George Perez and the 1970s Romantic Revision of Inhumans

Recent Hall-of-Famer George Perez is more known, now, for Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Infinity War cycle, which will soon be a two-part Summer blockbuster for Marvel and Disney. But back in 1975, when just starting as a professional penciler, Perez quietly revolutionized how the Inhumans were portrayed.

Romancing the Inhumans

George Perez and the 1970s Romantic Revision of Inhumans

Pop Medicine

Travis Hedge Coke

Perez's elegant layouts, articulate line art, and constantly flowing visuals smoothed away the blocky, design-heavy patterns of Jack Kirby’s original portrayal. This was followed in kind by Gil Kane, and intentionally or not, ultimately has shown beautifully through in Jae Lee’s and other more recent takes.

With layouts more reminiscent of European albums than many of his superhero-drawing contemporaries, each page of Perez’s fives issues (1-4, then 8, our of a 12 issue series) looked like a complete experience. There were Steranko-esque triptychs of mobile figures walking or flying, stacks of motion that would ricochet your eyes to the right with a punch, then left as living hair flung someone away, only to settle, dead center, afterwards, with something directed straight at the reader. And, the panels would line up like glorious architecture, like fitted, purposeful mosaics.

Perez was not committing to the amazing scenes where a dozen or more characters would interact in novel yet sensible ways, but his work with individual characters, already had a sheen of brilliance. His mastery of body language led even to individual characters not falling or passing out in the same ways. Conscious and mobile, figures were individual, personality and accoutrements defined posture and gesture.

Even as almost every issue had a different inker, a different colorist, the underlying pencil-work gives a coherence and a sense of development to the changes wrought by other hands. Diane Buscema and Janice Cohen’s sense of balance and flowing contrasts seems to me to compliment Perez’s elegance and orderliness more than later colorists’ sometimes garish or monochromatic execution, but these were produced fast and without any expectation of reprint or permanence. The move from subtlety to directness almost carries a narrative arc to it, anchored by the solid tone of Perez’s art, and that of his replacements, Gil Kane, and then Keith Pollard.

Pollard and Kane are their own artists, their own selves, but on Inhumans, they seem straight in line, not so much with the Kirby version that preceded, but very much with the Perez new view. The Inhumans, as a book but moreso as a trademark, as a grouping, had become Perezed, had become Romantic, lush and living, almost languidly actioning, and any reductions, since, to a four panel, icon-heavy puncher or to more “realist” standing in a field versions (such as the otherwise great Paul Ryan did during his tenure on Fantastic Four) leave something missing, a vital aspect stolen away. You can’t take bricks out of the base of a building and hope it to stand and represent as well as it did when whole, and that’s what Perez’s art did. George Perez made the Inhumans whole, made every brick count and every brick hold its weight.

Some Are to Be Solved, Some Are to Be Mysteries

Some Are to Be Solved, Some Are to Be Mysteries

Pop Medicine

Travis Hedge Coke

A great point of contention, for many x-fans (that is, fans of X-Men-related entertainment) is that the original five students called the X-Men were brought to the present a few years ago, have been living lives that diverge radically from those experienced by their normally-aged, non-time-displaced selves, and yet no good argument has been put forth as to why there is no paradox, no retroactive erasure of incompatible history, and no attempt at all to put that genie back in its bottle. It is a huge mystery, seemingly without given clues or a recognizable structure of revelations. That rankles some fans as much as it does anti-fans or casual speculators.

This is not particular to comics. A quick survey of clickable lists or discussion boards for tv shows will reveal a plethora of complaints regarding unsolved mysteries. The most agitating of these tend to be those mysteries that no one responsible for the entertainment seems to have ever planned on explicitly solving.

The point, and the major draw of keeping those time-displaced X-Men around and neither resolving not explaining away the seeming impossibility of their situation is just that. They answer may be interesting, but it would, almost certainly, stop you wondering, stop you from getting excited. Agitation is good, in an audience. An audience that craves answers, stays aware. That audience pays attention. That audience pays for issues.

