Spider-Man could be anyone under that spider-suit, but until 2011, he was only Peter Parker. The genius of that character was always that the shy, nerdy, unlikely hero was the audience proxy of the Marvel Universe: He battled among the demigods of the Avengers and saved the world from Doc Ock, then went home to fret over his chemistry final.
But not everyone could be Peter Parker, right? Even in Marvel’s popular Ultimate imprint—a group of titles set outside the main Marvel Comics universe—he was the same white kid from Queens. So eight years ago, Ultimate Spider-Man creator Brian Michael Bendis—a white writer with two adopted children who are black—killed off Parker and gave his spider-job to Miles Morales, a 13-year-old from Brooklyn with a black dad and a Puerto Rican mom. It wasn’t a stunt, and it wasn’t pandering; instead, it provided the superhero world a model for thoughtfully diversifying the stories it told for as big an audience as possible. That model has continued through comics characters like Marvel’s Ironheart—a black teenage girl who builds a suit like Iron Man’s—and now, it seems, in the ascension of Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson into the position of Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s likely those moves wouldn’t have happened without Miles Morales. Miles was a compelling hero (reluctant, sensitive, eventually buoyant) whose story was not an imitation of Peter Parker’s but its own vibrant self. The character developed such a passionate fan base that Marvel eventually ported him over to their main superhero universe. The big payoff was 2018’s brilliant Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a Miles-centric movie that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Sure, it had Peter Parker, too—actually, three or four Peter Parkers, and a Spider-Ham—but only one heart. That Miles isn’t the only Spider-Man no longer feels like a hedge. As Miles puts it in the film, in a heartening message for the world’s dominant pop culture storytelling mode to deliver: “Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask. If you didn’t know that before, I hope you do now.”
—Jonathan Fischer