[Book Review] Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He's even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he's Spider-Man. But lately, Miles's spidey-sense has been on the fritz. When a misunderstanding leads to his suspension from school, Miles begins to question his abilities. After all, his dad and uncle were Brooklyn jack-boys with criminal records. Maybe kids like Miles aren't meant to be superheroes. Maybe Miles should take his dad's advice and focus on saving himself. As Miles tries to get his school life back on track, he can't shake the vivid nightmares that continue to haunt him. Nor can he avoid the relentless buss of his spidey-sense every day in his history class, amidst his teacher's lectures on the historical "benefits" of slavery and the importance of the modern-day prison system. But after his scholarship is threatened, Miles uncovers a chilling plot, one that puts his friends, his neighborhood, and himself at risk.

It's time for Miles to suit up.

1.5 STARS

This is a book my fiancé Matt and I have been highly anticipating for months now. Him more so, because he is a huge Spider-Man fan (Spider-Man to him is what Harry Potter is to me). He reads the comics all the time which makes me feel like his opinion has more weight than mine does, so I'll be splicing his thoughts on the book in my review. Starting with ratings, where I am giving it 1.5 stars, Matt is giving it 1 star. This will be a spoiler-free review.

Some of the good things from me would be that I liked most of the main characters. So Miles, his parents, and Alicia. I liked them fine, and although they aren't some of my new favorite characters, I enjoyed reading their moments. On the other hand, both Matt and I didn't like Ganke and thought he was a bit of a jerk. He constantly put Miles' secret identity on the line and he wasn't the best friend to Miles. Other than Ganke, it is the characters that I feel like drive the story along and the only positive thing about the book. Granted, that is coming from someone who hasn't read the comics. Matt on the other hand says that Miles was a pretty good representation of comic Miles. He didn't fully feel like the character, but Miles' self doubt and constantly being in his head definitely came across well in the book. However, he says Ganke's character was completely different. Ganke is way more confident in the book than he is in the comics. In this comics he's this shy kid who can be a bit more confident/himself around Miles but overall he's shy. And he loves superheroes and the fact that his best friend is a superhero. In the comics he is the one that pushes Miles to get out of his head and be Spider-Man, but in the book by the end he seems to be doing the exact opposite.

So, the more bad aspects of this book, and honestly there are a nice amount. Like I said earlier, this is a spoiler-free review, however, if I include spoilers I'll give a heads up beforehand.

First and probably the most popular problem I've seen in other reviews, Miles is almost never Spider-Man in the book. It feels like false advertising to slap "Spider-Man" under "Miles Morales" on the cover because it's a lie. Even putting him in the mask in the art on the cover seems wrong, considering he's barely in the mask/costume to begin with. Second, basically nothing happens until the last fifty pages of the book. There's a lot of high school stuff and Miles is dealing with an aggressively racist teacher but other than that it's him trying to get a girl to pay attention to him. This would be fine, if there were sections in between the high-school stuff of him being Spider-Man. Third, both Matt and I agree that the writing was fine(ish), however there were enough poop/urine references to last us both a lifetime. Especially considering Miles is sixteen years old. It seemed juvenile. Also, everyone seemed to have the same speech pattern. Even Ganke, who is from a different part of New York and has a different background. It seemed lazy at times. I think having a conversation about race is a great thing and important thing to have, especially  with half black half Puerto Rican representation in Miles as a main character. But it seems like Miles was chosen to be the character of this story just to have a story about race and the superhero elements were an after thought. It would have been a much stronger book if Miles was actually being Spider-Man. Miles is such a great character and role model for young readers who see themselves in Miles and can see themselves being superheroes too.

Spoilers paragraph! So skip this paragraph if you do not want to be spoiled! I am going to do a quick list of the things we had issues with that is borderline spoiler-y. One issue we had is that Miles's dad is so strict with him on everything but he knows Miles is Spider-Man so it doesn't seem to make much sense. He also is a ex-criminal who cut ties with his brother because he wanted better things for his family, but invites other ex-criminals to their house? Also, the ending really seemed to make no sense. Turns out there's a big baddie named Warden controlling a bunch of men with the last name Chamberlain (like Miles' racist teacher) to be super racist to people of color all over New York. Nothing is explained, it's barely touched upon because it shows up so late into the story and it's over almost instantly. We don't know how they're being controlled, why they are going after a good chunk of Miles' family, or even how they know that Miles is Spider-Man. It's like Reynolds didn't want to include anything with Spider-Man at all and added the last fifty pages of "action" (if you can call it that) at the end of the book to meet a requirement so it'll be marketed as a superhero book. And then once Miles defeats Warden, Chamberlain is still super racist! So what was the point? Another thing, so the bad guy's big plan was to give Miles nightmares and frame him for stealing canned sausages? That's really the game plan? They know Miles, a sixteen year old kid, is Spider-Man, and that's all they do?

Matt's final thoughts:
The conspiracy/villain that drives the book is ill defined both in his goals and what he can do. He is also introduced the last 30-50 pages of the book seemingly slapped in so it's a superhero story. Comics have a long history of dealing with social issues but this book isn't interested in using that perspective at all. The biggest issue with this book is that despite being marketed as a Spider-Man story, it's not, all of the "comic book" elements are handled so poorly that it borders on aggressively bad. It is like the author doesn't like the character Spider-Man and doesn't care about him so it really sucks that this is how Miles gets introduced to a large group of people.

Overall, we are both pretty bummed about this book. It could have been really great and instead it felt like only half the story that could have been told. I honestly do not recommend this book and I suggest if you're interested in reading Miles's Spider-Man to just pick up the comics because that's where it is done right.

Thanks for reading!