Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #3

Okay, the title of this review might be a bit misleading. I call it a review of Ultimate Spider-Man #3, but it's really more talking about this and last two issues. Both issues have stuff that is going on that has me invested: Miles wanting to and inevitably talking to Kate about the fact that he's Spider-Man, Norman Osborn and Peter Parker both apparently being alive, a pair of pseudo Spider-Men running around committing crimes and causing trouble. All of it sounds great, and causes for great drama. However, I have a problem with them: There's not a lot of Miles getting into action himself, or resolution to any of the issues. We think that Peter might be a clone, but we don't know. We've seen the two spider criminals cause trouble, but we don't know jack about them and/or where they come from. We're about to get the fight pretty much promised from the get-go in Miles vs. Green Goblin, but again, THREE ISSUES IN, and they've only just NOW, at the end of this issue, met face-to-face. Heck, one of the driving plots of this arc is the apparent return of Peter Parker, and we don't even see him in this issue, aside from a flashback.

I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm new to this series. And yeah, I know, new title and numbering, but I consider it part of the same series that Miles starred in already. So maybe this is just how stories work in this book and I just need to get used to it, but it still feels like they could've condensed things into two issues, so we're not still sitting on our hands waiting for the action to heat up at the end of issue 3. And I know, they wanna warm up to the point where Miles takes on Green Goblin since it's his ultimate test, yada yada so on, but we can't even see him get into a tussle with the spider twins? THAT would've help justify the three issues to get to this point.

All that said, I wanna address what it is about this book that keeps me hooked: Miles himself. The awkward teen geek angle works for him in a way that is both similar to and different from Peter, both mainstream and Ultimate, and therefore feels appropriate for someone taking on the identity of Spider-Man. And frankly, while he is still prone to making screw-ups in his decision making, I'm INFINITELY more forgiving of him than, say, 616 Peter Parker, the man-child who traded a life with his gorgeous wife and future daughter for life with his constantly dying aunt to the devil. Why? Because he's still a kid, who is actually younger than Peter was when he first became Spidey and still learning the ropes, ergo being more sympathetic. And yeah, I DO wish we could see him get into more action in this book than we've seen thus far, but I can't really complain much about who he is as a character.

Anyway, bottom line, the pacing feels slow to me, but maybe it's me and just something I need to adjust to. But for now, I'll give this three stars since I AM still legit interested to see where this goes, and I do still love the character. I just hope that with the confrontation between Miles and Green Goblin next issue, things pick up that much more.