For example, I decided to get back into Spider-Man on PS4 to finish the “City That Never Sleeps” storyline. It was alarming how close to home the game hit with what’s happening in real time with COVID-19 and the protests. In the story, there’s a virus released that becomes a pandemic. One mission has you run into a Black Sable agent named David Obademi that’s trying to get clinical masks out to the public and supplies to the war-torn country. Listen, I came here to get away from COVID-19’s clutches, but this game making me remember there’s a whole-ass pandemic goin’ on outside no person is safe from in the real world still. When we first meet David, he’s getting jumped by the corrupt members of a private military force. I automatically thought back to that Twitter-thread rabbit hole where police officers were destroying protestors’ food and medical supplies. Art be imitating life way too hard at times, man.
There’s another part in this storyline where Peter Parker talks to fellow Spidey Miles Morales and prepares him for Spider-Man training. Peter has Miles studying mathematical equations and physics to understand everything that goes into how using web-shooters and web-slinging as Spider-Man works. There’s a point in the game where Miles uncovers the web-shooters Peter has made for him and they have this interaction:
MILES: I can see that the nozzle size and shape is the same as your other ones.
PETER: Yeah, so?
MILES: Well, according to Hooke’s Law elastic force is linear with distance, given all factors are equal. But you and I aren’t equal.
Peter then realizes Miles is right, that the differences in pounds between them can affect so many things like tensile strength and web-fluid consumption. Miles, knowing this, figures out a 0.7-millimeter adjustment to the nozzle diameter will even things out.
I’m not sure if this conversation between Miles and Peter was a subtle reference toward racial equity, but it was damn well the first thing that my mind jumped to. Peter, being the only Spider-Man for so long, assumed he was the default and what worked for him should work for Miles. However, they aren’t the same person. Therefore, those differences hinder Miles instead of help. This simple line of dialogue says so much… and if people in positions of power or with platforms in the real world were more like Peter Parker when called on shit, it’d be a better place. It could all be so simple, couldn’t it?
Funny enough, there’s another comic book quote from Jonathan Hickman that inadvertently touches on the Black experience. In New Avengers, vol. 3, #20 (2013), the Black Panther T’Challa is fighting against the Rider but saying they don’t need to fight. T’Challa believes their issue can be worked out. Mind you, the issue was their planets/universes clashing together. One universe had to go so that the other could survive. The Rider tells him there’s no need for platitudes, this fight between them was inevitable, so why lie? T’Challa, now agreeing, has a dagger appear in each hand provided by his suit and says, “Very well… No more lies. There will be death here today.” It’s such a hard-hitting line that sticks with me. So much so, it pops into my mind every time I see a post online about police killing a Black person. There’s this moment of pause before I get in depth to the details of the matter for more information about the victim and how they were killed. Each time I take that leap into all that fucking hurt, I think, “Very well… No lies. There will be death here today,” preparing myself for the reality of what I am about to encounter or engage with.
I hear the phrase while I’m scrolling through all the videos of Black folks the media puts out on display being brutalized by police whether they be on the news channel or on social media to raise awareness. Just the phrasing of that quote hits me at my core. It makes me think about how a regular day gets interrupted with images of a dead Black person on display or moments before their death. As if to say that good day you were just having was a false image. That good day you were having is irrelevant now or it was a lie, because this death, this unnecessary loss of Black life, this preventable loss of Black life, is still happening. “No lies. There will be death here today” reads to me in regard to social media platforms as “There will be a Black death on your timeline today, there will be a Black death in your news feed today, there will be a Black death here today.” If there isn’t, consider it nothing more than luck. Wild, right? Often it feels like no matter where you go, even in imagination, you can’t escape the sight or the thought of Black loss.
*sighs heavy as fuck* I be wanting to get my self-care on, man. I swear. It’s just so hard when the fiction you consume unexpectedly hits you with a reminder of what’s going on in real time inadvertently. Don’t get me wrong. There is escapism for Black people. There are other routes to disconnect. I just find it ironic that, as a Black nerd, when art imitates the Black experience in life even inadvertently, it hits so different when it’s a phrase that exemplifies the struggle. The fucking roughest parts of that struggle. The parts where the best Black folk can do to survive is not lose from this position we’ve been put in where we can’t win.
