Miles Morales Is Marvel's Main Spider-Man

Marvel needed a PR miracle. This week saw more dumped documents from that hack of Sony Entertainment, including a highly controversial contract the comic book publisher sent to the company's film studios. According to that legally-binding document, Sony weren't to make any Spider-Man movies where the lead character was anything but straight, white, Peter Parker. Thankfully, a miracle was waiting just around the corner. Marvel have been teasing big changes to their line after the current Secret Wars crossover - Lady Wolverine! A new Hulk! - and it turned out a radically different Spider-Man is exactly what they needed. It turns out Miles Morales, the Ultimate Spider-Man, will be taking the place as the publisher's primo wallcrawler. Miles debuted to some fanfare (and push-back from conservative windbag Glenn Beck) when he was introduced in 2011: the half-black, half-Latino teen replaced Peter Parker in the Ultimate universe. Now that alternate universe line of Marvel books is cancelled, but the kid Spidey is surviving - and will be the titular character in a rebooted Spider-Man series.

It's Miles who will be starring in the new title, called simply Spider-Man, which will be written and drawn by his long-time Ultimate creative team of Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli. But what about Peter Parker? Expect the two to cross paths, as they did in the 2012 mini-series Spider-Men. In fact, Bendis has pitched the first year of this new Spider-Man book as a sequel to that story. Bringing the character into the mainline Marvel universe presents some challenges. "A lot of people may be worried about Miles€™ supporting cast, Miles continuity, Miles€™ back story," said Bendis. "Also, exactly what Miles relationship is to the other characters. None of these things have been revealed and many of them will be surprising." Peter's definitely still about too, glimpsed in those All-New, All-Different Marvel teasers, so don't panic. Just expect things to be a little different. Bendis is also working on a rebooted Iron Man book in the new status quo, with former Miles artist David Marquez.