I really feel like Ahmed could do better to finally give Ganke something to do than forcing a completely artificial and out-of-nowhere conflict with him hooking up with Barbara and then Miles loses it on him. Like, I get that Ahmed was building up to Miles feeling stressed and that he was probably going to blow up eventually, but that felt like a dumb thing to freak out over and get as physical as he did when he never even got that bad about some of the dumb stunts Ganke pulled in the Bendis run.
A part of me wonders if Miles' journal took away from him talking to Ganke as his sounding board and confidante instead of "guy who gives me webs."
Gone are the Days of the 2 man team that was Ultimate Spider-Man (Maybe to avoid comparisons to MCU Spidey and Ned) but Ganke still does help out, like with preserving the life of shift. Not sure if Saladin will develop him more right now though. I believe he mentioned in a interview he was nearly done with his run and had a successor picked out for when he leaves the book. The announcement was what made me think he was the pick for the next ASM writer. I'm assuming his final Miles story is going be some sort of graduation from BVA, and a solid push into the college Era which he's been alluding to throughout this run. I was thinking he'd be lining it up to happen with the 900 issue for ASM.
I don't know if it's that or just being all that into Ganke as a character and giving him a reduced, yet still supporting, role.
I don't think Ahmed or any of the Beyond writers are getting ASM but I can believe he might have Miles graduate high school with all the other significant moments that have happened in this run. Or maybe he might plan to, depending on what Marvel will let him get away with.
I was talking about this with someone else on twitter the other day. You kind of see the same thing with Ahmed's Kamala Khan run in which he had a preference for writing his teenager characters' relationships with their parents over their friend groups. It was even more blatant in Kamala's case since she actually had a bigger friend group than Miles but when Ahmed took over Mike got written out of the book and Gabe never got referenced, Nakia and Zoe's roles got pretty reduced and Bruno kind of got brute-forced into being a straight-up love interest to really mixed results.
On that same token, Bendis' tenure saw him put way more emphasis on Spider-Man with his primary confidant. When he was writing Ultimate Spider-Man it was Pete and MJ and when it came time for Miles it was him and Ganke. In that sense, i get why so many people ship the two lol
The artist formerly known as OrpheusTelos.
That is a pretty cool suit there. As for the discussion about the focus on Miles's peer group vs. the focus on Miles's family as his primary supporting cast, it's actually kind of interesting, at least to me, to juxtapose that with Peter not having any family in his life aside from his aunt May, not to mention how Peter tried (and still tries) so hard to keep her from knowing of his double life as Spider-Man, whereas Miles's family was (eventually) very supportive of Miles as Spider-Man after they found out.
The spider is always on the hunt.
I think it's a shame that Ahmed decided to just use Barbara as a prop to created fake drama. I actually thought it was pretty cool how she became apart of Miles' circle of friends, now I don't really care if she never shows up again.
When the journal thing started I did consider it kinda strange, since regular thought bubbles exist, but now that you mention it a lot of Miles and Ganke's dynamic was supplanted by it.
Thinking about it Miles' situation before Ahmed is more like a college student than a high schooler. Living with roommates, no curfew, and generally free to do as he pleases in his spare time. Not to say the family time has been bad but I guess there's a loss of "maturity" because of it. Also for all the time spent with them we still don't know much about them; we still don't know what Jeff does for a living and we don't know much of anything about Rio's family besides her mother whose last appearance wasn't even in the main book.
Barbara is such a strange situation for all the time spent on her nothing really came from her being around. All we really got was Snatcher who I don't think anyone is chomping at the bit to see again, and that manufactured drama from dating Ganke. And as things stand now there's no real reason for her to ever show up again. She went from love interest to supporting character to girlfriend of a supporting character to ex of a supporting character.
It happens, some of Peter's old flames were going to be central supporting characters after the relationship ended. At best they just fall into obscurity and at worse they die so Barbara becoming irrelevant by issue 25 isn't new when other girls were more popular and Saladin wanted to hype up Starling at the time.
Last edited by Jaychance; 01-04-2022 at 10:17 PM.