Weeellll, it had to happen eventually didn’t it? Brian Bendis’ surprisingly-consistent run of near-faultless Miles Morales comics comes to an end with this newly-renumbered title launched in the wake of the Ultimates event, Cataclysm. Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 1: Revival is unfortunately pretty crap.
I’ll probably never bother with Cataclysm as it sounds like generic event garbage (Galactus rocks up, he hungers, etc. etc. whatevs) so it’s irritating that I missed a noteworthy development in Miles’ story: his dad apparently found out that he’s Spider-Man and they’ve fallen out. Still, a flashback scene is included to catch everyone up so it’s not so bad. Man, I hate events/crossovers so much!
What’s disappointingly obvious with this relaunched series is that Bendis seems to have run out of ideas and/or a purposeful direction for the character. There’s some tedious soap opera-y crap where Miles wonders whether he should tell his girlfriend Katie Bishop that he’s Spidey (yaaaawwwwnnnn!)… and nothing else. Booo!
Instead Bendis falls back on superhero clichés, resurrecting Ultimate Peter Parker from the dead somehow AND bringing Norman Osborn back to vamp some more as the ‘roided out Green Gobbo. Oh and a couple of Peter Parker clones (!!!) are dressing up as robo-Spider-Men and causing trouble for some reason. Could not. Care. Less. I read this series for Miles – if I wanted ‘90s haircut Peter and his bullshit I’d read his Ultimate Spider-Man books!
The Ultimate Spider-Man #200 issue that opens the book wasn’t bad. A bunch of characters assemble for the second anniversary of Peter’s death and there are some cute moments like Gwen Stacy smooching Ganke and Ganke and Miles’ banter. The accompanying splash pages by guest artists Mark Bagley, Sara Pichelli, Mark Brooks and David Lafuente looked splendiferous too. But it’s a largely pointless, overly sentimental and unnecessary comic with Bendis relying on still more soap opera-y rubbish to fill the pages with.
David Marquez’s art looks great as usual but the flair Bendis normally brings to his Miles Morales comics is noticeably absent in Revival. All good things, eh? Ah well, at least the pre-Cataclysm stuff was solid.
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