Doesn't matter if you're black or white....

Or does it? There has been a lot of buzz about Miles Morales taking up the mantle of Spider-Man. The buzz does not seem to be so much about the reason for Miles to don the webs, like Peter Parker getting killed in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man. The biggest backlash is Miles' race. He is a half black\half Hispanic teenager. Spider-Man has been Peter Parker a white male since his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy in 1962. I have grown up with Peter. I have been through the ups and downs of the teenage years with him. I have been through being the nerd who got beat up in school. I also saw him become something more when he was bit by a radioactive spider in a lab and given the proportionate strength and speed of a spider. 

      Peter was a symbol of being able to rise above the problems I had and a sign that things would get better.  He was my hero. Now he has been taken away. I am hoping that the reason is not for a gimmick. Writer Brian Michael Bendis says that this is going to be for the long haul. A lot of the positive feedback for the change is that people that are not white to see someone that they can identify with. One of my problems is writers have had chances to develop original characters that resonate with minorities and I think a lot of them have dropped the ball. They have been unable to come up with anything else so they piggyback on an icon. As with the movie industry the comic industry has run out of original ideas so they have to do the constant reboots.

     In this world of political correctness I can’t help but think that this is what has happened here, a politically correct change for the sake of being politically correct. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt because above all I am about the story. I hope that Peter was not made a martyr for political correctness. He deserves better than that.

      This is a tough path that Bendis has gone down. What happens if Peter comes back? This happens quite often in comics. Marvel thinks the backlash is big now. It is going to be ten times worse if a white Peter comes back to take Miles' place. It will be called racism, and just another case of the white hero taking over the place of a minority, and we will be back to square one. I hope that the stories are good. I hope that minorities get out in record numbers and buy the book and support the change they have been pushing for. I guess time will tell.