Saladin Ahmed and Javier Garron Announced as MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN Creative Team

When writer Brian Michael Bendis departed Marvel a few months ago, many readers wondered what become of the new Miles Morales Spider-Man, a character whose ongoing adventures have been spearheaded by Bendis since he was introduced back in 2011. Between the character’s appearance in other media including the most recent Spider-Man PS4 game, it seemed unlikely MIles Morales would stay in limbo for that long. Given the upcoming Into the Spider-Verse film features Miles Morales in a prominent lead role, a relaunch timed with the animated film seemed like a no-brainer. Sure enough, today Marvel announced via IGN a new Miles Morales: Spider-Man book from writer Saladin Ahmed, fresh off from winning an Eisner Award for his Black Bolt book, and Young Gun artist Javier Garron set for a December release.

Though Ahmed has only between writing comics for a few years, he’s quickly becoming one of the rising Marvel creators. Before the Miles Morales book hits stands, you can get a taste of Ahmed writing the original webslinger Peter Parker with the new Amazing Spider-Man Annual this month. Ahmed revealed some details to IGN including to expect classic Spidey villain the Rhino to appear in the first arc:

“For my money, Spider-Man is, at his core, a teenage hero. In this book, Miles will be that Spider-Man: battling threats against the community and the city rather than the universe, and trying to do so while dealing with grades and bullies, family and botched dates. This is classic Spider-Man, but very much dealing with modern concerns and realities.”

“I think our background always informs how we tell stories, it’s just a question of how conscious of that we are. And there are always both bridges and gulfs between ourselves as writers and the characters we’re writing. I’m not Black or Puerto Rican, I ‘m not a teenager, I didn’t go to a nice school like Miles does. But there are lots of points where we do connect powerfully, even points where his experiences connect with my kids’ experiences., and I absolutely draw on those connections.”

Of all the Marvel tropes, the hard-luck supervillain is maybe my very favorite, and Rhino is sort of the Ur example of that. It’s precisely because he’s a sort of artifact of the Silver Age of comics, this hulking prehistoric monster vs. Miles as a sort of young face of the modern super hero. There’s going to be some fun back-and-forth between them.”