Brian Michael Bendis keeps writing characters saying time is not linear, or that contradictions in causality might not be, but then some other character he's also writing will worry about those seeking contradictions and feel all panicked. The characters can be certain of some things, but never all certain of the same things at the same point.

Not every mystery needs to be solved. Not every crisis needs to be resolved. A universal certainty would kill of our uncertainty as an audience. More than solely a hook for readers, that this particular situation worries characters motivates and drives whole stories, entire trajectories. But, it drives different characters in different ways. It can drive even one character, alone, in different ways.

Younger-Beast, for instance, is troubled as a scientist, but he's also a young man with a crush, and a teenager confronted with his own future, the tragedies of his friend's futures, and being gifted an escape from a present that, now made past, probably felt more real, and therefore more dangerous.

Kitty Pryde isn't a character with a time-displaced double, but as someone who has experienced mild, but upsetting May/December romances, she is — as a teacher and a human being — wary of connections between time-displaced and local-era individuals, who have had romantic feelings or relationships with some version of the other person.

As long as a mystery can engage an audience, even in distress, and can keep propelling characters along new or, at least, partially unexpected pathways, that mystery probably earns its continuance. To kill the mystery would provide temporary relief, but need to be quickly replaced with yet another mystery. Especially in serial fiction, the only perfect reason to kill a big question, is when enough of the audience get so bored they don't care. Hopefully the resolution arrives before that boredom sets in.

Beyond that boredom, there is really no professional reason to wrap things up. While contrary to the common fan-understanding illustrated by these frustrations at prolonged or externally -unresolved mysteries, it is the unanswered that resonates the strongest and, ultimately, the longest. Audiences will continue to speculate and argue, to worry out the unsolved, when all the answers and revelations, charts and explanations are so forgotten don't even mentally cache them as things to not be further worried over.

Why Grant Morrison Will Never Be the David Lynch of Comics

Why Grant Morrison Will Never Be the David Lynch of Comics

Pop Medicine

Travis Hedge Coke

David Lynch is the David Lynch of comics.

We forget that Lynch made comics. He was in and out, one strip proper. And, it wasn't for everybody.

Unlike Grant Morrison, David Lynch has, even in such an inglorious format as the newspaper comic strip, refused to give us immediate or traditionally-formatted satisfaction.

I love Morrison and his work, but the Lynch comparison is made because of certain direct appropriation of tropes and a tendency to namecheck Lynch. To reduce Lynch to these blood of visual weirdness or a red and black pattern on a floor, or to ignore Morrison's wonderful and dedicated commercialism, misunderstands both authors.

I love Morrison, and his work is for nearly everyone. Wants to be read and loved. Asks to be. Waits for it.

Morrison would never burn a general audience the way that Lynch has shown himself to be entirely comfortable with. This is identifiably true in their music and visual art, as well as, as is our focus, their comics.

Morrison is one of the biggest names in comics because he makes money. David Lynch is spoken of in reverence, despite his movies not making the big bucks. Exaggeration on both fronts, but a worthy truism.

So, why do we say it?

Lynch, with his nerdy style and his quaintness as a shield, is punk to bones. He is accepted as one of the cinema signposts of our lifetimes without fanfare or sell.

Morrison has to say he's punk, or no one would believe it. His press has to push him as a "spokesman of the counterculture" (which counterculture?) or it probably would not have occurred to us. To me, even, as an old Lither.

David Lynch's comics work is outside the comics mainstream, and outside of mainstream expectations, so much that it is easy to forget it exists. When reminded, it is still a simple matter to deny that it is genuine, that it is real comics.

Simultaneously, Grant Morrison is massively mainstream within the realm of comics readers. He is no more an outsider or non-pop comics author than Steven Spielberg is not a mainstream movie director. His mystique as an insider-outsider is engineered. He talks of when he left comics behind as a young man or when he temporarily out comics away, but an attentive person will notice that he never put all comics away, nor could even this temporary cessation of solid fandom have gone on long, as he launched into his comics-making career quite young.

