Who are these characters?
The first one is Barbara Rodriguez and the other Tiana Toomes aka Starling. In other words, they are Miles’ Mary Jane/Classic Gwen Stacy(the jury is still out on Barbara but she is something) and Felicia Hardy. How are they his Mary Jane/Gwen Stacy and Felicia? Barbara is a rapper and singer which parallels MJ’s acting and modeling career. Like MJ, Barbara is hinted of knowing that Miles is Spider-Man is very annoyed that Miles refuses to tell her like MJ has. There is something hinted as going on with her like MJ being from a broken home, but we don’t know yet. She is like Gwen in that she feels out of the loop and that her respective Spider-Man is keeping secrets from him. Also like MJ and Gwen, she dated that Spider-Man’s best friend.
Tiana is the granddaughter of Adrian Toomes and is a brutal vigilante and carries a violent streak just like her grandfather and has the same nasty attitude as well. While Felicia is a thief and Tiana is a vigilante, they are both criminals that either Spider-Men have trouble reconciling with. Both see the good in their respective girlfriends/love interest, but have a clear line they won’t cross. Felicia is probably the best damn thief in the Marvel Universe and everyone, including Captain America, turns a blind eye to her antics. Tiana is the granddaughter of a murderer who she used to look up to. Felicia used to hate the ordinary man behind the mask which annoying spawned the one note belief that she hated Peter but not Spider-Man. Tiana hates masks in general and is unknowingly carrying her grandfather’s biases towards his own adversaries.
I hope you see the dynamics. Now why haven’t they appeared in any other media outside of the comics. Because Bendis is the slowest writer to actually progressing a story that has ever put pen to paper in comics. When Spider-Man PS4 came out, Miles was on hiatus because Bendis just left Marvel to go to DC and Marvel had to choose the next comic. Mind you that only Barbara debuted so in the 70+ issues of Miles that the man has written and the 8 years he has, Bendis failed on expanding the supporting cast past Ganke, Miles’ parents and uncle, and a few others. Not once has the man actually developed a love interest let alone expand on Miles’ own rogue’s gallery until the very end of his run with Miles. This is why Miles comic fans have a mixed opinion on Bendis. So by the time, Insomniac were introduced to Miles, they did not have a lot to work with and that is apparent in the PS4 version of the game, they had Miles go to Midtown, Miles’ character is basically black Peter Parker, Ganke is not mentioned or shown to be with Miles, Rio is a teacher instead of a nurse, and Jefferson is a fan of Spider-Man. It wasn’t until the ITSV movie came out is when they actually started adapting Miles Morales more accurately to the books and film but the damage had been done. Insomniac started development of Marvel’s Spider-Man in 2014. So they would have done all the research for Miles at a time when he was not even in the 616 universe yet. We will get to why the movie has not gotten to either Barbara or Tiana yet, but let me cook. As for why Sony used Gwen, Sony does not own the rights of either Katie Bishop or Kamala Khan, the role that Gwen alludes to in both ITSV and ATSV.
But what about Ghost-Spider and Spider-Gwen? Carol Danvers as in that one time Peter went on a date with Carol when she was Ms. Marvel. Literally, fanservice and a one off. Not even a fucking Bobbi Morse. Two black girls are the main romantic interest of one Miles Morales, and if you want to doubt that Barbara is black, I got pictures and depictions as well as text comparing her to Alicia Keys. Girl is Afro-Latina like his mother is. So step the fuck off. Point is Gwen and Miles started out as some alternative cover celebrating the love interests of Spider-Men, a cover series that had the likes of Peter Parker carrying Mary Jane, Peter Parker carrying Felecia Hardy, Eddy Brock carrying Felicia Hardy, and Miles carrying Spider-Gwen. Then Sitting in The Tree happened and more on that later, but ultimately the arc concluded that Gwen wanted to just be friends with Miles’ teenaged horny ass because Spider-Gwen only considered Miles because she saw an alternate reality of her being happy and not miserable as she usually is with Miles. And she backed out because between a teenaged boy lying about his age to appeal to a college aged Gwen, someone had to be the responsible party and stop before Gwen got the FBI called on her.
