"Miles Morales: The Clone Saga"

 

            The following is a review of the Marvel Comics event “Miles Morales: The Clone Saga” as presented on Marvel Unlimited.

            Welcome to From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin. I’m your reviewer Tim Cubbin. If you’ve never read any reviews on this blog before, I’ll tell you how this works. If you’ve read one of my reviews before, you know the rundown, but still read the next few sentences anyway as it might be a little different from my prior reviews. First off, I am a total diehard Marvel Comics fan. I read from Marvel Unlimited pretty much every day and now any events I read I review, so here we are. Anyway, at the start of every one of my reviews, I give my opening shtick (like the one you are reading now). Then I give a brief explanation of the major characters you need to know about as you read this review. Following that, I give a synopsis of the main stories in the event. After that, I give my thoughts, what I liked, what I disliked and why. Following that, I’ll tell you the level of background knowledge I feel you should know before making the commitment to read this event. Then comes the numeric score I give the event. After that, I’ll tell you if I recommend it and to whom I think would like to read this event. Finally, I’ll give my log off message and stop wasting your time.

Well, if you’re still with me at this point and have not been scared off, let’s get right to it. The main character of the event is Miles Morales/Spider-Man. Miles was bitten by a genetically altered spider and gained several powers: adhesive fingertips and toes; the proportional speed, strength, and agility of a spider; the ability to camouflage himself to the point of invisibility; the ability to discharge an electric charge; and a precognitive awareness of personal imminent danger. He also has web shooters. He took on the name of Spider-Man (even though there already IS a Spider-Man, who agreed to share the name with Miles).

Peter Parker/Spider-Man: The original Spidey.

Rio Morales: A nurse; Miles’ mother (knows her son is Spider-Man).

Jefferson Morales (formerly Davis): Former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent; Miles’ father (knows his son is Spider-Man).

Billie Morales: Miles’ newborn baby sister.

Ganke Lee: Miles’ best friend.

Tianna Toomes/Starling: the granddaughter of original Spidey baddie the Vulture. Has a flight suit.

Kamala Khan/Miss Marvel: Size-changing polymorph. Miles’ teammate in the young super team the Champions.

Knull: the King in Black. Malicious god of the symbiotes.

Selim, Mindspinner, and Shift: Clones of Miles (we’ll get to them in a minute, stay with me here).

Okay, these are the main players in this little drama, what say we get right to the synopsis of the event. In the first story, Miles has a team-up with Starling. After a successful rescue, Starling kisses Miles, leaving him the question: does he have feelings for her?

Next is a “King in Black” tie-in. Knull leads a horde of hundreds of thousands of symbiote dragons to Earth. Miles is forced to battle Miss Marvel, but is able to rescue her from Knull’s control. During the chaos, Ganke cowers in fear with Miles’ ex, Barbara, and after Knull’s assault on Earth, the two start dating.

Following that is the main story: “The Clone Saga.” Several months before, a villain called the Assessor kidnapped Miles, assessed him, and created unstable clones of Miles: Selim, the leader, an improvement on Miles; Mindspinner, with a spider form and mental powers, kind of like a psychic screech; and Shift, a gooey creature. Selim committed crimes as Miles, stealing items and kidnapping a scientist in an effort to create a cure for the clones’ instability. Miles, not knowing this, finds the clones’ lair and destroys it, and the clone stability cure. In a rage, Selim trashes Miles’ relationship with Miles’ friends, then Selim, Mindspinner and Shift attack Miles’ parents and kidnap Miles’ baby sister Billie.

I’m stopping here so I don’t spoil the ending. Now we go on to my personal thoughts. The Starling story wasn’t too bad, but I felt like the sparks between Miles and Tianna should have had some more development. “The King in Black” tie-in was my favorite story in the event. “The King in Black” was a whole other event, and I actually enjoyed that event and felt like Miles’ storyline in the whole drama was interesting and exciting, especially the drama of Ganke connecting with Miles’ ex (which actually happened to me, oddly enough) that created friction between Miles and Ganke. As far as “The Clone Saga,” I felt it was mediocre. I didn’t hate it, but if the writer had made the story an issue or two longer to develop the story a little more (such as featuring the full assault on Miles’ parents, more of the clones ruining Miles’ reputation and friendships, and extending the drama of Selim kidnapping Billie), there could have been potential for a slightly better story. As it stood, it wasn’t too bad.

Okay, let’s talk accessibility. For those of you who don’t quite know what I mean, it’s my way to tell you if this is a good jump-on point for new readers or not. I found this story to be relatively self-contained. For those with no Miles experience, I feel you can still pick up this book and be able to understand it.

Okay, now for the score. I go on a one to ten scale. One means this was awful and I only read it for continuity’s sake. Ten means this was awesome and reading it as a whole made sense and I enjoyed it more reading it a second time. Just so you know, I’m a really hard to please guy when it comes to comic scoring, as prior readers will know. Oddly enough, my score will fluctuate. Before I post, I feel like I’ll give it one score, but while a write this, my score might change, and maybe even after this post my score might change. At the moment, I give it a six. For my reasoning behind this, go back two paragraphs and read again because I literally just told you.

Now, I’ll tell you my recommendation. Do I recommend it? If you read comics regularly yet did not read this story in your perusal, I would recommend it to you. Again, the story wasn’t bad, but it could have been better. If you have never read a Miles Morales comic book before but saw the movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and liked it and wanted to find a good place to start reading a Miles Morales comic, this might be for you. If you know absolutely nothing about Miles or have never picked up a comic book before and just want a good storyline to start reading at, it’s a fairly good place to start. Now, I’ll say this: I CANNOT tell you if you’ll like this or not. I might have liked it, but I can’t guarantee you will like it because I am me and you are you. That said, this does get MY recommendation. If you read this review and are now interested in reading it, I say go for it! If you read it, feel free to let me know what you thought about it, this blog site does have a comment option, or you could just Tweet at me if you found this link on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you!

Well, now I guess I’ve gone on long enough. Your brain’s probably on overload. I just have to say, if you read this ENTIRE review, you are THE BEST! I appreciate your effort. I now ask for YOUR support. Please retweet this post, share it, follow me, contact me, whatever you can do, I’d love your input. As far as this blog goes, I’ve done plenty of work. I’ve written over a dozen reviews and will do plenty more. I also do mental health essays, an editorial series called B’ings, short stories and poetry. I’m actually a certified journalist with no job, so to pass my time I read and blog out of the goodness of my heart, getting no money for this, but I love doing this, it gives me purpose, so I just do it. There is plenty of content here and plenty more on the way, I’ll be doing this blog until I can’t do it anymore, so please feel free to check back often. I’m also working on a comparison piece involving this post and a previous post, it’ll be here in a few hours, so please hang on and come back. If you do, you are THE BEST! So I bid you farewell for now, and till next time, Tim Cubbin… out!