in the notoriously change-averse fandom criticising the move as little more than a marketing gimmick.
But just as many are curious to see how young Miles will fare in the web-slinger’s role.
“You just can’t change things for the sake of it and then expect people to like it,” one reader said. “But this is being written by Brian Bendis, and if anyone is going to pull this off, it’s him. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.”