Comic Book / Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2018)

Hey, watch your step, you may fall down from there!^note Cover by Brian Stelfreeze

Miles Morales: Spider-Man is a comic book starring Miles Morales. It was released in 2018, by Saladin Ahmed and Javier Garron. Ahmed and Garron are also the first creative team to work on a Miles Morales comic after the character's creators, Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli.

While Bendis and Pichelli's run were higher-stakes, with considerable Morales-Davis family drama and Miles looking for his place in the superhero community of two different worlds, Ahmed and Garron's run aims to be more down to earth. More focus is put on Miles's school and personal life, with the book's narration captions having an in-universe explanation that Miles is keeping a journal for a creative writing class.

The book also expands Miles's supporting cast and Rogues Gallery, introducing Tiana Toomes / Starling, an up-and-coming Anti Heroine that Miles has mixed emotions about, Vice Principal Lyle Dutcher, a blowhard who respects Spider-Man as the embodiment of the values of tradition and responsibility but cannot stand that menace Miles Morales, and even the announcement that Rio Morales is pregnant with a second child. New villains include Snatcher, a man with Mind Control abilities that he uses to kidnap kids and sell them as minions to various criminals, the Assessor (and, by extension, his teleporting lackey Asset Quantum), a Mad Scientist interested in the limits of Miles' spider powers, and Ultimatum, a close personal friend of Mayor Wilson Fisk with some connection to another time and place that Miles can't quite identify.

Also, this is the book that established Miles's middle name is "Gonzalo".

Ahmed eventually concluded his run with a total of 42 issues and one Annual special under his belt. Miles's adventures continue in a 2022 relaunch under the same title.

Not to be confused with Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the 2020 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 game starring Miles.

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Miles Morales: Spider-Man provides examples of

• 10-Minute Retirement: Between issues nine and ten, there is a months-long Time Skip in which Miles has been inactive as Spider-Man so he can recover from the torment he endured at the hands of the Assessor in issues seven through nine.
• Ageless Birthday Episode: Played With. Miles is a year older than he was as of his birthday in issue 10, but the exact number is never explicitly stated, and given how wonky time is in Marvel Comics, this is likely for the better.
• Almighty Mom: Miles calls Rio the real badass of the family and he's terrified of letting her down.
• Almost Kiss: Twice in Issue #4 with Barbara, only to be interrupted by a supervillain attack both times. He finally gets it on the third try.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Miles doesn't remember he's from the Ultimate Universe, but his encounter with a returned Ultimate Green Goblin causes him to start remembering their encounter way back when.
• Asleep in Class: He didn't get that far, just "yawning in class", but the teacher noticed it anyway.
• Author Appeal: A significant Motif of this run is Miles' narration captions doubling as the entries he is making into his journal. Miles is required to keep a personal journal through his Creative Writing class. Saladin Ahmed noted when interviewed that this in part was inspired by his own background in writing poetry and prose fiction.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Shift, one of the three escaped clones of Miles Morales created by the Assessor, is a Shapeshifting Humanoid Abomination that can only speak in unintelligible garbles. But he's also a morally sound Gentle Giant who saves Billie's life from Selim after the latter had attempted to throw the former over the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Betty and Veronica: Barbara, Miles' kind and mellow maybe-girlfriend, is the "Betty" to Tiana Toomes / Starling's "Veronica", a new Anti Heroine that he crosses paths with as Spider-Man.
• Bilingual Backfire: One of Ultimatum's henchmen tries to pass along secret information by saying it in Spanish, only for Miles to immediately pick up on it and make his way to Paseo Marítimo in Washington Heights.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Issue 10 / 250 takes place on Miles's birthday. In that time, Peter visits and asks him to do some superheroing for him. Miles gets attacked by Ultimate Green Goblin and Ultimatum. Also, he misses his birthday party.
