Words. Lots of them.
Miles Morales, extremely lucky black/hispanic teen is the new, sensational character find of 2011. This is his debut... if it weren't for his debut that happened a while ago in a different book.
The Good
- Humanity: All the characters feel human in this one. Miles seems to be a genuine person, his dad seems to be a genuine person and so does his uncle. His mother is not quite as present as you'd like her to be, but there are quite probably going to be more issues.
- Reality: This book feels as if it's very grounded in reality. The charter school lottery, the joy the parents feel and the sadness of the losers, that's all a reality as evidenced by that one documentary Bendis and I probably both saw.
- Art: I was most impressed with the art in this one. Every character - and there are a lot of them - looks distinct and different. And the colours help a lot as well.
The Bad
- Words: There's a lot of text. So much of it, in fact, that Bendis once more crosses the line to textwalling. He usually manages to stay right above the line where all his text gets annoying, but this one was really bad. Even his trademark conversations that are something like "Bendis?" - "Bendis." - "That Bendis?" - "No, the Bendis." - "Oh, Bendis!" kind of don't work anymore. Why? I have no idea.
- Soundalikes: Miles and his supporting cast sound like Peter and his supporting cast. How about trying something different that is neither "Oy vey, I'm a New Yorker kid with spider powers, chutzpe!" - "Chutzpe?" - "Chutzpe." nor jive?
- People: There are oh-so-many people in this we should instantly care about. There's Miles, his mother, his father, the ill-fated scientist, Osborn (even though we know he's a bastard) and Miles' uncle. Add the one-panel "Oh, poor you"-moments with the poor sods who didn't make charter school appearances and you're in the double digits of people you should identify with. How about not having two characters talk about popsicles for ten pages and instead focusing on the people holding the popsicles? It feels like Bendis just went on like nothing happened.
- Decompression: Barely anything happens and if it weren't for the dialogue to keep you distracted, you'd notice how disjointed Miles' intro actually is. Lab. School. Uncle. Jarring segues.
The Verdict
Buy it. It's a solid intro, after all. And it's the new Spider-Man and that's always exciting. Even though we meet a ton of people and learn nothing about them, it's still money well spent.
