Better Late Than Never: First the White House, Now the Webslinger?

So, my arch-nemesis—whose alter ego moonlights as my best friend—calls me and says, “Killa, they killed Spiderman.” Now, I don’t do ambiguity very well so I ask, “Who’s they, DJ?”.  He tells me that Marvel Comics killed off the Peter Parker of the Ultimate imprint. I wasn’t the least bit surprised because the writers on the Ultimate docket are the most fatalistic writers to ever grace the comic book genre; they kill everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. They kill their big namers. They kill their big namers’ children. Hell, they’d put a bullet in your momma if it took the stories to a new height. Believe it or not, even Wolverine got got in the Ultimatum story finale. The mainstream Marvel line doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to do the big job to a main headliner like the Old Canucklehead. I mean, how the hell would Marvel make monthly sales if Wolverine ended up six feet under? Curious. And just as I’m beginning to wonder how the hell the Ultimate line is going to remain in monthly print with their headliners taking the ultimate dive, DJ drops the bomb on me: A new Spiderman is going to take up the webslinging. And get this: HE’S MIXED BLACK AND LATINO!!!

Yup. That was my reaction, too. Holy $@*% balls! This is going to start a media storm. And, I knew the internet had to be blazing with controversy. Man…was it.

I don’t have the time to type every opinion posted on the internet for you to reference nor do you have the time to read them all, so I’ll just give you the general consensus: 1) Political Correctness is forcing us to increase diversity everywhere…even to the point of killing iconic characters to change their ethnic background, 2) changing the character in such a manner is disrespectful to the creator, and 3) minorities already control the White House, can nothing be left sacred?

Let me put this all in perspective: The Golden Age heroes were created in a time of great strife as an avenue for us—the followers of a great mythos—to find solutions to our problems. Chief among those problems at the time was Our World at War…for the second time. I won’t insult your intelligence by running through the list of social, cultural, military, and political perils that plagued us as a society at the time but I will say  characters like Superman, Captain America, Namor, and The Human Torch sure as hell saw us through some tough times. You see, there were no easy solutions to, say, the problems of the Nazi Regime and the threat of world domination. But, these heroes substituted their great attributes and powers for our own deficiency to see a means to an endgame. Where the Americans had to spend many grueling years fighting alongside the allies to force a Nazi surrender, our heroes simply skipped across the border, frolicked up to the front door of Adolf Hitler’s compound and knocked his door. When he answered, our heroes punched him slam in the eye socket and then hauled his racist ass off to a tribunal.

‘Killa, where the hell are you going with this?’ you’re probably asking. My point is this: When we as a society are faced with some strife (as in the previous example of the Nazis and WWII), we look to our heroes for guidance. They experience the same things we experience and then they charge headlong into a solution—right, wrong, or indifferent. From this, we as a society are able to formulate a means to solve our strife based on how our heroes did it. Frankly, our heroes, whom are foci by which we can all relate, give us (if you’ll excuse the platitude) hope of a better tomorrow. I got news for you, Nazism and World Wars are not and never have been the only problems facing our society. Things like economy, drugs, sexual orientation, and minority diaspora are huge points of contention. Why wouldn’t they appear in our modern mythos?

This comes full circle back to Miles Morales, our newest Ultimate Spiderman. He lives in a fatalistic world where heroes make the ultimate sacrifice and never come back from it. He lives in a very realistic world much like our own, where the stakes are high and the consequences can be overwhelming. In this world, Miles Morales is inspired the ultimate sacrifice of another faceless hero, Peter Parker, and decides to take up his mantle in his honor. Let me repeat that: IN HIS HONOR! Spiderman hasn’t only saved New York City countless times, but also saved us. He has saved our sanity and our morality. He has given us hope. He has been our friend. He has been our rock and our scapegoat. Moreover, he has given us his life and if you see the page where his late-Uncle Ben (Peter Parker’s entire motivation for being a superhero) puts his arm around Peter as they walk towards the pearly gates saying, “You did good, kid. You did good,”…you feel it too—you feel his sacrifice. That’s the same sacrifice that Miles feels and makes the decision, in the face of his own potential demise, to become Spiderman in Peter’s honor. And, it has nothing and everything to do with the color of his skin. Nothing because he feels obligated out of a sense of duty not Affirmative Action; and, everything because he’s proving that skin color and culture aren’t barriers to neither greatness nor selflessness.

So, in my opinion (not that it really matters anyway), the decision to have Miles Morales, a mixed-kid, take up the mantle of Spiderman shouldn’t be looked at as some devious plan to take Affirmative Action to new heights, but rather as proof that we ALL can identify with our heroes regardless of color, race, creed, gender, etc. Realistically, it doesn’t make a difference what color his skin is underneath the suit, Spiderman will always be blue and red.

Oh and by the way, Miguel O’Hara (better known as Spiderman 2099) was half-Puerto Rican and nobody complained about that. Just sayin’.

Not that they made a big fuss about it at the time…