Category: Marvel Comics

[Book Review] Miles Morales – A Spider-Man Novel

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Miles Morales Cover

Title: Miles Morales: A Spider-Man Novel
Author: Jason Reynolds (Twitter)
Rating: Super Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Superheroes, Slice of Life, Spider-Man, Young Adult, Race and Representation
Release Date: August 1, 2017

Publisher:  Marvel Press/Disney Hyperion

Order Here: AMAZON (KINDLE)  | AMAZON (HARDCOVER) | BARNES AND NOBLE

Note: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review and that’s what you’re getting.

SYNOPSIS

“Everyone gets mad at hustlers, especially if you’re on the victim side of the hustle. And Miles knew hustling was in his veins.”

Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He’s even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he’s Spider Man.

But lately, Miles’s spidey-sense has been on the fritz. When a misunderstanding leads to his suspension from school, Miles begins to question his abilities. After all, his dad and uncle were Brooklyn jack-boys with criminal records. Maybe kids like Miles aren’t meant to be superheroes. Maybe Miles should take his dad’s advice and focus on saving himself.

As Miles tries to get his school life back on track, he can’t shake the vivid nightmares that continue to haunt him. Nor can he avoid the relentless buzz of his spidey-sense every day in history class, amidst his teacher’s lectures on the historical “benefits” of slavery and the importance of the modern-day prison system. But after his scholarship is threatened, Miles uncovers a chilling plot, one that puts his friends, his neighborhood, and himself at risk.

It’s time for Miles to suit up.

REVIEW

Jason Reynolds’s Miles Morales: A Spider-Man Novel is the kind of Miles Morales content that I’ve been craving since the second Brian Michael Bendis had Miles straight up not get that him being “the Black Spider-Man” was significant representation for kids.

Reynolds’ novel portrays a version of Miles that fans of the character (and some of his lingering detractors) need to be reading. It is, easily, a portrayal of Miles that is more honest and authentic than any we’ve seen so far. Reynolds’ imbues the novel (and Miles’s life) with details about his day to day life at home and in school, giving us a look at Miles’s life that we so far really haven’t seen in the comics themselves.

What’s fantastic about Miles Morales, is that this is a novel where we really get to know not just Miles, but the people around him. When Spider-Man Homecoming came out, everyone was beyond pleased with the fact that we had more time with Peter and his friends and in his neighborhood than ever before.

We got to know the kid under the mask.

That’s what Jason Reynolds does for Miles.Read More »

“What if a white guy played Black Panther?”: The Fake Concern of Fake Geek Guys

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racebending mike.jpg

Whenever I talk about racebending as a concept when it comes to comics and comics-related properties, smartasses always show up to say something snarky like “what if Black Panther or some other Black hero were a white guy”.

They crowd into my mentions or any comment field they can get a hold of, trying to shout down my commentary by insisting that they’ve finally found the one way to get one over on supporters of racebending.

It’s supposed to be the kind of comment that leaves Black comic fans stumbling around in a haze formed by our hypocrisy (because if we don’t want characters of color whitewashed, we shouldn’t keep pushing for white characters to be racebent).

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[Book Review] Marvel’s Black Widow – From Spy to Superhero edited by Sherry Ginn

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black-widow-cover

Title: Marvel’s Black Widow: From Spy to Superhero
Editor: Sherry Ginn
Authors: Malgorzata Drewniok, Heather M. Porter, Samira Nadkarni, Valerie Estelle Frankel, Jillian Coleman Benjamin, Sherry Ginn, Lewis Call, David Kociemba, and Tanya R. Cochran
Rating: Yeah, No Thanks
Genre/Category: Nonfiction, Superheroes, Feminism, Popular Culture, Comic Books
Release Date: March 1, 2017
Publisher: McFarland and Company

Order Here: AMAZON

Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review. All of the views in review are my own.

