After more than half a century of sterling service to webslinging, Peter Parker is to be replaced as Marvel's official Spider-Man by a mixed-race character who for four years has been wearing the suit in an alternate universe.
Miles Morales, a teenager from Brooklyn with an African American father and Puerto Rican mother, has played a version of Spider-Man since 2011, but will take over the mainstream role from Parker this autumn.
He appears in a series of comics set in an alternate universe where Peter Parker has died, and where he has reluctantly received a set of superpowers similar to Parker's after being bitten by a genetically altered spider.
Spider-Man is Marvel's most successful character, selling nearly $1.3 billion of merchandise last year, eclipsing their next bestseller, The Avengers, which shifted around $325 million.
Spider-Man's popularity stems in part from the that fact there could be anyone under that hood, and the character has been portrayed as different characters across the Marvel comics universe.
Morales is the first black character to wear the Spidey suit, but the second Latino after the half-Mexican geneticist, Miguel O'Hara who featured in a 1992 comic set in the year 2099.
Miles Morales was introduced in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, which run parallel to Marvel's mainstream universe, and his arrival received mixed reactions. Some people criticised the character's existence as politically correct, but many non-white readers praised the fact that either they, or their children, now had a big-name role model in the Marvel Universe.
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