Author: frank

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

In Scott McCloud’s seminal text “Understanding Comics,” the author discusses the basic principles of character/audience identification.  Basically, McCloud says the most relatable character is also the least specific: a plain old smiley face.  Not the most compelling character, to be sure, but one that we can impose our own personalities, hopes, and fears onto.  As you make the character more specific, adding features and personalities, the character becomes more complex and nuanced, but also less likely to be 100% relatable to an audience.  For the more cultured reader, eager to explore new stories outside  the realm of their own personal experience.  For some comic fans, though, it means throwing a borderline racist hissy fit when Marvel announces that their new Ultimate Spider-Man is half black, half latino, because that dude is different from them and therefore lesser.

This is the tightrope upon which not just comics, but all storytelling in popular media must balance: an engaging, dynamic, three-dimensional character who is also accessible and speaks to something common in all of us.  Add to that the pressure of following up a career-defining run with Brian Michael Bendis’ take on Ultimate Peter Parker, the progressive-at-best-token-at-worst role as Marvel’s new diversity Spider-Man, and the unenviable heft of the legacy of arguably the most popular superhero of all time, and poor Miles Morales, our erstwhile new Ultimate Spider-Man, had a lot of pressure put on him even before the first issue of “Ultimate Comics All-New Spider-Man” hit this week. 

 

 

So how did our boy hold up?  Are we looking at the once and future Spider-Man?  Well, no.  We’re looking at an ordinary middle school kid, living in Brooklyn, trying to figure out where he belongs.  Which is not to say he won’t get there.  This is, after all, a hyper-decompressed, written for the trade first issue; an entr’acte before the meet and potatoes.  I’m not going to argue the merits of that attitude, as I feel we all got out our “why doesn’t the main hero actually show up in his own book” ha-has out of the way with Justice League #1 a few weeks ago.  But it definitely means I don’t really have an idea as to what kind of person we’re dealing with quite yet.  Miles seems defined by the people and circumstances that surround him; even his eventual secret identity is passed on to him by someone else.  How he will define himself is yet to be seen; but we better see it soon.

It just seems like the actual character of Miles is swallowed up by they hype both outside of his book and within it.  The book opens up five years ago (where have I heard that before?), with Norman Osborne (pre-Goblin days) trying to make a second Spider-Man.  Normie throws around a lot of talk of destiny and the myth of Ariadne (uncomfortable shades of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark here).  All this talk of myth and the inevitable harkens back to J. Michael Straczynski’s run on Amazing Spider-Man, and each seemingly coincidental turn of events that leads Miles to a career in webslinging serves to strengthen that vibe.  The very fates themselves are conspiring to bring us a new wallcrawler, and fate has decreed that it will be a child of Brooklyn! 

Flash-forward five years (though not necessarily post-Death of Peter Parker; why are all these new #1s being so damn coy with their timelines?), and we meet young Miles Morales, emphasis on the young.  Miles here seems younger than he did when we last saw him, and seems a tad shy and stand-offish. This is a kid still trying to find his place in the world, and who’s activities are defined by the relationships around him.  He’s got an overbearing mother who wants nothing more than for her child to win a lottery to get into a new, fancy, charter school, in a scene straight from the documentary Waiting for Superman (IRONY!).  He’s got a dependable if pessimistic father.  This new Spider-Man even has an uncle who looks out for him, albeit a shady uncle whose at odds with Miles’ father with a penchant for breaking into science labs and stealing genetically altered spiders.  At first, this Uncle Aaron fellow made me a little uncomfortable: why does the black Spider-Man have to have a shiftless, deadbeat relative?  Although I suppose it wouldn’t be surprising for a white Spider-Man to have similar relations.  This isn’t racial profiling; it’s character profiling, and the hero’s villainous relative is as much a trope as a hero’s noble relative, and Uncle Aaron looks like he could evolve into a dynamic mixture of both.

 

My biggest issue with this book is that I never got a clear sense of who Miles was really.  He’s dragged to the lottery by his parents, coaxed into visiting his deadbeat uncle.  Make no mistake, Bendis writes a hero’s family dynamic like no one else- it was one of the most consistent strengths on his previous work on this title.  And I’ve noticed that, when one of the big two decides to tout a young “minority” hero (“Blue Beetle,” “Power Man,” and “Static Shock,” to name a few) the characters typically shine when introduced to the family dynamic.  It’s as if the weight of being “MINORITY SUPERHERO” stifles the personality, and stripping away the mask really lets you understand who they are and where they’re coming from.  This doesn’t seem to be the case so far for young Miles, who is really only given one surprising moment of character definition in the whole book.  When he wins the coveted final slot at the new charter school lottery, Miles takes one look at the other kids who made it in and says “It shouldn’t be like this.”  This is a great spin on ol’ Peter Parker’s trademark survivor’s guilt, but taken on its own, it ultimately amounts to telling us “Miles is a noble guy.”  Not exactly earth-shattering characterization for a hero.  Again, we’re dealing with a kid at a very young age, before he’s had a chance to develop a real personality, as opposed to the teenaged ball of hormones and webs that was Ultimate Peter Parker.  He’ll likely grow into his own.

