Chances are, if you`ve been paying attention to Spider-Man stuff at all this year, the name Miles Morales has come up. After all, it`s been a pretty big year for Spider-fans, between Pete`s new suit in Infinity War, the release of Insomniac`s Spider-Man video game, the Venom live action movie, and now the upcoming Into The Spider-Verse animated movie--and Miles has come up in two of the four. Not a bad ratio for the new kid on the block.Miles may not quite be at Peter Parker levels of name recognition just yet, but he`s well on his way--which means it`s time to sit down and take a look at just who this new Spider-kid actually is, where he comes from, and most importantly, where he`s headed.Introduced in 2011 with Ultimate Fallout #4, Miles originally made his home in what`s known as the `Ultimate` Marvel Universe, an alternate reality full of alternate versions of classic Marvel heroes, set outside the traditional Marvel continuity. The idea behind the Ultimate line was to give people who hadn`t read decades worth a back issues a line of books they could, in theory, pick up at number one at not worry about, so they typically featured new retellings of origin stories, slightly modified characterizations, totally new takes on villains--you name it.In the Ultimate universe, Norman Osborn and a team of scientists had been studying Peter Parker`s blood in an attempt to reverse-engineer his abilities by genetically altering spiders. Miles` uncle Aaron, a thief and low-grade supervillain named Prowler, broke into the lab and stole the formula, unknowingly giving one of the modified spiders a ride out in his duffle bag in the process. Later, when Miles goes to visit his uncle`s apartment, the spider stowaway skitters out of hiding and bites him.Miles, quickly realizing he`s suddenly got a whole bunch of weird superpowers to deal with, actually decides that it would be best to lay low and pretend nothing is wrong. He`ll leave superheroics to the actual superheroes, thank ...
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