Marvel Comics is relaunching the Spider-Man series this fall — with a long overdue modification to its main character. Instead of Peter Parker behind the mask, Marvel will finally be welcoming Miles Morales into the main Marvel Comics universe as Spider-Man. "Our message has to be it’s not Spider-Man with an asterisk," writer Brian Bendis tells New York Daily News. "It’s the real Spider-Man for kids of color, for adults of color and everybody else."
Of course, Bendis' words are especially interesting in light of the recently unearthed contract between Marvel and Sony which very directly stipulated that — for any film adaptations — Spider-Man / Peter Parker could only be heterosexual and white. Morales currently exists only within the offshoot series Ultimate, where he initially replaced a murdered Parker.
The character is the teenaged son of a Puerto Rican mother and an African-American father. Discussing his own emotional response to the news, Bendis detailed the importance of the Morales transition. "I realized my kids are going to grow up in a world that has a multi-racial Spider-Man," Bendis says, "and an African American Captain America and a female Thor.”
Predictably, the next cinematic Spider-Man will probably just be another white guy.