It was not even a tease. It was really both authors, Jason Latour and Bendis, realizing that in their runs, they failed to give either characters any development with their own supporting cast and using a crossover to tease at something which Bendis conveniently threw out because Miles was then being paired up with Lana Baumgartner and fucking Technogoblin literally right after that arc. If you actually read Miles stories, even the terribly bad run in 2016, you’d know that it was never going to be a thing and it was very unserious. Also Bendis was suffering from writer’s bloc. But nope. Here we are.
Gwen has not appeared in a Miles Morales comic since 2017. She has not been mentioned in a Miles Morales comic since 2017. Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel is more of a feature of Miles Morales cast than Spider-Gwen. Since that one arc, Miles has had 74 solo issues excluding cross over events and not once did one Spider-Gwen appear or even be mentioned. I am not even counting Champions or Avengers. Gwendolyn, without the E at the end, Stacy has 38 issues of comics and not once has Miles appeared in them. Gwen is getting regulated to 5 issue minis now with Cindy Moon and Spider-Ham. Mind you, I did not count the What If Miles Morales stories or even Miles solo Spider-Verse. Miles lapped this Gwen since Sitting in the Tree and is about to do it twice. And guess what was Gwen’s highest selling comic since then? Sitting in the Tree.
I told a Gwiles believer back when ITSV released that Gwen would not last. She is going to fade out and her only relevancy was Miles Morales because she is more of a gimmick than actual character unlike Anya Corazon, Mayday Parker, or Jessica Drew. And I was fucking right. In 5 years since that movie, Miles has had 2 prominent love interests and 3 romantic teases. Gwen has had one romantic interest and no haole, it’s not Miles. And I also told that Cavewoman Becky that if Black women saw that Miles has been with a Black woman romantically for more issues than Gwen’s entire existence, there will be calls of misogynoir towards Sony and Marvel for white washing a romantic interest. And I was right because that is where the Reylo analogies are coming from. This shipping war is about to get real racial up here, but instead of advocating for a non-abusive ship, we are advocating for black love representation against an oversaturated mainstream media depiction of black men being obsessed with white girls.
Something Gwiles Stans should consider before misquoting Loving v Virginia
I am going to name the most prominent Black Male Superheroes today.
T’Challa aka Black Panther
Miles Morales aka Spider-Man
Eli Bradley aka Patriot 2
Victor Alvarez aka Power Man 2
Rayshaun Lucas aka Patriot 3
Sam Wilson aka Captain America 2?
Adam Brashear aka Blue Marvel
James Rhodey aka War Machine
David Alleyne aka Prodigy
Virgil Hawkins aka Static(should this count if he is in Milestone now?)
Jefferson Pierce aka Black Lightning
John Stewart aka Green Lantern
Duke Thomas aka The Signal
David Zavimbe aka Batwing
The 3 or 4 men from the Blood Syndicate
Okay, you know I had to reach to name some of these characters. And no I am not counting the X-Men. You’d be proving my point anyways if I did. Bishop isn’t Black. He is Australian Indigenous.
Anyways, here are the Black Male characters that have a prominent main romantic interest with a non-white woman of color. Let’s say that. Because we actually have to clear that hurdle before we purge this shit. Let’s even make the hurdle lower: they have to be intimate with this woman for more than 10 issues of their comic lifetime and it actually being the main love interest
T’challa aka Black Panther
Miles Morales aka Spider-Man
David Alleyne aka Prodigy(is actually gay so kudos for David)
Jefferson Pierce aka Black Lightning
You starting to see the problem here? Do you get it now? Is it connecting for you? Let’s just dwindle this down even further. How many of them actually marry a black woman or woman of color?
Okay, maybe that was too stringent? Maybe it was unfair to Miles because he is still a teenager. How about all of the characters that are in a main relationship with a black women?
T’challa aka Black Panther
Are you seeing it now? No? Okay, which of the two are with women of color and both are actually alive or not separated?
Point is that it ain’t a lot. And no, I am not counting John Stewart. It would be like saying Starfire is a black woman when she is literally an alien. No. And before you say, “well those three that have are in movies and video games and tv shows now,” shut the fuck up. T’challa will never be seen with Storm or Okoye because Chadwick Boseman passed away until they reboot him, it’s irrelevant. Jefferson Pierce’s Black Lightning was cancelled and it wasn’t that popular to begin with. @majingojira can verify me or tell me if I am missing a few.
