Spider-Man has a new face – and it is not white. The latest incarnation of the Marvel comics superhero – plain old teenage Peter Parker by day, crime-fighting half-arachnid by night – was unveiled on Wednesday as Miles Morales, who is half-African-American, half-Latino. He takes up the mantle from the late Parker, who, in Marvel's Ultimate imprint – a series of comics, launched in 2000, in which characters are reimagined for contemporary settings – was killed off in June (but before you reach for the tissues, Parker is still alive and well in the mainstream Marvel comics). Morales debuts this summer in a six-part series named Ultimate Fallout, and will have his own comic from September.
Morales is not the first non-white character to stalk the mean streets of comic-book land. In 2006, DC's Blue Beetle was replaced by a Mexican-American teenager, Jaime Reyes; in 2010, Marvel ushered in a half-Mexican, half-Puerto Rican character, Anya Corazon, as the new Spider-Girl (disappointingly, she is no relation to Morales); and DC's Teen Titans series features Cyborg, an an African-American character.
But a row about the dearth of ethnic-minority characters in comics continues to rumble – and so the new Spider-Man's creators hope Morales will appeal not only to a new generation of readers, but mark a change in attitude, on the part of both comic-book artists and fans.
As Ultimate Fallout series artist Sara Pichelli told USA Today: "Maybe sooner or later a black or gay – or both – hero will be considered absolutely normal."
