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Miles Morales will replace Peter Parker as Marvel’s Spider-Man, becoming the first Black Latino in the role as part of a larger move to diversify representations in the comic world.
“Many kids of color who when they were playing superheroes with their friends, their friends wouldn’t let them be Batman or Superman because they don’t look like those heroes but they could be Spider-Man because anyone could be under that mask,” writer and co-creator Brian Bendis told New York Daily News. “But now it’s true. It’s meant a great deal to a great many people.”
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The new Spider-Man looks like me!!! #MilesMorales pic.twitter.com/s9lPnlzTOq
— Topher Jordan (@TopherJordan)
June 21, 2015
Morales, the teenage son of an African-American father and Puerto Rican mother, will join the first female Thor, the first black Captain America, and the first Muslim Marvel heroine, Ms. Marvel.
“Our message has to be it’s not Spider-Man with an asterisk, it’s the real Spider-Man for kids of color, for adults of color and everybody else,” Bendis said.
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Morales, who has appeared as an alternative version of Spider-Man since 2011 and is expected to debut in the Fall, is the first black character but not the first Latino to portray Spider-Man. Miguel O’Hara, a biracial Mexican geneticist, appeared in a 1993 comic book set in the future.
The announcement comes after Wikileaks revealed an agreement between Sony Pictures and Marvel saying that Spider-Man can neither be black, gay or female in its film productions.
The best things always come with patience especially when it comes to a character like #MilesMorales. He'll get his movie soon. Trust me.
— #3BlackgeeksDMV (@3BlackGeeks)
June 23, 2015