• Bittersweet Ending: After defeating Emperor Selim, Miles and Aaron successfully return to Earth-616 and pick up where their lives left off. Miles would go on to earn a substantial college scholarship, his new ally Kenneth can now officially serve as The Armorer of Miles' superhero endeavors after being granted access to Janet Van Dyne's "special equipment", and his relationship with Starling is still going on strong. But the Trauma Conga Line Miles has endured throughout the entire series has hardened him to an extent where he worries that he might inevitably reach a Rage Breaking Point. His 616 counterpart Ultimatum is also still at large somewhere in the multiverse.
• Break the Badass: Miles's time being horrifically tortured in issues 7 through 9 causes him to give up being Spidey for months.
• The Bus Came Back A dozy in issue 250: First Ultimate Green Goblin shows up, and then Earth-616 Miles Morales reappears.
• Busman's Holiday: Judge convinces Miles to play hooky for a day by faking illness through Ganke's ear infection. But every time Miles tries to unwind, something happens that forces him to be Spider-Man.
• Captain's Log: Miles is assigned to keep a diary for his creative writing class he shares with Judge first period. As nobody will ever read it, he uses to keep a diary of his activities as Spider-Man. It is also used to introduce all the main characters.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Miles insisted to Rhino that it would be easy for them to keep in touch if they text each other. Rhino loathes cell phones, doesn't have one, and doesn't want to. Justified because he's too old to be familiar with them and too big to reasonably use one. His costume doesn't even have pockets regularly.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Judge, Miles previously often forgotten second roommate, was previously portrayed as being bitter that Miles and Ganke were keeping secrets from him. Here, he is a Large Ham and Plucky Comic Relief who is oblivious to Miles' double life and is a much closer friend to him.
  • Miles' personality is also slightly different compared to how Brian Michael Bendis wrote him. Miles is still a sweet and generally shy kid, but has become much more self-confident, and his love for hip-hop is emphasized. He also uses slang and AAVE more liberally.
  • Picking up from where Brian Bendis left off with his development, Aaron Davis goes from being the total bastard who wanted to manipulate Miles for his own criminal endeavors to making an honest effort to seek forgiveness from his nephew, leading them to inevitably come together as family. He also begrudgingly returns to using his popular Prowler persona in order to rescue Miles after he's kidnapped.
• Child Hater: Rhino declares that he hates kids just as Miles tells him to go rescue them. Despite this, he's teaming up with Spider-Man and Captain America to save his niece.
• Child Soldier:
  • The villain of the first storyline is kidnapping children, brainwashing and imbuing them with superpowers, then selling them off to Tombstone and other villains as minions.
  • Happens again in the Clone Saga storyline where it's revealed that Selim, Mindspinner, and Shift were all trained The Spartan Way at an early age by the Assessor and his underlings into being ruthless assassins.
  • Becomes another plot point in the Empire of the Spider arc, where the Billie Morales of a Bad Future was practically raised to become a guerrilla fighter under Emperor Selim's oppressive regime.
• Civvie Spandex: After his original costume is trashed during his fight with Selim, Miles gets outfitted by Kenneth with a new suit that channels this design aesthetic. Unlike most examples of this trope, Kenneth actually cites that the new spider-suit is made out of the same patented specialized fabrics Janet Van Dyne uses for her own hero costumes, making it fire resistant, flexible, and incredibly durable.
• Clone Degeneration: Miles is forced to combat a Terrible Trio of clones created by the Assessor from his DNA. All three of the clones are doomed to die due to their cellular degeneration and are so desperate for a cure that they're willing cross whatever line they deem necessary in order to create one, even if it means ruining the reputation of the "real" Miles Morales in the process as they commit crimes wearing his costume.
• Comes Great Responsibility: He mentioned at one point that Parker taught him this. He's not sure about the "great power" part, as he's not Thor or Captain Marvel, but sticks to the lesson nonetheless. But with the world getting more and more crazy with every passing day, he's more unsure of how far his responsibilities should go than ever.
• Commonality Connection: After their last talk involved them coming to blows, Miles and Captain America quickly bond when they realize that they're both from Brooklyn.