Into the Spider-Verse Got Three Moments Better Than the Best Moment of Your Favorite Comic Book Movie Not Named Into the Spider-Verse
WILLIAM EVANS, aka Spider with the Webs and the Drip
ART IS SUBJECTIVE. Everyone has a preference. Some people think anime is high art. Some people think the opera is trash. The debate about what art and art forms we love and love less are the beautiful foundations of what makes life worth living and show the uniqueness of people and what they enjoy. Unless we’re talking about Into the Spider-Verse. Cuz that shit perfect. This is an objective critique. You might think, “William, I enjoy a good superhero story, but perfect?”
Yes. You’re wrong. I don’t even know what you just said in your head while reading this, but you’re wrong. Go argue with your momma.
And now that we have established a scientific baseline for perfection, I have an aside. I picked three moments cuz I ain’t trying to exhaust y’all. Even perfection can be a fatiguing element in this much abundance. We can talk about the animation, point-blank period. Or we can talk about the callback to the comic book origin stories (“Okay, let’s do this one last time,” a Spider-Person says for the fourth time). The Biggie transition that introduces Uncle Aaron. The comic book thought panels, including the ever-increasing volume of Miles’s inside his own head. MILES FUCKING MORALES. The voice acting of the whole crew.
But let’s also be very honest. You came to a book called Black Nerd Problems, so let’s not mince words. This is the Blackest superhero shit since the first Blade, yo. Miles shouting out Brooklyn while they tag a wall off a subway route in his unlaced Jordans?!? What?! You ain’t supposed to see this shit with a budget like this! You put Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, and Shameik Moore all on the same track? Is this movie catching bullets? With its teeth? Spider, please. But I digress.
There are three moments that are just straight up untouchable with no qualifier for me. And that shit is throughput of our Spider-Heroes. Moving in chronological order, we gotta start with the greatest.
BLOND PETER PARKER HAS ENTERED THE MUTHAFUCKIN’ CHAT
I don’t besmirch new Spider-Man fans. The ones riding that Miles wave into the fandom. The ones that saw a Puerto Rican and Black web-slinger and thought, “NOW I’m a Marvel fan.” I welcome you with open arms. We have buttons and coffee mugs for you. But let’s also be very clear. Peter Parker been the best of us for a long fucking time. And the legend has never been as strong as when Miles stumbles upon his fight against Fisk and his time-shifting doomsday device. A couple things of note about this scene:
One, before Peter saves Miles, he was beating the brakes off of Green Goblin. Like, mad that you paid $80 for pay-per-view when the fight lasted two rounds type of ass-whuppin’. I’m not “blaming” Miles for what transpired next. All I’m sayin’ is Peter blew a halftime lead cuz he was saving Miles while his enemies were on the court in the third quarter getting free buckets. And two, the jokes. Don’t. Stop. There’s a lot of people that talk about superher
oes being inherently fascist. I think it’s a good point made by people that are decaying like Sunday-morning roadkill on the inside. I typically qualify that with white superheroes might be fascist. Obsessed with accumulating power and removing the agency of everyday folks. But the reason they call your boy your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is cuz he’s here for the people, yo. The most humble of superheroes. And humility is great, but also boring as hell if you ain’t got the jokes to go with it. I’m an Ohio kid. I don’t know how New Yorkers feel about it, but when Peter tells the Green Goblin that he can’t allow Fisk to open a portal cuz Brooklyn can’t be sucked into a black hole (Staten Island maybe, but not Brooklyn), it made me damn near squeal.
And then he saves Miles from falling a really, really far way down. The moment between them is so damn short but still perfect. The web giveth and the web taketh away. Peter isn’t threatened to know there’s another person like him out there. He doesn’t do the “gotta learn the hard way like me” tough talk. He tells Miles that he’ll have to show him the ropes, ya know, once he destroys the big machine over his shoulder that could wreck the space-time continuum. What follows is THE sequence. Well, maybe not THE sequence cuz that comes up later. But THE (1) sequence for the first part of the movie. It only lasts about eleven seconds, but Peter vaults away, lands on a skinny scaffolding, tiptoes along its edge, jump flips up to a rotating carbine, web-sticks one hand to a higher carbine and rides the elevator up, and jumps off the top of that while web-slinging to slingshot himself to the ceiling, where he sticks and makes his way toward the control panel.
