Now that the new Spider-man has been unmasked as Miles Morales, a half-black, half-hispanic teenager, it seemed that it was about time for the Mainstream Media to freak out, as per-usual.

Maybe Diversity is in bad taste.

It’s nice that this story is making front page news, but I wish it was not seen as controversial.

First things first, however, because I’m noticing that people are making this mistake.

MARVEL’S AMAZING SPIDER-MAN IS NOT ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN.

A few years back, Marvel decided to create a line of comics called The Ultimate Universe, which would be a sandbox for creators to play with the main Marvel superheroes like Iron Man, Captain America, or Spider-man without having to worry about continuity. It’s a completely separate universe, where a lot of crazy things happen and characters die, but are still alive in other series.

Comics, everybody!

Peter Parker is still alive and well in the Amazing Spider-man series. Yes, he’s dead in the Ultimates Universe, but if you miss him that much you can always read Amazing Spider-man. He didn’t really go anywhere, he’s just not in this book anymore. It’s a comic book thing, but believe me when I say it’s not anything worth freaking out over.

See, one Spidey has wacky adventures, the other gets shot in the head. Totally different!

However, as a comic book fan, I was personally starting to feel tired of the Ultimate Universe for how safe and similar they appeared to the main Marvel Universe. It was growing boring and made me wonder what the whole point of a free universe was if nobody was ready to take risks.

Now that we have a new Spider-man, it seems that it finally looks like they are going to branch out and really treat it as its own entity. Which is exciting, because as I said before, you now have two Spider-mans in two books, both doing neat and interesting things.

The characteristics of Spider-man are not those that can only be seen solely in a white character. The essence of Spider-man can be summed up in Uncle Ben’s famous words, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Meaning, any being who holds power, is responsible for the influence of said power. Spider-man is a character who uses his power to help not only his city, but the entire world.

This can be attributed to any hero, of any race. What makes Spider-man influential is not the fact that he’s a white kid from Queens, it’s the fact that he’s an Every Man who found himself with a gift and used it to help his fellow citizen.

Also, as someone who lives in New York City which prides itself as being a melting-pot of sorts, let me just say that a mix raced teenager swinging around Manhattan is far more believable than a white guy.