• Costume Copycat: Mystery villain Ultimatum's outfit is a mix of elements from all the founding members of the original Ultimates (well, except Hulk, for reasons that are pretty self-explanatory) - he's got Giant-Man's cowl and goggles, Iron Man's gauntlets and boots, Thor's chest... thingies, and Cap's shield. Albeit all in a matching red, brown and grey color-scheme.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When Taskmaster arrives to kidnap Starling, Miles gets absolutely thrashed by the villain who despite being a relative Badass Normal proved to be fast enough to keep up with his superhuman agility. According to Taskmaster, this is because he's fought the original Spider-Man so many times before that his photographic reflexes could now perceive Miles' Spider-Sense and therefore developed a way to get past it. That said, Tasky's ability to No-Sell Miles's Venom Blast like he did all the way back in Spider-Men II has been ironically lost, leaving the masked merc susceptible to the kid's electrical attacks again.
• The Dandy: Kenneth Kingston, a fashion-centric kid in Miles' neighborhood, was targeted and beaten by bullies at their school for being this trope. Miles, both incredibly sympathetic to their situation and genuinely impressed by the kid's uncanny talent as a fashion designer, helps reignite Kenneth's self-esteem and publicly declares himself a personal friend of his to get the poor kid's tormentors to back off. Miles even promises to check in every once and awhile just to make sure his "message" got across to the jerks and hooked Kenneth up with a mentorship program at Janet Van Dyne's Design Studio so they could keep following their passions. Needless to say, both Kenneth and their mother are immensely gratefully for the webhead's kindness.
• A Day in the Limelight: In Issue #9, Miles has been kidnapped by a mysterious new villain called the Assessor that wants to study his powers. The main body of the issue follows Jefferson and Aaron as they try to rescue him.
• Dean Bitterman: Miles is about to swing into his next adventure when... hey, where do you think you are going? You have chemistry class! The vice principal is not an idiot, and he has his eye on you! This is later deconstructed, as his co-workers chide him for trying to bust a single teenager when he should be doing more typical things like attending faculty meetings and actually doing his work.
• Disney Owns This Trope: Just shortly after his brawl with Taskmaster, Miles is confronted by the Beyond Corporation's legal team with a cease and desist letter to relinquish the mantle of Spider-Man since Beyond now owns "Spider-Man" as a licensed trademark. Miles refuses, putting him on a collision course with Beyond's corporate-sponsored Spider-Man: Ben Riley.
• Distressed Dude: Miles is kidnapped by a strange new villain at the end of issue 7, and issue 8 revolves around the physical and mental torment that he's being put through as "the Assessor" tries to study Miles and his abilities. In issue 9, he's found and rescued by his father and uncle.
• Determinator: In the final issue of the first arc, The Snatcher spends so much of his mental powers trying to keep the ultra-determined Captain America at bay that it frees Miles and Rhino to go to town on the supervillain.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • In issue 11, Ganke breaks the bad news that the school's new lab time policy means that he won't be able to make any more web fluid for a while, meaning Miles has to deal with Ultimatum's thugs, Prowler, and everything else while keeping a limit on his most useful power.
  • Then in issue 12, the fight with Man Mountain Marko messes up Prowler's anti-gravity tech and completely drains Miles' webs. To make matters worse, Prowler has broken his deal with Ceres Goldstein, who now has no choice but to put a bounty on his head. The only way to resolve it is for the two of them to make it across the city to Ceres' base of operations in Red Hook for Ceres can "capture" Prowler before any of the several dozen Professional Killers in NYC get to him first.
• Dramatic Irony: Vice Principal Dutcher admires Spider-Man for his sense of responsibility, bravery, and tradition and feels that Miles could learn a thing or two from him.
• Electric Black Guy: His "Venom Blast" lets him produce painful electric shocks with a touch that can be conducted through his webbing to hit multiple targets at once.
• Endearingly Dorky: Miles is about as awkward and bumbling as a teenager is expected to be. Lampshaded by his classmate and friend Barbara.
  Barbara: So you're my man now? I thought we weren't putting labels on things.
  Miles: Ah... I... uh... Judge is just...
  Barbara: Relax, Miles. You want to hang out this weekends? I'm babysitting my cousin, and we're gonna go to Brooklyn Bridge Park and all that. If you don't mind kids.
