Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man vol. 2 — Revelations

The main problem I’ve had with the past few volumes of this title is that Bendis has been putting Miles Morales through situations that defined Peter Parker rather than building up the history and character of this latest Spider-Man.  Miles is a great character and seeing him put through the same paces as his predecessor feels lazy and uninspired.  With this last volume before the character is shuttled off to the Marvel Universe proper, Bendis finally gets back to telling stories about him.  It’s not a perfect send-off — It has a genuine “Red Skies” crossover ending! –but it at least gives me hope that we’ll see better stories about Miles with the forthcoming relaunch of his title as (adjectiveless, dig it) “Spider-Man.”

Now, before Bendis and artist David Marquez can start telling these stories about Miles, they have to finish off the “Return of Peter Parker” storyline they started in the previous volume.  For all intents and purposes, it appears that the Peter who has returned here is the real deal.  He has all of his memories and it turns out that his body was missing from his grave.  There is the indication that he may not be telling everybody everything about this, but that’s not the point here.  The point of this is to have these two Spider-Men team up to take down Norman Osborn, and have Peter acknowledge Miles’ capability and to personally pass the Spider-Torch on to his successor.

As a story that needed to happen at one point, it’s passable.  The sentiment behind it is nice, but the execution feels like Bendis was going through the motions here.  Yes, we get an explanation — that may or may not be true — about Peter’s return and see the (final?) smackdown of Osborn.  The dialogue is exposition-heavy and the fight between Miles/Peter and Osborn feels repetitive with the characters just hitting the villain repeatedly until the plot dictates that he falls over.  If you were one of the two people who were waiting to see Peter hand things over to Miles before you accepted him as Spider-Man, then here’s the story for you.  For the rest of us, I guess it could’ve been worse.

Things pick up immensely with the next two issues as the feature the return of Miles’ father, Jefferson.  If you’ll recall, the last time we saw this character was when Miles revealed his identity as Spider-Man to him and he ran off without leaving a forwarding address.  He’s back and Jefferson’s explanation for his actions, along with the story he tells about his past, his no-good brother, the Kingpin, Mutant Growth Hormone, and Nick Fury plays a lot better to Bendis’ strengths.

It’s basically a gritty crime story from the 80’s with some superhero trappings peeking out here and there.  The story starts when Jefferson’s brother Aaron asks him to come to a meeting with local thug Turk just to “stand there and look intimidating” so he can get paid.  Naturally, things go bad, Jefferson has to fight his way out, and then gets picked up by the cops in the end.  To his surprise, he’s sprung early in the morning.  The person doing the springing:  Nick Fury.  It turns out that he and S.H.I.E.L.D. have had their eye on Turk for a while and Fury wants Jefferson to be their man inside the organization because something much bigger involving it is coming along.

So we get a story of a basically decent guy who wasn’t sure what to do with his life, thrust into being an undercover agent to help take down a mutant-drug smuggling ring.  You won’t be citing this story in the same breath as Bendis’ best work in the genre, but it works well overall.  The dialogue is sharp and the drama from Jefferson’s situation is keenly felt.  Marquez also alters his usual style to a grittier, thicker-lined one that is well-suited to the material.  As much as the flashback story works, it’s the present-day conversations between Miles and Jefferson that really hit home.  No, the man hasn’t been that great of a father.  Yet after reading his impassioned explanation for his history, why he left, and his regret at such, you’ll be just as inclined as Miles was to give his old man a second chance.

After this, Jefferson says that they’ve earned a free pass from drama for the rest of the year.  Naturally the final story has Miles tangling with a Doctor Doom-backed Hydra as we find out what his girlfriend Katie’s deal really is.  If the previous stories were about torch-passing, and tying up loose ends, this one is a straightforward superhero story set up to showcase what Miles is capable of and give him a solid win in the process.

Did I spoil things there?  No, not really.  This story may be fun, but it’s the superhero equivalent of comfort food.  We get people finding out about Miles’ secret identity, the hero and his loved ones held hostage by very bad men, and his inevitable triumph when he shows them what he’s really made of.  Along with his work in the recent volumes of “All-New X-Men” and “Uncanny X-Men,” this shows that Bendis can pull a page from the superhero playbook and play it as well as anyone.  We’re not talking innovation here, just the familiar done quite well.  Along with a more effective use of the Ultimates than we saw in their own book.

There was a time when “Ultimate Spider-Man” was one of the few Marvel comics that I’d recommend to people even if they weren’t in to superheroes.  Those days are long past, but Miles’ adventures have been generally fun.  Even if they haven’t lived up to their potential due to the writer’s insistence on putting the character through Peter Parker’s paces.  With those days behind us, and a fresh start in a whole new universe ahead, maybe we’ll see stories featuring Miles Morales start getting real good again.  This volume at least indicates the potential for that is there.