And before you say, “well now do Black women superheroes,” They ain’t dating black men either! Or black women! The only Black woman that are with Black men are Misty Knight who like her boyfriend Sam Wilson is relatively recent,Vixen, Ororo Munroe and Naomi McDuffie. That is four. That is cuatro. Could be more but again, prominent ones. Monica Rambeau aka Photon is perpetually single. Riri Williams aka Ironheart never really got that far in spite of Viv’s gaydar being off. And jury’s out on Shuri but given how she may be queer coded, it might just be a woman which honestly good for her.
White girls, when you were crying about being overly represented as a damsel in distress, black women weren’t even seen as being loved by black men in media or seen a desirable. When white girls were crying about being killed to further male tears, Black women could not even get the solace that any one would care if they died. While you are fetishizing gay men or just like mlm romances over poorly written hetero ones or just prefer good old wlw(which is fine and harmless), Black women are still not seen as desirable in main stream media by Black men and there are far fewer black hetero romances than white gay romances in mainstream media in general let alone superhero comics. It’s all centered around you, white women, so look around before you decide to call all hetero depictions of romance regressive. Black Love is not represented in the mainstream media consumption. Less so in Marvel or DC.
The only character that has been with Black Women as a love interest and is the most popular of all these superheroes is Miles Morales today. Miles ain’t B-List. He is most decisively A-List. He is the only one.
Gwen has been paralleling certain Miles Morales characters in both ITSV and ATSV
Alright if you made it this far, I am warning you because this section may veer into possible spoilers for ATSV. Possible as in I haven’t seen it yet, but have seen interviews from the movie producers talking about the relationship between Miles and Gwen. This is a warning.
Alright, let’s set the scene. Miles is in school sitting in class. There is a girl that notices him. Sound familiar? Oh you must be talking about the scene where Miles is late for class and makes a pretty good joke about time being relative in which only Gwen laughs? No. I am talking about this.
Okay, how about that blink and you miss it scene where Miles is walking down the hall frantically and you can see Gwen walking by him which is then referenced later from her perspective? Yeah, that happened in the comic too.
Okay, you may thinking that she kind of looks like Gwen with the piercings and the overall punk rock look. Well, a few Spider-Gwen fans took note that original Spider-Gwen was not overly punk and did not have piercing(because there is no way in hell that a cop father would allow his daughter to get eyebrow or nose piercings) and she was not stereotypically punk yet she was a drummer in a punk band. That is because she is mirroring Katie Bishop, Miles’ first love interest. But why wouldn’t they just use Katie? For one, Katie Bishop is the Ultimate Version of Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye so they couldn’t use her. Second, for the sake of narrative purposes and roles, Gwen just made more sense in that role so Phil Lord and Chris Miller just made a pragmatic change.
The are doing the same thing in Across the Spider-Verse as well.
Miles is grounded because he is getting poor grades or skipping out of school too much. His parent(s) don’t know what’s going on with him and Miles is bummed out because he feels it’s unfair. Than he hears a tap on his window.
If you don’t know who Kamala Khan is, I am sorry, but you are lost.
Regardless, these are the characters Gwen is playing placeholder. These characters are failed romances of Miles. They did not work out. The first one kind of spontaneously happened. Like I am being forreal. There was a time skip and then bam, Miles is with Katie. But then it was revealed that Katie was part of Hydra and in the Ultimate Universe, that is like dating a neo-Nazi and yeah, it did not work out. The second one is more interesting because well, it is one-sided. Miles had a big crush on Kamala Khan. A lot like he does for Gwen in ITSV.
He even hilariously wrote throuple fanfiction with himself, Ms. Marvel, and Nova.
I think this is why I kind of think of Miles and Kamala as the new Peter and Johnny Storm. It’s kind of endearing.
Anyways, Miles does eventually tell Kamala his feelings although not of his own volition. He ran an operation with Ms. Marvel to take a mood stone which he thought was an infinity stone and it made him say things to her.
But what does that have to do with ATSV? Lord and Miller have described that Miles and Gwen are more like an instance of a boy who has a crush on older girl, and older girl goes off to college and the young boy asks if he could visit and she is like, “Umm, can you not, maybe?” There is also the fact that Spider-Gwen/Ghost-Spider is now wearing Hobie Brown’s aka Spider-Punk’s sneakers…the Spider-Man who is not only the same age as Gwen and also does not remind her of Peter, but also has the same interest in music and they both play instruments, and he isn’t in high school and…I could go on, but yeah. It’s like that.