  Miles: No, that's cool, I love kids. I used to be one!
  Barbara: You're such a dork.
  Miles: But a dork with a winning smile, right?
  Barbara: Oh my god, please leave now.
• Enemy Mine: Makes an unexpected team-up with Rhino when he finds out that they are both following the same kidnappers. Also, Rhino may have had some fights with the original Spider-Man, he has no beef with this new one.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Rhino is a career criminal prone to causing rampant destruction wherever he goes, but he wants to protect his niece Tanya to honor the memory of his late wife, Oksana.
  • Vulture, typically a cruel old man, is here portrayed as a loving granddad to Miles' new friend Tiana Toomes, a.k.a. Starling.
• Evil Counterpart: Saladin Ahmed introduces two of these for Miles.
  • The first to hit the scene is Ultimatum AKA the Miles Morales of Earth-616. A former enforcer and close friend of Wilson Fisk who returned from the Earth-1610 wielding the stolen armaments of The Ultimates, he's obsessed with taking over Brooklyn as its one and only crime lord after abandoning his initial goal of leaving his life of crime behind.
  • After Ultimatum's defeat, the next major antagonist Miles faces is Selim, a Wicked Cultured Clone of himself who was created and groomed by the Assessor to be a Tyke-Bomb. Fed up of being physically and psychologically abused by the Assessor's trials, Selim escaped confinement alongside two of his "brothers" Shift and Mindspinner and is determined to find a cure for their mutual cellular degeneration before its too late. Unlike Miles, who is a good person, Selim is a calculating and sadistic individual who is seemingly incapable of understanding why Miles would ever want to help them.
• Evil Overlord: Selim became this in an Alternate Universe where he succeeded in killing Miles during their battle on the bridge and erected a brutally oppressive regime after entrapping the entirety of Brooklyn in a Pocket Dimension. This version of Selim also responsible for the deaths of this reality's Jefferson, Rio, Judge, Barbara, and Tiana.
• Evil Power Vacuum: After Spider-Man and Starling take down Tombstone and his gang, the void is quickly filled by a new villain called Ultimatum and his goons. Ultimatum's crew act like a vicious drug cartel that literally forces some Super Serum down people's throats.
• Expressive Mask: How Miles' expressions are conveyed while in-costume.
• Expy: Vice Principal Dutcher is essentially a Miles-specific version of J. Jonah Jameson; a blowhard who exists to make Miles's life harder. It's inverted however, because while he's distrustful of Miles, he holds his superhero identity Spider-Man to high-regard.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Rio addresses him as "Miles Gonzalo Morales" and demands to know what happened when she catches him with cuts all over his body while trying to sneakily wash his costume.
• Future Badass: Spider-Smasher is a grown-up Billie Morales who hails from a Bad Future where Miles was murdered by Selim and the latter trapped all of Brooklyn in a Pocket Dimension where he rules as a immortal tyrant. A variant of Ganke also exists in this reality as an elderly Rebel Leader who became Billie's guardian after the death of her parents.
• Gibberish of Love: In #42, when Miles sees his love interest Tiana in formalwear, he is momentarily reduced to babbling.
  Miles: I…I…I…
  Tiana: Speechless, huh?
  Miles: Me? No! I can—I can talk… I know… words.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Snatcher's eyes glow an ominous orange and are normally kept hidden underneath his shades. He uses his powers by having people look into them.
• Good Parents: Jeff loves Miles more than anything, and talks in issue 10 about his determination to do better by Miles than his own father did by him. He also risks his life to rescue Miles in issue 9. Rio, for her part, is no longer Locked Out of the Loop and is proud and supportive of her superhero son.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Miles and two prominent supporting characters (his mother Rio and his ex-sort-of-girlfriend Barbara) are bilingual, and some Spanish words are peppered into their dialogue. Rio's first words in the book is to greet her son with a "Buen día baby".