So true story: My homie and coauthor Omar and I saw this movie on the same night, but he was in New York, I was in Ohio. And we both, in our separate theaters, watched that sequence and thought, “My god, Peter Parker is the fuckin’ GOAT.” I don’t even think it’s up for debate, yo. I don’t know who checkin’ him. Y’all can debate M.J. and LeBron. Have fun. Superheroes? I think that debate is over.
WHAT’S. UP. DANGER?
I got any Breaking Bad fans in here? What’s the Venn diagram for folks that watched Walter White take over the New Mexico meth business and the folks that watch animated comic book films with Black folks? Anyways, there’s the iconic scene in Breaking Bad when Skyler White sees the walls closing in on her and her husband, Walt. Powerful men are coming to kill them and she pleads for Walt to finally end this charade and go to the police. But Skyler doesn’t actually know who Walt is or what Walt has done. And perhaps this is the moment when Walt realizes who he actually is. Skyler says Walt should “admit you’re in danger.” And Walter counters, “I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No, I am the one who knocks.”
So like, take that scene, keep the word danger, and take the venom from over nine thousand down to zero. And oh, make it Black. THEN you have the “What’s Up Danger?” moment. Let’s also be clear, this is the best moment on this list, but we going chronological (and it sets up the last moment, you guessed it, perfectly). This is not only the best moment in the movie, it’s the best “superhero realizes who they are and what they’re capable of” moment in history. Like, including time measured in BC. That’s Before Clark Kent. Blasphemers.
You can start this moment when the track starts playing, but you gotta go back further than that. To the whole Spider-Crew deciding that Miles just ain’t ready for the prime time and that past-his-prime brunette Peter B. Parker would turn on the collider to enable everyone to go home. Which would kill him. This shit crushing, yo. PBP was the one trying to sell Miles as the real deal to the whole team, but he has to admit to himself and to Miles that he was projecting and that Miles isn’t actually ready. The shot from outside Miles’s window as PBP breaks it down to him, with the rest of the Spider-Crew clinging to the wall listening, but out of Miles’s view, breaks my heart every time (every time being about 742 at the time of me writing this, by the way). PBP webs Miles to his chair after Miles can’t perform under pressure and we’re left with our hero, helplessly asking, “When will I know I’m ready?” and PBP’s words: “You won’t. It’s a leap of faith.” And then the impossible Brian Tyree Henry as Miles’s father, Jefferson, visits his dorm. It’s the combo of being left behind and his father telling him how limitless his talent is. Internalizing all those things in succession: the rejection, the abandonment, the loss, and then his father picking him back up exactly when he needed it. Then the chair he’s strapped to isn’t a dead end as much as a trial. We see that cold blue coursing through his veins and then, ya know, the venom blasts happen and set him free. The chair, the webbing, our expectations, all get obliterated. And then the beat drops.
All praise to Black Caviar and Blackway for giving us this song. And Black people. Praise to Black people in general since we’re here. But back to that leap of faith. Look at the material! The efficiency of this moment. Miles approaches the shed and already got the bio unlock on his arrival. Aunt May being the Pennyworth to Miles’s Spider-Man. The voices of his parents and mentors guiding him. Customizing the Spider-Suit with his paints. The squeak of the Jordans on the windows of corporate America before the leap. Why are you reading this when you could be watching this shit right now?! But the leap itself is fucking poetry. Miles makes the jump (and of course we get the inverted fall with Miles rising into the sky), but Miles turning his fear and helplessness into agency THE THING. He goes from falling and flailing for forty stories to the purposeful nosedive gaining speed before he shoots the web-shooters to the top of the building. BUT WE AIN’T DONE. Miles going from swinging to the ground, where his momentum is pulling him, to sprinting through traffic, the parkour of the truck, the drawstring of your boy’s hoodie flapping as he runs across Wall Street’s face in the Jays. It’s… It’s almost too much. I need a minute. Several. I’ll catch y’all in the next session. But still. Best coming-of-age moment. EVA.