Of course, Grant Morrison is not a shill or a revival tent litigation of words and pictures. David Lynch is and is not who he is sold as, and he is sold. He has a coffee beans and announced the weather as a novelty act. To make yourself an act of art and promotion is as necessary as making your art an act of promotion. Let’s not pretend there is no commerce of money and ideas, memory and love.

Both frequently have characters speak plainly and directly without cues or the hallmarks of exposition. Both Lynch and Morrison are gone of allusions and resonances that are narratively tangential, but which set the tone of a scene. They like resonances. It is important to stress that they are not dissimilar; certainly, Lynch is a genuine influence on Morrison.

Both embrace "equivocation and totality," as Jacques Derrida calls it, but Lynch 's totality is small, almost cramped into personal space, whereas Morrison's equivocation is rarely demanding. Without devaluing either, I don't think we would make the Lynch comparison of Morrison did not, so often, himself. But that citation and loud allusion is the purest Morrisonian to me. It would hardly be Morrison of there were not constant, shorthanded shoutouts and echoes reminding us of other things.

David Lynch seems to delight in presenting ineluctably unnavigable experience. Morrison wants his audience to navigate. While Lynch has shown distaste for chapter breaks, author annotations, fast forward and external distractions, Morrison most often encourages readers to hit search engines as they read, to flip back and forth between pages, between comics, and to ultimately map their own territory out of his street signs and storefront logos.

Seeing Yourself in Comics

Seeing Yourself in Comics

Pop Medicine

Travis Hedge Coke

A recent interview with Gengoroh Tagame opened with, “He drew what he wanted to see, but couldn’t find elsewhere.” And, because I bought his My Brother’s Husband in the same batch of comics as Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, and the Hope Nicholson-edited, The Secret Loves of Geek Girls, the question, for me, becomes, “How can we see ourselves? our wants? ourselves in comics?” with immediacy.

I read a lot of comics. I know a good number of comics fans, the world round. And, many comics try to put you in the protagonist’s skin, to see with their eyes and know their experience. Which, is cool. I know many fans, many readers do see themselves, regularly, in Spider-Man, in Ranma Saotome, in Dennis the Menace. I don’t, and I’m used to not. Maybe I’m just being fussy, maybe I’m just a stick in the mud, but Peter Parker, when I was growing up, had a steady job, a movie and soap star wife, a flat in Manhattan with a skylight, and we lived on commods. Peter “hard luck” Parker once flew to Scotland because he inherited a castle. That was, then and now, way out of my realm.

I can enjoy Spidey comics. I often do. I cannot, though, really see myself in Peter Parker. I don’t really understand his financial life, much less his sexuality. Peter Parker’s sexuality befuddles the hell out of me. When Parker was briefly widowered (or so he thought), he roomed with Randy Robertson, and I greatly enjoy that era of Spider-Man comics, I liked their pairing, but during that, he reminds me never of myself and consistently of horrible, annoying roommates I’d suffered.

So, what would I do if I wanted to see myself? I can’t pick up Amazing Spider-Man. I can’t write or draw Spider-Man comics. My nephew sees himself in Spidey, in almost every iteration he’s ever come across. I fully believe that Dan Slott can see himself in Spider-Man comics, in that moral order and that psychological map, but I would not be able to. To do so, I would have to change so much, it would no longer be what it is. I would have to lose everyone who can see themselves in it.

I do not see myself in My Lesbian Experience, either, but it is closer. I know what depression looks like. This inability to reflect or to perceive is not particularly about race or sexuality or class or gender. I’m not a Japanese woman. I don’t feel gender significantly enough to really get homosexuality or heterosexuality. The fundamental break, there, is lost on me. But, I see my reactions in Nagata, and more importantly, I see Nagata Kabi in her comic. The same way I can enjoy Slott’s fan-self in his Spider-Man, yet more intimately and strengthened by its resonating with my own self-image and self-concerns, Nagata shows earnestly in her work.

She made a comic for herself. A comic in which we can see her, and even if the mirror is marred or tilted, I can see myself.