• Heel–Face Turn: While trying to figure out Tombstone's plans, Miles visits his uncle Aaron in Issue #7. Aaron assures his nephew that his days as a criminal are behind him; he's sold his gear back to its creator and used the money to build an honest life for himself.
• Harmless Electrocution:
  • Miles subdues the brainwashed kids by webbing them up and stunning them by conducting a low level Venom Blast through his webs to knock them out as painlessly as possible.
  • Miles' Venom Blast, which has previously been his finishing move, has repeatedly gotten No-Sold by a number of less powerful enemies, simply due to them wearing insulated gear or being enhanced with some super serum.
• Heroes Gone Fishing: The one-shot issue "Friendly Neighborhood Rivalry" is about Miles and Peter Parker searching for the best pizza in New York.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: After a law is passed that makes it illegal for minors to engage in superheroics, Miles becomes subjected to this as both Federal Agents and the NYPD are regularly out to apprehend him via ambush tactics and sting operations.
• An Ice Person: Miles' visit to the Brooklyn Museum is interrupted by the Frost Pharoah, who shoots freeze rays from his staff.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Downplayed. Starling is determined to kill Tombstone, but Spider-Man, a firm believer in Thou Shalt Not Kill, tries to spare him, even as he assures her that she's dope and Tombstone's trash.
• Immortality Immorality: Emperor Selim has been keeping his Clone Degeneration at bay by harvesting the life force of this world's Peter Parker, which allows him to stay young while Peter gradually degrades into an elderly husk being kept alive through life-support machines.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • First it was Miles, towards the Rhino. They are trying to locate the kidnapped Rhino's niece, and Miles asked if he has a girlfriend. "A wife. But not anymore". Of course, Miles apologized after that.
  • And then it was the Rhino. Explaining that things are difficult for him, as he's trapped inside a Rhino suit he can't get rid of, he told Miles that "You don't know what it's like. People think' they know you 'cause of how you look". Miles is young, has a normal body... and he's black, so yes, he knows. However, as he's in his Spider-Man suit (which covers his whole body) Rhino had no way to know that.
  • Miles only knows of Adrian Toomes / Vulture as "that crusty old white dude" who Peter Parker usually tangles with, and says as much when he meets Starling, a.k.a. Adrian's granddaughter and mentee, Tiana Toomes. While Tiana knows of her grandfather's criminal past (and Spider-Man often has to talk her out of crossing certain lines), he's also the most supportive and loving person in her life, and she makes sure this upstart Spider-Man knows it.
• The Insomniac: When Miles usually gets home after a night of superhero work, he's usually still pumped full of adrenaline, and can't get the required sleep before class.
• It's A Small Net After All: So, there are some guys with special uniforms. Ganke tracks them by searching in the black market that sells those uniforms. And yes, it has a web page. Villains buy things on the internet, too.
• Jack up with Phlebotinum: Miles' adult 616 counterpart plots a takeover of the underworld by spiking drugs with Ultimate Goblin serum, converting masses into an army under Ultimate Osborn's control.
• Just a Kid: Rhino dismisses Miles as not being the "real Spider-Man" since he's just a kid by comparison.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: A classic Spidey problem that plagues Miles and causes his budding romance with Barbara Rodriguez to fall apart.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Miles ditching school with his friends by faking sick ends with him getting legitimately sick after spending his ditch day having to stop various crises as Spider-Man.
  • The Assessor finally gets his just deserts in issue #35 when Miles destroys the massive server complex housing the villain's AI. And since Miles did this before Assessor could transfer his data to another instillation like how he originally evaded Iron Man, it's heavily implied Miles killed him for good this time around.
• Legacy Character: A new character, Starling a.k.a. Tiana Toomes, is introduced during this run. She's the granddaughter of the Vulture who has learned to fly for herself and is on her own mission of revenge.
• Mind Control: The villain of the first arc, The Snatcher, is able to forcibly control the minds of children. However, his control wanes the more people he controls at once and strong-willed people like Captain America can force Snatcher to use more effort, which can free other people under his control.
• Mistaken Identity: Captain America says he thought Spider-Man is a Queens guy. Miles has to say that the other Spider-Man is from Queens and that he's from Brooklyn.
