Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #12
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: David Marquez & Justin Ponsor,
Cover: David Marquez & Justin Ponsor
It seemed like only last week that I was excited about picking up Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1 to see what this Miles Morales kid was all about. Now, several years later, the Marvel Universe is coming to an end along with this title, and not even Spider-Man can stop that. Now if you haven’t been reading this title (shame on you) Miles recently told his girlfriend about his secret identity. Unfortunately someone didn’t have the “great responsibility” talk with Kate because her father found out and he just happens to be HYDRA. So now Miles, his father, and best friend have been captured and to make matters worse, Doom and HYDRA have formed an alliance. They want to pick up where Osborn left off and leave no strand of DNA unturned. It’s a good thing that a classmate of Miles’ has also pieced together his secret and runs into some friends of the wall crawler that can help in situations like this.
This issue wrapped up the story arc and series in the same fun and exciting fashion that Bendis has been doing since he introduced us to Parker’s successor. He’s put Miles through the paces over the years and it was nice that even though friends were coming to save him, Bendis shows that this Spider-Man can handle his own. Albeit with a brief manifestation of a brand new power! The dialogue from Doom was just classic villain narcissism which fits him perfectly. He even references the attack on his island when Miles was with the time displaced X-Men to tie some things together. Bendis also leaves us with a cliffhanger that will lead directly into Secret Wars and if you’ve been keeping up with the Time Runs Out storyline it’s a richer experience.
David Marquez has been making Miles Morales look fantastic for quite some time now along with colors from Justin Ponsor. These two do it once again here and we even get to see a couple of familiar looking detectives in this final issue. The first several pages are just visually fun as we go from the classroom to the HYDRA base where Miles is suspended high in the air in an energy cube. The smaller panels in the double pages set up a great rhythm to when Miles lets loose his new power and things get messy. There’s also a very nice phantom-like effect used for Cloak and it really helps set the character apart from his 616 counterpart. However, as good as the issue did look that last page is definitely a “fill your pants” moment for all of the characters and the artists make sure you feel the weight of it all.
This creative team has made sure that this series has been nothing but quality which is probably why Miles has risen in popularity over the years. Bendis has effectively moved him from the shadow of Peter Parker and established him as his own Spider-Man in some of the best looking stories in comics!
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