And So It Was That Death Came to Peter Parker

Curiously though, this report comes from CBS (which is busy also burying Charlie Harper), not the Daily Bugle:

There’s a new web-slinger in town.

New Yorkers take their fictional heroes seriously, so it may come as a shock to some that Peter Parker, the Queens native whose destiny was forever altered by a radioactive/genetically altered spider, has been killed off in the “Ultimates” imprint of Marvel Comics. The Ultimate series is different from Marvel’s standard line, in which Peter Parker is still happily toiling away as everybody’s favorite hard-luck hero.

No, in the Ultimates series, Peter Parker gets killed at the hands of his nemesis the Green Goblin. But, being a comic book series, no hero stays dead for long. While Peter Parker may be gone, a new kid is stepping into the tights: Miles Morales.

Miles Morales is a half-black, half-Hispanic super-powered teen who gets into the hero game after being inspired by Parker’s death.

CBS concludes by pondering, “No word on whether the change in ethnicity is going to play a role in casting decisions in upcoming Spider-Man movies or Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.”

My guess is probably not — we all grew up with Peter Parker; movie and theatergoers would very likely wonder why he’s gone missing. And as the report notes above, Peter is still cheerfully battling crime in one of Marvel’s many alternate universes.

But when will Hollywood get around to fighting the Secret Wars at the movies? The small screen version’s special effects are increasingly looking a bit dated these days.