NO MORE SPIDER-MAN DYING EVER AGAIN
Listen, you can’t pull off the most beautiful vault with tight flips and spins and not stick the landing. Into the Spider-Verse stuck the landing like it was driving a nail into the damn ground. Before we get to THE (1) part, you can’t talk about this endgame without making note of the real shit:
First, when Miles comes back and gives Doc Oct the phantom punch, the whole Spider-Gang is revitalized with the out-of-nowhere but completely in character drop from PBP saying, “I love you! I am so proud of you! Do I want kids?” (Let me answer that for you, PBP: I dunno, fam. Kids are amazing, mostly because they are not yet corrupted humans. But I haven’t slept in ten years, there aren’t nearly enough family or unisex bathrooms out there in the early years, and don’t even get me started on how expensive preserving human life is. I’m just saying, don’t make any snap decisions.)
Second, this movie is all about things coming full circle. The way Miles and Peter are webbing away from the ceiling while talking is the final form of their earlier escape through the woods from Alchemax. Thwip and release. Thwip and release. And then, of course, there’s Miles stealing the goober from PBP. Remember earlier in the film when Miles had PBP tied up, trying to figure out why he watched Peter Parker die, but here was Peter in his uncle Aaron’s apartment? But while Miles is working through it, PBP gets free and tells Miles, “Watch the hands.” Well, Miles is a grown-ass Spider-Man now. And he returns that “watch the hands” in kind. Then Miles duplicates the traversal from Peter Parker at the beginning to deactivate the collider. If you’ve forgotten, please go back to the first section of this essay, but the short version is SPIDER-MAN IS THE GOAT, THE WHOLE GOAT, AND NOTHING BUT THE GOAT, SO HELP ME SPIDEY SENSE.
Aiight, I’ve stalled long enough and the tears already coming, so let me just get to this shit. Peter done sent everyone home but PBP and Fisk has had it. PBP rushes off to take on Fisk but Miles is like, “Nah, b. Your fight is over.” And then THE LINE from PBP:
“I can’t let Spider-Man die.”
Look, no disrespect to Olympians e
verywhere, but ain’t no torch passing like this, my dude. There’s no “you could be Spider-Man one day.” No “you will step into the shoes of this universe’s Spider-Man.” Nah. NAH. You are Spider-Man. PBP got nothing left to teach him, man, the glow up is complete. And of course, the validation from Miles back to PBP despite all his insecurities: “Neither can I.” I’d say that shit gave me goose bumps, but this is Marvel’s world, so I’ll say my Spidey sense go crazy every time I watch that part. And that moment ends with the student becoming the master, down to the sweep kick and the leap of faith for PBP.
Didn’t I tell you this shit was perfect? I mean, I made my case and I didn’t need the shoulder touch callback. The shoulder touch, yo! Anyways. You might have your faves that don’t come from Into the Spider-Verse. But this is America, I respect your right to be deadass wrong.
I Hate It Here: Food Wars Would Be the Most Annoying Anime to Live In
OMAR HOLMON, aka Stove Top Contessa
HERE’S A QUESTION: What fictional universe would you wanna live in? Yeah, these are the hard-hitting questions we’re here to ask, dammit. It’s a tough choice, ain’t it? You gotta consider which genre suits you best as well as other factors. For example, I love comic books but I would never live in the Marvel Comics or Marvel Cinematic Universe. You see all the collateral damage they did in New York?! That’s where I reside, man! I’m not trying to look out the window to see Thor and the Hulk fighting supervillains on my block so now I gotta wait to go to the corner store. Got me complaining the whole time ’bout them always fighting down here but they never over in Williamsburg knocking folks through brownstones and into Priuses. I wouldn’t wanna live in the Star Wars universe either because I’d be beyond fed up if I was with the Sith or the Resistance. Fam, the Sith had a lead on the Jedi/the Resistance for how many years and still managed to lose? Don’t get me started on the Resistance—they got rocked and had their numbers dwindle so much that by the time of Rise of Skywalker everyone that was doing admin work for the Resistance now on the front lines. The fuck does Ahmed from accounting know about shooting a blaster gun?
Black Nerd Problems Page 3