A Refreshing New Take on an Old Trope: A Review of Miles Morales: The End

written by Saladin Ahmed
drawn by Damion Scott
colored by Dono Sanchez-Almaral

Since Marvel started publishing its post-apocalyptic "The End" books at around the turn of the millennium, I've picked a couple of them up, namely the Punisher one-shot and a reprint of the wildly popular Hulk one-shot. I had no interest in following the others, which seemed less like canon and more like the bleakest vision possible that the writer could imagine for that particular character. In terms of tragic characters like Hulk and Punisher, the endings crafted for them by Peter David and Garth Ennis, respectively, felt quite appropriate, and while the endings were exceedingly bleak, as someone who grew up with Mad Max and other works of fiction set after the imagined apocalypse, I was okay with that. Also what else could one expect from a book with "The End" on the cover?

When I picked up Miles Morales: The End, therefore, I was somewhat stunned by what I actually saw, and even more so by th3e fact that despite a radical departure from some (but not all) of the usual tropes of a "The End" story, it actually worked.

So, like all "The End" stories, MMTE takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Here, the world has been overrun by what are only described as "germs," and few places have been spared. One of them, fortunately, is Brooklyn, where a diverse community manages to thrive in an environment that has been, through the efforts of Miles Morales and the late Ganke Lee, been rendered impervious to the germs. Even though Ganke has long since given his life for the community, an aged Miles now presides over it as mayor, with Ganke's daughter serving as his right hand. Even living in the apocalypse, however, doesn't get Miles' spirits down, though the group of white supremacists known as One America emerge and pose a threat to the peace that Miles and Ganke have sacrificed much to obtain.

As "The End" stories go, this was one surprisingly brief compared to the other two I'd read, but was an enjoyable read just the same, and, oddly enough, managed to give a new flavor to such stories with Miles' inexhaustible optimism as conveyed by the script and Damion Scott's energetic illustrations, ably supported by Dono Sanchez-Almaral's vibrant colors. Ahmed, who's been writing the Miles Morales monthly book for over a year now, wisely eschews some of the more overused tropes of the "The End" subgenre and gives us a lead character who refuses to lose hope in the face of an unrelentingly bleak situation, to the extent that, even though plot-wise, the story plays out like a "The End" story tends to do, the overall tone of the book feels like something altogether new.

This was a pleasant read that should go down fairly well as a "The End" story with its own distinct identity.

8/10