The thing about Miles and Gwen is that it’s always been one sided. Miles in 2016 was written like a hormonal idiot teenager that talked about girls too damn much, not a fan. He literally had a crush on any girl that was remotely attractive and while he was mature about it(at times) it was never serious. He just wanted a girlfriend. Gwen lost her best friend who, unknowingly to her at the time, loved her or had a crush on her and grew jealous when their mutual friend asked her out on the prom. And then Peter turned himself into the Lizard at prom which Gwen had to beat too severely that it killed him. She is grieving because she is suffering from that mistake, is alone, and miserable, and for that bit of respite, the one Spider-person that did not remind her of Peter just so happened to be Miles and he related to her. You can’t judge Sitting on a Tree for solely that arc. You have to look at the totality of what those characters are going through up to that point.
Point is that Lord and Miller chose Miles specifically because they fell in love with Bendis’s comics and wanted to introduce Miles while remaining as faithful to the intention of the character as possible. These allusions towards his comic are intentional. You have to recognize that. Also Gwen, in the comics, has a boyfriend and it’s not either Miles or Hobie. Not that you care because you don’t read the comics anyways. So you ask stupid questions like “Why is Jefferson’s last name Morales and not Davis/Why is Miles last name after his mother and not his father” or “Why Miles has extra powers that Peter does not?” Because you don’t care to read a fucking comic book. Sure, spend 30 bucks on a movie ticket or buy a 60 dollar game, but spend 10-20 dollars on a trade book while supporting the creators that fucking made that story in the first place? Reading is hard(which is valid)! Comics are hard to get into! Blah, blah, blah!
I doubt anyone has made it this far down but whatevers. If you did, thank you.
First, I want to say that I don’t hate Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider. In fact, I feel that the ITSV depiction of her is relatively tame compared to the “trash New York squatting couch surfing hobo that is just trying to make it, man” character that goes beyond generic action girl that has her shit together when she most definitely does not have her shit together. I feel what failed Gwen was the need to always have her leave her dimension to either do some lazy parallel with 616 Gwen when the two characters are completely different or just to correlate with ITSV. Gwen never was allowed to expand on her own setting and her own supporting cast thus she feels transient. Not to mention she is only popular in the first place because white feminists use her as some example as to why the Night Gwen Stacy Died did not need to happen or was bad because it started the trend of fridging (white) women for (white) male tears in spite of the fact that the Spider-Gwen’s entire character being different from 616 Gwen proved Gerry Conroy’s point and only validated The Night Gwen Stacy Died because 616 Gwen, as much as you hate to hear it, was an unlikeable, overly dramatic, vindictive, hysterical, lazy anti-Lois Lane who was so extra that she campaigned for a known white supremacist mayoral candidate just to stop Spider-Man. She wasn’t fun. Did she have to die? Probably not. But if she didn’t she would have been like Betty Brant or her cousin Jill Stacy so really, what are we even discussing anymore? 616 Gwen Stacy and the Night Gwen Stacy Died, unlike every other copy cat, are iconic for being the first and the best one. It was one of the most memorable storylines and characters because they really dared it. It’s not Gerry’s and Lee’s fault that other writers tried it ad nauseum.
Second, I don’t know what is going to happen but I feel like this needed to be said because I am already seeing some grumbling from Black fans of Miles Morales. Miles has had the disadvantage of having to develop through a dying and underappreciated medium and being written by Bendis. And that has allowed for adaptations of him to be incomplete, misappropriated, or misapplied, and it’s really not fair to fans that stuck out through the initial racist vitriol in his inception that we general have to share the screen with fucking everyone. We don’t get his story alone in spite of him being the most successful and we already feel cheated by Homecoming basically being White Miles and taking Ganke, Miles’ colors, his school, and friends. Not to mention the anti-Black Latinos who really want to say Miles is not Latino or some shit. It’s frustrating that while Peter and almost everyone else gets these semi-faithful adaptations while Miles has to bend his story to share the screen with others. It’s the black kid that gets the half-assed adaptations. But it worked and it was still the most faithful adaptation yet because it had the balls to actually kill Peter, put Miles and his story at the forefront, and say that yeah, this looks like a comic book because comic books are fucking dope…except for Spider-Man 2016, that shit was fucking trash.
I am tagging @ororomunroedontpullout and @fandomshatepeopleofcolor because maybe they will get it lol.
