The New Spiderman is a Biracial Kid From Brooklyn
Superheroes, and the people who’ve devised their supernatural abilities over the years, have often been super-white. Think of all the biggest superhero names: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man… all white, right? Actually, not so fast: It turns out that Marvel is reimagining Spiderman, and this time, he will be a biracial kid from Brooklyn.
Meet Miles Morales: The son of an African-American father and Puerto Rican mother, the character has already been the lead in a lesser known comic book rendition of Spider-Man, fighting bad guys in NYC after the murder of Peter Parker, the original Spidey. But now Morales is poised for mainstream attention when Marvel relaunches Spider-Man this fall, hoisting the character into the limelight for the first time.
“Many kids of color who when they were playing superheroes with their friends, their friends wouldn’t let them be Batman or Superman because they don’t look like those heroes but they could be Spider-Man because anyone could be under that mask,” writer and co-creator Brian Bendis told the Daily News.
And lest you think that Morales will be some kind of lesser Spider-Man, Bendis told the Daily News: “Our message has to be it’s not Spider-Man with an asterisk, it’s the real Spider-Man for kids of color, for adults of color and everybody else.”
This news is particularly welcome since it’s pretty clear that Hollywood still remains firmly in the camp of only white-superheroes need apply. Comic books though are clearly trying to better reflect what the world actually looks like: When the new Spider-Man series launches, Morales will also join a revamped female Thor, an African-American Captain America, and Ms. Marvel, a new hero played by a young Muslim girl.
Here’s a glimpse of Morales below:
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