My main question is: did Bendis hold back on the big character beats here on purpose?  Did he figure that switching the race of the title character of the book was a big enough change off the bat and decide to ease into any further changes for the sake of maintaining audience identification?  Is Miles’ role as blank slate actually serve as a nifty narrative device?  I suspect so, as the last page reveal of one of Miles’ unique powers seems to emphasize his emotional state here.  Furthermore, if identification is the goal, why go out of your way to isolate Miles Morales as “the chosen one”?  Ostensibly, one of the main reasons to focus on a half latino, half black young man in this book is to reach out to a new audience that can now say “Spider-Man is just like me.”  Then why focus so heavily on Miles winning a lottery for a charter school, a situation that is, by it’s definition, limiting in all the wrong ways?  Why go to great lengths to emphasize that the winning lottery number matches the number on the magical mystery spider that somehow finds its way to Miles in the heart of the city?  This emphasis on “There’s something special about this kid,” runs counter to the notion that “This kid is just like me.”

 

Am I overanalyzing a scant single issue introduction? Probably.  I’ve stated before that I’m not a huge fan of ultra-decompression in comics, and as such I’m far less likely to be accepting of that “wait for the trade” mentality.  But just like Action Comics #1 last week, I believe Ultimate Comics All-New Spider-Man #1 really had to give me, at the very least, some kind of insight into what makes our main character tick.  Instead, we got a lot of plot and posturing, with only a scant bit of character development.  Again, I have supreme faith in Bendis.  He can make teen heroes sing like no one else, and for that reason (and the promise of some beautiful, dynamic artwork and expressive characterization by Sarah Pichelli), I’ll keep this book on my pull list.  But I’m going to need to see Miles evolve beyond just a smiley face in order to keep me engaged.

 

I went into Fright Night 3D with a cautious optimism.  The film had a surprising 74% on Rotten Tomatoes, but had been met with mostly “meh” by the geek community.  This was additionally shocking as a movie like this one should be pure nerdbait.  “Let’s remake an obscure 80s horror comedy with Chekov from Star Trek and Doctor Who!”  But walking out of the film (which I mostly liked, by the way), I had a chilling thought: “Man, the reboot they do of this movie in 15 years is gonna be awesome.”

And it will be, because the parts of Fright Night that I thought worked, the bits that had me laughing out loud with glee, was the new stuff.  Colin Farrell’s Jerry, a douchebag Dracula, is a warning to Charlie about the dangers of abandoning your true self (see Evil Ed, Charlie’s absentee father, etc.), and joining the cool crowd.  That’s a damn solid metaphor to build your horror movie around.  Equating vampirism to loss of virginity, a vampire tearing down a house to get around the whole “invitation” loophole, the monster design that combines a bloodsucker’s snarl with Ferrel’s “cool guy” smirk.   I almost wanted to hear Farrell quip, “I never drink…Budwieser.”  Screenwriter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer vet Marti Noxon has loaded this script with enough ideas to fill a season of…well, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I promise not to mention Buffy anymore in this article).

But the doting mom, Evil Ed’s disappearance, and – most sadly for this Whovian- the repeated need to travel back to the Vegas strip to consult with Peter Vincent, all keep the film from stretching its fangs.  Indeed, these characters play such a minor narrative roll that their inclusion feels a little like fan service. You’re telling me a kid who looks up how to pick locks on his cell phone needs a magician to tell him how to stake a vampire? Go watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, kid (I lied)!

I imagine that a fair amount of the geek displeasure with the film came from the relegation of these beloved horror characters to unnecessary plot fumbles.   Why have them in the movie at all? The answer, of course, is because they were in the original.   This is a hard and fast convention of the “Reboot Genre”- and make no mistake, it is a genre, with its own conventions and patterns.  Chief amongst these is the repurposing of a preexisting story or character to hopefully present those elements in a new light.  Unfortunately, all too often it means plucking liberally from the source material and tweaking it a just a little bit to achieve a giddy, nerdgasmic thrill for nostalgia’s sake.  It reminds me of the early days of Marvel’s Ultimate line of comics, which devolved into an endless parade of  takes on old Marvel characters. “Our Venom was the cure for cancer!” “Our Deadpool is actually Professor X!” * It’s more clever than engaging, and makes some of these remakes seem “less than” the originals when they really aren’t.  Hence the old “Why can’t they come up with original ideas instead of mucking up the things I love?” defense.

Let me be clear: I have nothing against remakes/reboots.  I feel a remake/reboot should play the same role as a theatrical revival, finding a unique take or theme on the material and picking and choosing elements in service to that theme. It’s that thinking that gave us Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a “reimagining” that takes a simple premise- apes evolve and take over earth- and uses it to tell a ripping prison break story focusing on animal (and human) rights.  I give the filmmakers tremendous credit for not naming the orangutan in that movie “Zaius.”

And if it’s the characters that interest you, look at J.J. Abrams’ recent Star Trek reboot.  You get the same quirky dynamic of the original Enterprise crew, and throw them in an entirely new, more action-adventury scenario.  I don’t need to see a flashy 21st century take on Kahn.  Take what you need to tell your story, scrap the rest. Hell, the original Fright Night could be seen as a good reboot of the original Dracula story- “I’ve gotta save my virginal girlfriend from our creepy new vampire neighbor with the help of this crazy old guy.”

Again, I really dug Fright Night 3D.  Hell, I’m just happy to have a good, straight up “Let’s kill some vampires” movie again; it’s been too long since Blade 2.  I just can’t help but think the interesting meditation on adolescence the filmmakers were going for somehow chafed up against the perceived “requirements” of a reboot.   We’re staring down the barrel of a bunch more reboots in the coming years (although superhero origin stories like The Amazing Spider-Man and Superman: Man of Steel are an entirely different matter for an entirely different post).  Here’s hoping they learn from the past without being beholden to it.
 
*Granted the push for new ideas gave us Spider-Man versus this guy, so what do I know?

**I have a good friend who hates the Star Trek movie because he thinks it’s erased The Next Generation from existence. I haven’t told him about “The New 52” yet.