Miles Morales’ Beyond tie-in continues this week and it’s leading towards a major resolution for Miles. Miles Morales and his new clone brother Shift are taking the fight against the man who tortured him, but they have no idea what horrors hide within his headquarters. Miles Morales: Spider-Man #34 shows how far they’ll go to get answers.
Those headquarters are set on Staten Island, which adds another layer of awful. Writer Saladin Ahmed approaches this issue twofold, first pushing Miles and Shift as far as they can go and second making this about their growing brotherhood. It gives the issue an arc as they enter the building and face different threats along the way.
Set up as if going through trials, this book is heavily an action-first comic. There are callbacks to the treatment of Miles and Shift in the past, but it’s mostly punching and kicking. Art is shared by pencilers Michele Bandini and Luigi Zagaria with colors by David Curiel. They get the size of Shift no matter the scene, which helps convey his pile-of-muscles physique. It’s hard to say which artist draws each page, which is a plus since it’s never a jarring switch.
Where are they, Hogwarts?!
Credit: Marvel
One criticism towards the art is a full-page splash, which generally looks great, but seems to get Miles’ new costume wrong. The black shorts over his red spandex are a bit too baggy, as if Miles pulled some raggedy basketball shorts out of the wash.
As a fight comic, this issue feels more like an exercise in dodging threats than a fight with a direct foe. That makes it lack a certain sense of intrigue, especially since Miles and Shift are fighting robots and low-stakes enemies. There’s visual evidence these heroes are going through a lot, always show and don’t tell, but a whole issue to show this feels a bit much. It gives the book less for the reader to think about and build on. Essentially it’s a bridge issue till we can get to some direct confrontation between Miles and his arch-nemesis.
Compared to the last issue, this issue features fewer types of scenes focusing mostly on the action. That doesn’t make it a bad comic, but one with a more singular and simple fight-comic feel. If you want action, Miles Morales: Spider-Man #34 is where it’s at and then some.
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