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Good news, at least for people who trust one massive soulless greed-fueled corporation more than another massive soulless greed-fueled corporation: Last night, Disney and Sony announced that the one thing that could bring them together (greed) has, indeed, brought them together, and Spider-Man will now be appearing in Marvel-branded movies—meaning that instead of being kept all on his lonesome, Spidey's now free to show up and make fun of Loki and the Hulk in The Avengers sequels, or get involved in the pissing contest between Captain America and Iron Man in 2016's Captain America: Civil War.

Who do we have to thank for this? North Korea, maybe, whose Sony hacks revealed how befuddled Sony was about what to do with Spider-Man, or last year's unwatchable The Amazing Spider-Man 2, or perhaps, just perhaps, the whispered, Cheeto-flavored prayers of dozens of neckbeards, crossing their hearts as they bowed to their spit-polished shrines of Marvel producer Kevin Feige. The deal, as reported by Deadline, makes it clear that Sony retains the movie rights to the Stan Lee- and Steve Ditko-created character, even as it allows Spidey to appear in Marvel-produced movies (and Marvel-owned characters to appear in Sony's standalone Spider-Man movies). Still, it's hard not to think of this as Sony throwing up their hands and letting Marvel run the show and make the big decisions. Which, as anyone who made it more than 30 seconds into The Amazing Spider-Man 2 can attest, is probably a pretty good idea.

There are, however, two downsides to all this:

1) It's almost certain that Andrew Garfield got fired, probably with all the grace and kindness as J. Jonah Jameson shutting down Peter Parker. That's a goddamn shame, because Garfield was fantastic. Sony's Spider-Man movies have had a lot of problems, but Garfield wasn't one of them; I have a legitimately hard time thinking of any actor who could do as good of a job as Garfield did. On the other hand, he'll probably be okay:


2) To make room for Spider-Man (and to play nice with Sony), Marvel's pushed back the releases of two of its more interesting upcoming releases: Captain Marvel, the first Marvel movie to star a woman, and Black Panther, the first Marvel movie to star a black man. Given mainstream movies' overwhelming... white maleness (and particularly given the overwhelming white maleness of superhero movies), Captain Marvel and Black Panther were already long overdue. Now they'll be coming even later.


There is, however, one decision that could go a long way toward helping fix those problems, and that's getting rid of Peter Parker. While Marvel's official press release makes a point of mentioning the name "Peter Parker," I'm ignoring that, because fuck it. That's the wrong call.

Peter Parker's now had his shot in five major movies and countless cartoons—but for the past few years in the comics, he's been playing second-fiddle to Miles Morales, the Black Hispanic star of Portland writer Brian Michael Bendis' Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man. It's hard to overstate how smart and how fun Bendis' book is, and how great of a character Miles is—he's gone from being inspired by Donald Glover to growing into a fantastic character in his own right. He might have similar powers to Peter Parker, but his concerns, motivations, and personality are his own; reading his comic is a reliable, constant, and surprising delight, even for those of us who've grown tired of other superhero books. Would he work onscreen? Absolutely. He could be excellent onscreen. There's also the fact that mainstream movies matter when it comes to representation—and at this point, you can't get more mainstream than Marvel. Having a Spider-Man who acts, looks, and is different from the ones who've come before could be just the thing that these two massive soulless greed-fueled corporations need in order to make the average person care.

(By "average person," I mean someone who, unlike me, doesn't spend entirely too much time thinking about Spider-Man.)