• Mouthy Kid: Eduardo is a surly ten-year-old who acts like he's twenty according to his cousin Barbara. He's understandably sour after his father was seized by the immigration police. He also insists on seeing a slasher film with Miles and Barbara.
• Multilayer Façade: The Morales family is filled of secrets. Miles was secretly Spider-Man, yes, but also Jefferson was secretly a SHIELD agent, and uncle Aaron was secretly a villain, the Iron Spider.
• Mundane Utility: Miles uses his invisibility powers and his web-shooters to spook the security guard so he, Judge, and Barbara can sneak out for the day.
  • In issue 22, his father is complaining that an electric drill won't work. The battery is depleted, so Miles uses his bioelectric venom blast to charge it up.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Miles has a poster of Dazzler in his dorm room.
  • The Rhino mentions the time he became a mall Santa in The Incredible Hulk #378. Amazingly, this also helps him bond with Miles; because of that experience, Aleksei gets that "Spider-Man" can also be bigger than just one person.
  • When Miles, Barbara, and Eduardo go to the movies at the end of #3, Miles is eating "Ultimate Popcorn", and Eduardo’s popcorn is branded "Steve and Stan's".
  • Although the origin does not explicitly mention the Ultimate Marvel universe or his change of home universe after Secret Wars (2015), the image of the time he met Peter Parker is similar to the one from the crossover Spider-Men.
  • Assorted characters wear t-shirts with superhero logos on them; notably, Miles is wearing an Iron Man night shirt in the first issue, a Captain Marvel shirt in issue 5, and a Captain America jacket in issue 10.
  • Ultimatum is a walking Mythology Gag, since not only he looks like a composite version of The Ultimates, he's named after the Ultimatum event.
  • The series ends on issue 42, an Arc Number that is ever-present in Miles' mythology as both the lucky number that got him into Brooklyn Visions and the lab designation of the spider that empowered him.
• Nice Guy: Despite his trouble staying awake in class, Miles has a good reputation among Brooklyn Visions' faculty for his tendency to help others around him on a whim. He also risks his life every day as Spider-Man to protect New York.
• Older Is Better: Miles' creative writing teacher, Dan Sumida, instructs his students to write diaries in a manner that is completely hack-proof: paper and pen.
• Open-Minded Parent: Rio Morales doesn't mind that her son is risking his life as a superhero because she knows he can take care of himself. She feels proud knowing that he's saving lives every day.
• Open Secret: Nowadays, both of Miles' parents know his secret identity, which makes his life at home easier.
• Past Experience Nightmare: After his ordeal with the Assessor, Miles has nightmares for months. Then, as soon as that set of bad dreams ends, a new one starts — reawakened, jumbled-up memories about his life in the Ultimate Marvel universe.
• Playing Sick: Judge convinces Miles to do this and skip school to hang out for a day. By the end, he actually gets sick from the dirty puddles splashed on him in the subway and getting blasted with a freeze ray by an upstart supervillain, Frost Pharaoh.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In the first arc, Spider-Man, the Rhino, and Captain America go up against the Snatcher, a man with psychic powers who's been enslaving kids and selling them off as minions to villains. Snatcher states that he's specifically kidnapping kids who are homeless, drug users, or from immigrant families.
• Psychic Nosebleed: The Snatcher can induce these in others when he uses his psionic powers to attack them, turning the brains of adults into mush while powering himself up.
• Punch-Clock Villain: In classic Taskmaster fashion, the second Tony realizes that he could no longer fulfill the contract on Starling's head due to severe time constraints, he immediately stops fighting Miles and Tiana to give up on his mission.
  Miles: Is...Is that your phone alarm?
  Taskmaster: Ahhhh, %@&#! Times up.
  Miles: Huh?
  Taskmaster: This was a very specific contract. Delivery by midnight or null and void. My phone runs constant hyper-precise ETA recalculations. There's no way to make it to the client now with all the time we've wasted here. You little brats cost me a fortune. But hey, you don't have to worry about me coming after you again. No profit in it!