In her foreword to The Secret Loves of Geek Girls, Kelly Sue DeConnick admits to initially misunderstanding the premise of that anthology, referring to her state upon realizing it is a collection of love stories as panic. “Love stories, frankly, make me… uncomfortable.” But, when DeConnick wrote Captain Marvel, she wrote my favorite kiss in a Marvel book from that year. She wrote some of my favorite love stories from the publisher during that time. Stories I could see myself in, that I saw my wants in, and that, hopefully, did not make DeConnick too uncomfortable to write.

Everyone else, one year, went nuts over the kiss in Angela. Warrior princess angel and her buddy and scribe locking lips. Big deal. Whole page stuff.

The kiss, in Captain Marvel, was a small panel in a multi panel scene. And, though I couldn’t know it then, now I’ll always associate it with that Angela kiss and with something Ta-Nehisi Coates said about keeping a same-sex kiss in silhouette, early in his Black Panther, because it should be for them, not for us.

I get it, but at the same time, I think he’s presuming his audience too much, there. To me, that’s right up there with Frank Miller’s “gimme an ass-shot, Jim.” The big kiss scene in Angela felt like it was for everyone, and the scene in Captain Marvel felt like it was for me.

Earlier today, online, I got to witness someone blowing up over a decade-old Wolverine cover by Esad Ribic. It’s a beautiful cover. It’s Nightcrawler walking over to his fellow X-Man in a bar. It is a sexy cover. Bleeding Cool called it a “gay porn” cover. Again, though, it is just a cover. It’s indicative of the story within, but it is not the story. There’s no homoeroticism between Wolverine and Nightcrawler in the comic. Not really, and certainly not so blatant. But, this guy; it threatened him. Its existence, and the mirror it threw up, made the world bad for him. It showed him things he did not want.

My Brother’s Husband is not especially erotic. It’s an all-ages comic, family drama and slice of life pleasantness. And, I know there are, out there, many a fan of “gay comics” who were upset. They felt that Tagame was limiting himself, or censoring, because this was no porno. Others are bothered by the huskier bodies of the male main characters, or that there are no “traditional” aggressor and aggressed-on, no yaoi or boy’s love genre roles.

There is no appreciable difference, for the limitations of this essay, between the displeasurable reflection (or refraction) of the guy re the Ribic cover and yaoi fans and My Brother’s Husband. I'm not saying they’re wrong (I kinda am), but they are genuinely disappointed by what they are being faced with. That has to be acknowledged. What is more important than their displeasure, though, is that these comics are allowing so many others who don’t often get to see themselves in comics, to see their lives and their wants, to have their chance. Even if said, “guy” is a majority, or represents a majority, the entire world, both the Earth and the world of comics, cannot only be tailored to him.

The Hysterical Debate Over the Best Spider-Man

Following last weekend’s release of Spider-Man: Homecoming, social media has been flooded with memes and debates over the best depiction of Spider-Man, or the relative merits of his various love interests as depicted in the different film franchises. Lists and debates aren’t foreign to discussions of a comic book nature, but the ones revolving around Spider-Man always tend to involve a lot more hysteria and loaded bias than others.

The Hysterical Debate Over the Best Spider-Man

Back Issue Ben

Ben Smith

When a website or fan asks fans who their favorite Batman actor was, it tends to be a calm matter-of-fact discussion of personal preferences. I’ve never seen it devolve into a cesspool of personal threats and declarations of racism quite like a Spider-Man debate almost always does. Every Batman movie has been equally as comic book inaccurate as any Spider-Man movie, if not more so, and yet it never seems to matter as much to Batman fans. I prefer Michael Keaton’s Batman, and that is entirely because I was 11 years old when I saw Batman ten times in the theater. I don’t claim those Burton movies are better films, in a vacuum, than the Nolan ones. They’re probably not. Yet, nostalgia and personal bias seem to be the dominant factors in any discussion about Spider-Man movies.

The enduring commitment to the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films is made only more inexplicable due to the absolute garbage fire his performance in those films was. (Calm down, that's my subjective opinion. It happens to be 100% true, but still.) I challenge anyone that champions those movies, to prove they’ve watched them at any point in the past 10 years. I’m with you — at the time they were released, they were absolute revelations. Their influence on the (at the time) growing superhero revolution in movies cannot be measured, but just because it was one of the first, does not (absolutely does not) mean they are still enjoyable to watch. Tobey is whiney and unlikable. Some might say that’s an accurate adaptation of the character of Peter Parker, and they might be partially right, but it’s not the whole picture, and shouldn’t be.