This collection of essays first came to my attention last semester when I looking for sources I could use in a paper for my Cold War literature class about the position the Black Widow held when it came to Anti-Cold War propaganda in comic books. This essay collection is both a celebration of Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) and a criticism of the cultural environments that led to her creation and subsequent (frequent) reimaginings/reinventions as a second-string to male heroes in Marvel’s various universes.

Out of the volume’s nine essays, I thought maybe three or four had serious worth and didn’t make me want to pitch my kindle.

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Bendis, Opportunism, and Bad Judgment Calls in a Terrible Time

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Note: This post contains spoilers for Invincible Iron Man #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Stefano Caselli, and Marte Gracia.

riri-panel-issue-1

Earlier today, Marvel Comics’ writer Brian Michael Bendis made a bad judgement call.

With people all over the world reeling from the fact of a Trump presidency, Bendis decided that there was no time but the present to do one thing: ply his comic, the upcoming Invincible Iron-Man #2, as a distant distraction.Read More »

Whose Luke Cage Reviews Matter To Me

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I started watching Luke Cage yesterday morning and immediately I found myself bombarded with the thinkiest of thoughts.

I have thoughts on respectability politics in the series, on Luke Cage’s old-fashioned everything, on Black womanhood, on the use of the word “nigga” inside our community.

And at the end of the day, I also have thoughts about how I am absolutely uninterested in any hot takes on the series that don’t come from Black women.Read More »

A rambling post on race and the X-Men Franchise

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X-Men Logo

The X-Men franchise kind of proves how allegories for oppression often fall flat when it comes to being cognizant of stuff like racism. The in-world oppression that the characters do face is serious and important, but the series itself is terrible at handling or recognizing intersectional identities and the realities of life as a marginalized person with a mutation.

In fact, the thought that inspired me writing this little post was looking at how of Black mutants in the United States where the original comic series  and the first film in the new franchise (that kills off the one Black guy (Darwin) in the first film and has Afro-Latina mutant Angel sexualized and then killed off in between films) was set.

Think about it: The X-Men franchise largely uses mutants and mutantdom to show characters dealing with racism (as in they are hated for being mutants and not “regular” humans)–

And yet, the series at no point actually and consistently addresses how the reaction to mutants in the franchise would be incredibly different when you looked between white mutants versus mutants of color.Read More »

The Reality of Bendis Writing Blackness

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Riri Williams and Tony

In theory, I know I should be happy that we’re getting more diversity in the form of Riri Williams,  a young black woman/girl taking over the role of Iron Man from Tony Stark.

In reality?

I’m getting sick and tired of these companies swearing up and down that they really want to promote diversity before putting yet another white male writer on a book with a character of color as the focus. (You know… instead of finding writers of color — especially Black female writers — to handle the character.)

I’m especially vexed that the man behind this is Mr. Brian Michael “My Spider-Man doesn’t see what so important about him being Black in a world that loves Blackness but hates Black people” Bendis.

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#NCBD 9/23/2015 Part One – Marvel Firsts Sale with Thor, Spider-Gwen, and Silk

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Marvel Firsts NCBDComixology currently has a bunch of Marvel Firsts out for series that I’ve been meaning to check out. Out of the eight books offered in the past four weeks (from Black Widow to She-Hulk to Prince Leia), I got three books that I had wanted to buy. At ninety-nine cents each, they were a steal and I think that even if I didn’t enjoy any of them, it’d still be a good bargain.

But what’s great is that I did like all three of the books I picked up from the sale and I want to talk a bit about that!

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#NCBD 8/19/2015 – Archie #2 and Secret Wars: Secret Love

Stitch

Spoilers abound.

wpid-20150819_191118.jpgI kept it simple this week when I was on comixology.

Mostly, that was because I blanked on what DC books I wanted and I’m on a tight budget until payday. But at the same time, there were only two books that I really wanted to buy: Archie #2 by Mark Waid and Fiona Staples and Secret Wars: Secret Love with a whole lot of people. (I’ll talk more about the individual stories and creative teams in a minute).

I don’t regret buying either book or yelling at my coworkers until they came to read them with me.

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