• Put on a Bus: After getting shot during a school shooting incident, Fabio/Goldballs has apparently been pulled from school. Judge is back to being roommates with Miles and Ganke as of the first issue here.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The device Emperor Selim uses to keep Brooklyn trapped in a Pocket Dimension is powered by Miles' Uncle Aaron, who got stranded in this reality for decades after the fight with Ultimatum and was surgically altered so he could serve as the Empire's Living Battery due to his unique dimensional signature.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Ultimatum Saga concludes with Miles and his comrades succeeding in sending both Ultimatum and Green Goblin back to the Ultimate Universe while curing all of the people who were turned into Goblinoids against their will. But Aaron needed to commit a Heroic Sacrifice just to pull it off, resulting in him being either trapped in the alternate dimension as well, or dead.
• Secret-Keeper: Miles has told his parents and his best friend Ganke about his superhero activities.
• Self-Deprecation: The comic book is introduced with Miles narrating: "My name is Miles Morales. This is my journal. The Journal of... Spider-Man". And then he admits that it sounds so cheesy, that he's glad that nobody will ever read it, or he would die of embarrassment. Additionally, he notes he'd probably also die for real, because this diary would reveal the truth about his double life.
• Ship Tease:
  • Miles gets this constantly with Barbara, sharing a kiss with her in Issue #4 despite not clearly calling her his girlfriend. Barbara calls him her "maybe-boyfriend" while he's stumbling out of a derailing train car on purpose to stop it with his web-shooters. It sinks in #6 after she gets fed up with his secret-keeping, but they're still on friendly terms.
  • Starling, Tiana Toomes' sporadic appearances have played up her Unresolved Sexual Tension with Miles. From her first appearance, there's a pretty clear attraction between the two, but it becomes something of an Anchored Ship due to Miles' reluctance to share his identity with her. After he finally does, Tiana gives him a kiss with issue #30 later confirming that the two vigilantes are now romantically involved.
  • The two-parter featuring Kamala Khan drives home just how close the two young heroes really are both in and out of costume. But while hanging out together in Issue #24, both Miles and Kamala eventually decide not to act on it and reaffirm that they're Better as Friends.
• Small Steps Hero: Although Miles has been in his fair share of multiversal crises, he says our greatest responsibility is to the people closest to us.
  Miles: "With great power there must also come great responsibility." The first Spider-Man used to quote that at me all the time. I've been to other planets. I know androids and demigods. But real talk? Our neighbors are more important than alien invasions or global conspiracies. And the people around us are our greatest responsibility.
• Smarter Than You Look: What the hell, Ganke? Are you checking black market stuff with the school's internet? Of course not! He set up a network of his own!
• Soft Reboot: The opening pages of the first issue, in addition to Miles' updated Biography entry from the Spider-Geddon Handbook, addresses the Continuity Snarl regarding Miles' origin from the Ultimate Universe. Miles' backstory is tweaked to state that he originates from one of the Battle Worlds from Secret Wars (2015), but only has vague memories from it.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Trying to sneak out of a famous private boarding school during school hours gets the vice principal on Miles' case.
  • Eventually the fact he keeps missing class because of being Spider-Man (and the whole getting kidnapped and tortured for an extended period thing) leads to him being placed on probation. He knows his parents will understand the extenuating circumstances behind it at the least.
  • Originally, Barbara was attracted to the air of mystery around Miles, but his inability to be totally honest with her becomes a problem when they try to build a proper relationship. This causes her to break up with him in #6.
  • Despite clearly knowing the dangers of doing so, Miles decides to use the journal he was provided for a class assignment as a written record of his double-life as Spider-Man. Miles inevitably misplaces the journal while in a hurry, leading to Vice Principle Dutcher getting his hands on it and confronting him about its contents. Fortunately for Miles, Dutcher decides to keep silent about his secret identity and helps get the kid off of academic probation.
• Technology Marches On: In-universe, Rhino dismisses the teenage Miles and tells him to go home to "play Sega or whatever".
