Crawling To The Finish Line: Reviewing ‘Miles Morales: Spider-Man’ #41
by Scott Redmond
Overview
Miles Morales’s big multiversal adventure is finally (thankfully) over, in an issue that is plagued by many of the same issues that have been there almost the entire time. Marvel Comics has failed their second Spider-Man character quite a bit these days but with only one issue left of this run perhaps there is some hope on the horizon for something more. Miles and the audience deserve something more.
Overall
7/10After what felt like ten years, but was actually just over a full year, Miles Morales’ version of the Clone Sage and his umpteenth not-so-excellent jaunt through the multiverse are finally over. It’s most assuredly been some sort of ride, that’s for sure.
As has been stated before, Miles Morales is one of my favorite characters at Marvel and writing reviews about how lacking or mediocre his stories have been for the past year (both in his solo title and his recent What If? mini-series) has not been easy. Well, it was easy in the sense that the words came out pretty easily onto the page but not so easy for my poor Spider-Man-loving soul.
After a number of issues that did little beyond shuffling pieces around towards the big climax, the 41st issue of this run gave us that climax which was ‘big’ in some sense but also mostly underwhelming. For all the posturing about how evil and powerful Selim is (truly I will never stop hating that his name is just Miles backward), Miles and Uncle Aaron (a far older Aaron) beat him pretty easily. Then old other universe Ganke did the whole sacrifice thing to blow up with Selim. A sacrifice that is touched on a bit but doesn’t hit really since we’re likely to never see this universe again and ‘our’ Ganke is fine.
There is only one issue left of this run, and for Saladin Ahmed to tie up some of the million character threads that were left abandoned for the multiversal adventure. Despite the credits to Ahmed’s name, this run hasn’t been one that will be held up and remembered all that fondly I would wager. It started off with promise but that was quickly tossed aside as Marvel has decided to chase the same circles with Miles that begin and end with Uncle Aaron & the multiverse.
Christopher Allen returns after Albert Foche handled the last two issues. There is far more for him to do in this issue than in his last solo artistic issue #37 where Miles and Shift were stuck in a bland in-between Universe space. Action pieces are solid and have some good energy though we’re back to Miles being fully masked almost the whole issue while the evil scarred Selim is the only Miles face that we see which just doesn’t sit well with me at all.
This is another very dark issue, it’s almost all at night, and just grim overall so David Curiel isn’t able to really cut loose color-wise like normal. There are good pops of color and the shadow/light work is really solid, overall though there is a lot of heaviness here.
Cory Petit makes the lettering work per usual, making a large amount of exposition flow and sticking to depicting tone/volume with shifting font sizes and styles. All the emotions that can be found between the Miles/Shift and the other Miles are tangible at the moment.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man #41 is now available.
