Peter Parker Replaced by Miles Morales in 'Ultimate Spider-Man'

Is Peter Parker now Half-Black, Half-Hispanic? (Hint: No)

Marvel Comics was faced with a problem when they killed off Peter Parker in the Ultimate Spider-Man continuity, and that problem should be self-evident: no more Peter Parker. As has been done before, the solution is to create a new character to step into the tights of the recently-deceased.

Enter Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Latino kid who is now the new Spider-Man. Miles Morales steps into Peter Parker's tights (as it were) as of Wednesday, August 3.

The knee-jerk reaction on the web was, "you can't change Peter Parker's race". Those familiar with Donald Glover's bid to audition for the Spider-Man reboot will have heard the arguments for and against racial recasting: some argue that, as it's a fictional character, it doesn't really matter what he looks like; others argue that a super hero's ethnicity is part of a larger cultural construct, i.e. we grew up with a white Spidey, so he has to be white.

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Miles Morales Replaces Peter Parker in 'Ultimate Spider-Man'

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In this case, that argument is moot since we're not talking about changing Peter Parker's already-arachnid-infused DNA, but introducing a whole new character. This is the Ultimate universe: it exists for revamping and rebooting well-established comic-book characters.

Note that Samuel L. Jackson's portrayal of Nick Fury in all the new Marvel films has been fairly well-received: not only is Nick Fury a relatively minor character to begin with, but Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch re-envisioned Fury as African-American way back in 2002... and based him on Samuel L. Jackson. So Jackson was cast to play himself, which actually makes perfect sense.

Deeper Issue of Race in Super-Hero Stories

This probably deserves its own post, but, if we're talking about race and comic books (since this is the internet, we must, of course, talk about race every 11 seconds), we can't ignore the portrayal of the US Army in the film version of Captain America. Specifically, the army was depicted as having black, Asian and white soldiers serving together.

This was the most insidiously fictional element in the film: the US Army was segregated during World War II. While there were plenty of black soldiers, they did not serve in white units. Japanese-American soldiers? Remember how the Japanese were treated in the US during WWII. That guy who says "I'm from Fresno" would have most likely been sent to the nearest internment camp, and not to Austria. If he was part of the 442nd, then his family would have been interned.

Why is this a problem, in a film that depicts a red-skulled supervillain in a Hugo Weaving mask and a super-soldier formula? Because it establishes a modern-day racial harmony that simply didn't exist back then, and the film's target market isn't necessarily being taught that the military used to be segregated. There were better ways of depicting African-American soldiers in Captain America: bless the production team's collective heart, but their choice didn't look like a choice- it looked like a mistake. I found it the most jarring aspect of the film.