REVIEW: Miles Morales Spider-Man Annual #1 (Infinite Destinies)

Diversity

Miles Morales Spider-Man Annual #1 (Infinite Destinies) is what I’d call a very run of the mill comic book story. There’s a bad guy, a backstory, and at some point, the heroes punch the villain to save the day. That’s sadly all this book is, as the majority of what you get in these thirty-five pages is awkward at best and inoffensive at least. The exciting part of this book comes in the diverse cast of Miles and Amulet, who are heroes of African/Spanish and Arab heritage, respectively. The book handles the introductions of Amulet and his family in a charming albeit slightly condensing way. The writer feels the need to bluntly point out what some Arab terms bluntly mean when Amulet introduces his family by using the exact English translation straight after the word that comes from his own culture. Those familiar with the term just see the word listed twice, and those unfamiliar just see a strange word followed by being told straight up what it is. I, for one, think readers would figure out in the following panels that Amulet was talking about his grandmother when he said Sitti by visual clues alone as it’s pretty obvious.

The introduction of a card game from their homeland is handled with more grace letting the reader figure it out for themselves using visual clues. While this is a Spider-Man book, this tale feels much more like Amulet’s story. It’s refreshing to see heroes of all races and creeds slamming down on evil and working together to show heroism knows no borders.

Mismatched Setting

There’s one part in his book where Amulet dives into a weird story about wizards and sixty-foot demons that eat babies from ancient times; when Spider-Man asks where the strange monsters they are doing battle with came from. Being sucked into this ancient tale and seeing the towering beasts lay waste to the land made me want to see Amulet as a warrior from old times instead of a hero in the modern-day. There was something exciting about this wizards and warriors setting that just doesn’t mesh with the common cape story. When the book cuts back to the modern-day, I felt a little sad we didn’t get to explore that world further as seeing superheroes punch mythical beasts seems out of place in a Spider-Man book when Peter Parker’s threats have primally been birthed from science gone awry. This is made even more glaring when Spider-Man himself is practically defenseless against these monsters without the assistance of Amulet’s magical powers to destroy the artifacts that bind them to the earth.

The Common Element

At the end of the day, it wasn’t the magic, the superpowers or the raging demons that connected me to this story; it was the people behind the masks. The story ends on a sweet scene of Spider-Man reminding Amulet of all the good they’d done that night, something he needed after seeing the cultist who’d been summoning the evil creatures took his own life. The chilling note is offset by the boys returning home to their families, leaving the reader with a warm feeling and heart-tugging visual as they reunite with their loved ones. Spider-Man and Amulet might be entire cultures apart, but simple, pure virtues like family, heroism and love are shared by all the people of the world.

. Final Score 2/5 Stars

Writer: Jed MacKay
Artists: Luca Maresca, Juan Ferreyra, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Publisher: Marvel