More often than not, this dedication to the soiled diaper that is Tobey’s Peter Parker has a lot to do with the character of Mary Jane as his primary love interest in those three movies. There’s been a subset of Spider-Man comic book fans that remain obsessed with the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane in the comics, a status quo that lasted for almost 20 years before it was erased in 2007, give or take. Despite this long-standing marriage, Peter’s true love has been a subject of much fan interest for the entire publication history of the character. This is why you can have a supporting character like Rachel in the Dark Knight movies, one that never existed in the comics, and nobody cares. Batman has no “true love,” and shouldn’t, because he’s a long-running fictional protagonist. This subnarrative of Peter Parker and his true loves, is something that never should have existed, not considering the core foundation the character was created with. This is only exacerbated each time a new movie comes out, with a new cast, and the reveal of which of Peter’s important love interests has been picked to be the co-star of this new iteration.

Kirsten Dunst was never playing Mary Jane Watson, not the MJ we know from the comics. But she’s white and had (dyed) red hair, so that makes it okay. However, Zendaya plays a character named Michelle that just so happens to go by the initials MJ, and all the racists come out with their pitchforks. (Sorry, you can qualify it any way you want with source material accuracy and what-not, complaining about the color of her skin is the definition of racism.) My problem with Michelle has nothing to do with the color of her skin, or her unkept appearance. My main problem with Michelle is that they didn’t go far enough and name her Mary Jane. They tried to curtail the predictable racist complaints by giving themselves the excuse that “she’s not Mary Jane, she’s Michelle,” even though it’s clear which character using the initials MJ is supposed to invoke. Inspired by, but not. Either create a new character, use the already established Michelle we know from the Spider-Man comics, or make her Mary Jane. Not that any of this really, truly matters when it comes to if the movie is good or not. It’s easily the best Spider-Man movie ever made. Regardless, if you’re opposed to Zendaya as MJ, but loved the dumpster sandwich that was Kirsten Dunst, you’re a flat-out idiot. If you’ve ever said or typed the words “forced diversity” with sincerity and intent, please go away.

As influenced by nostalgia as I and other fans clearly are, then we can only hope the diverse cast offered up in Homecoming will one day mean as much to a new generation of fans as it does to the current crop of fans. That is the only hope we have as a society. That the generations after us learn from our mistakes and strive to be better. This may only be a discussion about the diversity of and overall quality of superhero movies, but it’s representative of a larger symptom in our society. One which needs to go away forever. One which values “tradition” and accuracy to a franchise created in 1962 over the betterment of all people, no matter the race, religion, or creed. I don’t care if you’re upset that Liz is black, or Ned Leeds is Asian. It’s dumb. It’s literally a dumb thing to be upset about. What I do care about is that they give a young fan a face they can recognize and be inspired by, and that they show all fans that it doesn’t matter what someone looks like, it matters how they treat you. Ultimately, that’s what matters the most in life.

Racial Diversity and Bending in Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the best Spider-Man movie ever, and it isn't even close. To be fair, I don't think Tom Holland was the best Spider-Man — that's Andrew Garfield, who is much closer to my preferred version of Spider-Man (the late, college-age Steve Ditko version) than anyone else (Holland wins the prize for being the closest version to Ultimate Spider-Man. That's the thing. Spider-Man is open to interpretation. They all got a piece of him right.).

Nor do I think that it's the most groundbreaking of the Spider-Man movies, since that still probably goes to the first one with Tobey Maguire, which was mind-blowing at the time of release, but is horribly dated now. With context as to what the superhero movie would later become, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst look positively amateurish and incredibly underwhelming. (And whiny. Let's never forget whiny.)

Context matters, though. And in the larger scheme of things when the history books are written, Tobey Maguire's first foray as Spider-Man will be remembered as the character's coming out moment, for better or for worse.