• Technologically Blind Elders: Captain America struggles to work through the apps on his smartphone while helping Miles track down the kidnapped kids after getting a tip from his Congresswoman. Miles steps in and lends him a hand.
• This Is Gonna Suck: When Shocker sees that he's about to fight two Spider-Men, he gets a look of defeat and mutters "Damn it".
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: This continues to be a core part of Miles' crime-fighting philosophy, and he sometimes comes to blows with people who are less keen on it, like Starling and Prowler.
• Thought Caption:
  • A variation. In place of the usual captions that give us Miles' thoughts in real time, the narrating captions are instead excerpts of a journal that Miles is keeping for his Creative Writing class, as he recounts some adventure, or explains what he plans to do on his next one.
  • Usually, when the POV shifts to a narrator besides Miles, they think in standard thought captions, but exceptions are made with Bombshell and the Assessor. Bombshell's POV reads as a text conversation between her and her friend as she describes the events that play out in-panel, and the Assessor's is written like a lab report as the Assessor documents what exactly he is doing to Subject "002-004".
• Time Skip: Between issues 9 and 10, there is a months-long gap. In this time, a new semester has started at Brooklyn Visions Academy, Miles has been inactive as Spider-Man to recover mentally from what the Assessor put him through, and Rio is several months further along in her pregnancy. Later, according to invoked Word of God, issues 10 and 11 also have a time skip between them, during which Miles participates in the Absolute Carnage event storyline, before returning to his own story about Ultimatum.
• Unfortunate Names: Miles' father is named Jefferson Davis, like the Confederate president. It was an Ironic Name in Ultimate Spider-Man, as he despised mutants and superhumans in general, despite being a black man. This was removed during the transition from the Ultimate universe to the current one, and now he's an open and welcoming guy, but as a result, the name does not make sense anymore. In issue #22, he changes his name to Jeff Morales, wondering why his parents called him Jefferson Davis in the first place and pointing out how tainted it is.
• Vague Age: By Miles' own admission in the first issue, he's at the age where he knows his way around high school but is not yet freaking out about college. It becomes a recurring joke in issue 10, in which he celebrates his birthday, but any indicator of his actual age outside of "something-teen" is obscured (leaking balloon, misplaced candle, Peter Parker finding himself hilarious, and so on).
• Villainous Friendship:
  • Wilson Fisk and Ultimatum. Also known as his former BFF Miles Morales.
  • Aaron Davis / Prowler is very chummy with his weapons outfitter, Ceres Goldstein.
• Villain Team-Up: The first arc sees Tombstone purchasing brainwashed children as henchmen from the Snatcher. Later, Ultimatum's loyal attack dog, a demonic-looking creature the size of a Hulk, is recognized by the readers (but not by Miles) as the Ultimate Universe version of Green Goblin.
• Villains Out Shopping: There is a crime, and Rhino is there. Miles does not need any extra explanations, and attacks him. Actually, Rhino was following the criminals, as he suspected that they had kidnapped his niece.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Miles struggles with keeping up in school while having an active life as a superhero. This is reflected in the cover art of the second issue, which depicts Miles as a Vitruvian Man trying to balance all of his responsibilities: including finances, schoolwork, and superheroing.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Issue 4 is titled "Miles Morales' Day Off" and features Miles, Judge, and Barbara pretending to take a sick day to explore the city together, while the hard-ass vice principal, who irrationally hates Miles, tries to catch them in the act. Oh, and Miles has to fight the Frost Pharaoh while he's at it.
• With Catlike Tread: Acknowledged. Rhino is a huge guy in an animal costume who shakes the ground with every step. Miles tells him to standby as backup instead of going in first because he'll immediately tip off all the guards. Miles also has to carry Rhino to their first destination to keep the cops from swarming him when he treads along the streets of New York.
• Would Hurt a Child: Selim, while disguised as Miles, infiltrates his family home fully intending to kidnap and threaten the life of Miles' newborn sister Billie, entirely out of spite.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: After the reveal that The Snatcher's goons are all brainwashed kids, Miles and Captain America are reluctant to fight them and have to stop Rhino from going berserk when the kids blast him.

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