Similarly, context matters when looking at creative choices made in a movie like this. And while I can't quite put into words why the movie fell short for me despite the fact that all the elements to make it successful were there, I can talk about something else regarding the movie, and that's the fact that it's one of the most racially diverse blockbuster movies in recent memory. So let's look at...

Racial Diversity and Bending in Spider-Man: Homecoming

by Duy

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Spider-Man: Homecoming has a pretty damn diverse cast. Let's take a look at his main classmates Breakfast Club style.

So you've got Tom Holland in the middle playing Peter Parker. He's white. Over to his left is Zendaya, playing Michelle, is half-black, half-white, while in front of Tom is Laura Harrier, playing Liz, also half-black, half-white. Tony Revolori, to the right, plays Flash, and is of Guatemalan descent, while Jacob Batalon, who plays Ned, was born in Hawaii to Filipino parents.

It's diverse. It's a step forward in Hollywood. It's wonderful.

It also bugs me.

WAIT, NO, HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU FIRE UP THE COMMENTS.

All of these characters are named after a longtime Spider-Man character. It could be argued that since their last names are never given (except for one), they could be anything from callbacks to tributes to trolling methods on the part of the filmmakers. And that's fair. All the same, I think there are missed opportunities here. Let's look at them one by one, in the order of the level of opportunity wastage.

Tony Revolori plays Flash, the school bully. This is named after Flash Thompson. Flash Thompson normally looks like this:

So now we've got a Guatemalan playing him who also doesn't play him as a jock. Instead, he's also another science nerd, who just happens to be the least smart out of all of them, and instead of threatening to beat Peter up or calling him "Puny Parker," he calls him "Penis Parker" instead.

I'm cool with that. Look, racebending a 1962 comic just makes sense. You know what schools in the US were like in 1962? Segregated. That means white people and non-white people couldn't really interact. You know what a New York high school is like in 2017? Not segregated. That means Peter Parker's gonna have classmates of all races and descents, and if you populate a cast with racially diverse characters, but the only ones he interacts with are all still white, that just calls attention to the whole issue to begin with. You can't diversify without empowering.

As for Flash being a nerd rather than a jock, that's cool too. The past decade and a half has seen a rise in the nerd bully, the type that torments you verbally rather than threatens you physically. See, for example, Gamergate, Kylo Ren, the villain in the last Ghostbusters movie, and the entirety of the internet. Are jocks vs. nerds still a thing? The nerds kinda crossed the line the moment Revenge of the Nerds happened, and that was in 1984 Are jocks still bullies? I dunno, I'm old. But from the looks of the internet, nerds certainly are.

Laura Harrier plays Liz, the girl Peter has a crush on. In the comics, this girl is Liz Allan.

Here's the thing: they've racebent Liz before, in the excellent Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, which I still think is the best Spider-Man outside of the comics medium. She's Hispanic in the cartoon, I believe, and half-black in the movie. And that's fine — the character of Liz Allan works regardless of race.

I think it's a powerful message when young kids watching Spider-Man see a white guy having a crush on a girl who isn't white — and an interracial one at that. Seeing examples this early on in life can only have a positive effect.

Of course, in the movie, she isn't actually Liz Allan, so it was kinda brilliant because it built up that pivotal moment in the movie.

So we're fine with Flash and Liz. With that, let's go to Michelle.

Read More Below...


Zendaya plays Michelle. And at the end of the movie, Michelle says she prefers to be called MJ. I shouldn't have to remind readers, this is Mary Jane Watson:

Now, she isn't "Mary Jane," she's Michelle. But the role is still there. She's going to be Peter's main love interest moving forward (unless we get someone showing up as Gwen). And if that's the case, it was pretty smart in this movie to establish her as someone with her own agency and her own personality rather than someone who gets in trouble and motivates Peter. All the same, this bugs me, for two reasons.

The first reason is this: Zendaya's Michelle is nothing like Mary Jane Watson, party animal with a troubled soul... but she could be. We know this from what Zendaya's done before. She plays a socially conscious, withdrawn, isolated person when Mary Jane is usually the exact opposite of all of those things. She's basically another character altogether. The "MJ" reveal just feels tacked on and unnecessary, and without value past the first time you hear it. And it closes the door on a future MJ that may actually be like the MJ from the comics. (Kirsten Dunst was not the MJ from the comics. Kirsten Dunst played Kirsten Dunst.)

The second reason is that the character that Zendaya's "Michelle" is most like? A sarcastic woman who is both mean to Peter Parker and yet shows affection for him? That's actually a character named Michele. And she's awesome.

I'm always of the stance that racebending is fine if there is no counterpart that already exists. In this case though, there is. (Side note: Zendaya playing Michelle is still a racebend, since Michele is a Latina.) And what bugs me about this is more from a marketing perspective: Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson became the big Spider-Man love interests by continued exposure. How can we possibly build more characters and the presence of those characters when we're still cycling back and forth between Gwen and Mary Jane? That's why fans get so resistant in the comics whenever Peter has a new love interest, the belief that it can only be one of those two. But we don't give chances to other love interests, partly because Marvel doesn't give them those chances either.

I have nothing against Zendaya playing Mary Jane Watson, because she clearly can, if she were actually playing Mary Jane Watson. But she isn't. Her character was named Michelle, who is closest to a character named Michele. And that's what bugs me.

Jacob Batalon plays Ned. Ostensibly, this is after Ned Leeds. And this is Ned Leeds:

Ned's a reporter who didn't even go to high school with Peter. In the movie, Ned is his best friend, who knows who he is, helps him with Spider-Man stuff, and looks like Ganke.

Ganke is the best friend of Miles Morales, the second Spider-Man.

Seriously, why didn't they just name him Ganke? He's right there.

Which brings us to Tom Holland, who plays Peter Parker. And he was great. He nailed high school/Ultimate Spider-Man, and got the right mix of humor and angst that that makes Spider-Man who he is. And that's fine. That's fair. But here's the thing. Peter Parker in high school classically is a loner, someone who makes sure no one knows he's Spider-Man, goes about things on a grassroots level, and doesn't let anyone — anyone — help him out. He's actually a bit of a jerk, honestly.

The thing is, there is a character named Spider-Man who grew up idolizing other superheroes, who has an overweight Asian best friend who helps him out as Spider-Man, and who is mentored by the Avengers, and that guy is Miles Morales.

This should have been a Miles Morales movie. By concept, premise, and execution, everything about the movie screamed "Miles Morales" to me more than it did "Peter Parker," to the point where it felt like it was, in fact, a Miles Morales movie, except they wrote out Miles and dumped Peter in his place.

And that's the rub about this whole diversity thing right now. Whenever we applaud a movie for being diverse, we mean one of two things. We could mean it, as we did for Captain America: Winter Soldier or Spider-Man: Homecoming, as "a racially diverse cast with a white male lead." Or we could mean it, as is happening and will continue to happen with Black Panther, as "a cast that is dominated by one race." Both are well and good and unheard of even ten years ago on the level that it is now. But there's still something missing, and that's having a non-white character headline a blockbuster movie with a racially diverse cast. I will consider the battle for diversity won when we can see that type of movie in spades and not have to remark about how noteworthy it is.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to do it. They could have written Peter as an older character to focus on later, one that's always been Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and just not heard of much, as he normally is in the comics where he isn't that well-known outside of New York City, while focusing on Miles. And it could have been done, since we literally just saw it two years ago in Ant-Man, where the movie focused on Scott Lang instead of Hank Pym, the original, classic bearer of that mantle.

And I get it, too. If this was the only time we're ever going to see Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would want that Spider-Man to be Peter Parker. But if that's the case, I wish I could've seen a movie that felt more like Peter Parker than a Miles Morales movie where he's removed and replaced with Peter Parker. That this didn't feel like a Peter Parker movie to me is a cranky old fanboy nitpick. That this wasn't a Miles Morales movie, more than anything to me, feels like a true wasted opportunity.

The movie was still really good. I still really liked it. And I still absolutely appreciate the effort at diversity. But it could've been more for that. It could've done more for that. And maybe, at the end of the day, that's what I think was missing.