Miles finally gets Revenant’s origin story. Unfortunately, he has to hear it while paralyzed.
There are easier ways for a supervillain to explain his tragic backstory.
PowerPoint.
Podcast.
A strongly worded email.
Revenant chooses temporarily paralyzing Miles Morales in an abandoned subway station and making him listen.
Different communication styles, I guess.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man #3 continues Revenant’s vendetta against Jeff Morales, with Miles caught directly in the middle. The mysterious villain has already proven willing to tear through Brooklyn to get his revenge, and this issue finally explains exactly why Jeff sits at the center of all that anger.
Turns out?
It’s complicated.
And Wilson Fisk somehow made everything considerably worse.
Of course he did.
PROS
The strongest thing about this issue is that Revenant finally becomes more than “really angry giant man with electrical powers.”
His name is Martin Moore, and once upon a time, he trusted Jeff.
That went badly.
Very badly.
The story flashes back to Jeff’s undercover days, when Martin unknowingly became collateral damage in the operation. Fisk discovers that Jeff was a S.H.I.E.L.D. informant, decides somebody has to pay for that betrayal and chooses Martin as the unfortunate substitute.
Kingpin’s employee benefits package apparently includes:
Kidnapping. Torture. Experimental Mutant Growth Hormone.
No dental.
Marvel’s own backmatter confirms that Martin was kidnapped and experimented on after unknowingly allowing an undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent into Fisk’s operation, ultimately transforming him into the MGH-powered Revenant.
It gives Martin’s anger real weight.
He isn’t mad because Jeff punched him once fifteen years ago.
His entire life was destroyed because he became disposable to powerful people.
Jeff used him.
Fisk punished him.
Then Martin disappeared.
That makes Revenant’s obsession understandable without making what he’s doing to Miles remotely okay.
And I like that distinction.
Miles even points it out.
Martin keeps insisting Jeff is the monster, but Miles recognizes something Revenant doesn’t want to hear:
Fisk did this to you.
Jeff made mistakes, absolutely. But Revenant has spent years aiming all his rage at one man because accepting the bigger truth would mean confronting everything that happened to him.
That’s much more interesting than simple revenge.
Nico Leon also does excellent work with the subway confrontation. Revenant is physically enormous, while Miles spends much of the conversation literally unable to move. That imbalance makes the scene uncomfortable in the right way.
And visually, Revenant’s powers become much more interesting here.
He explains that his altered body can pull kinetic energy from his surroundings and form hard-light constructs. Apparently years of rage also taught him to turn childhood memories into weapons.
Most people remember their favorite barbarian hero fondly.
Martin remembers his and creates a giant sword.
Therapy remains an option, sir.
Bryan Valenza’s colors deserve particular credit too. The warm orange subway lighting gives Miles and Revenant’s conversation this strange campfire-story feeling, while Valentine De Landro’s flashbacks shift into harsher blacks and muted colors that make Martin’s past feel genuinely ugly and oppressive.
CONS
The biggest weakness is that this issue is very exposition-heavy.
Revenant essentially sits Miles down and says:
Okay, kid.
Here’s my origin story.
And then we spend a significant chunk of the issue flashing backward while Miles listens.
The material itself is strong, but structurally, Miles becomes fairly passive for much of his own comic.
He’s literally paralyzed for part of it.
That’s certainly one way to guarantee your protagonist listens to the villain monologue.
The issue also gives us the clearest explanation yet of Revenant’s powers, but there are still some fuzzy edges around exactly what he can and cannot do. Considering how easily he has disrupted Miles’ abilities, I’d like those rules to become firmer as the arc continues.
Thankfully, the story doesn’t drag the confrontation out forever.
Once Miles can move again?
THWIP.
Enough talking.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What makes Miles Morales: Spider-Man #3 work is that Bryan Hill doesn’t use Revenant’s backstory simply to make us pity him.
Instead, it creates a messier question:
How much responsibility does Jeff actually carry for the man Martin became?
Jeff clearly believes the answer is a lot.
Back home, he admits to Rio that this is about who Martin was—and who Jeff helped turn him into.
Meanwhile, Miles walks away from Revenant knowing more about his father than he probably wanted to.
That’s the real damage here.
Not the punch.
Not the paralysis.
The knowledge.
And then the issue ends on a completely different kind of danger.
Miles calls Valentina.
She answers half-asleep.
Miles tells her he needs someone to talk to—and that he wants to be honest with her.
Uh-oh.
Miles.
Buddy.
We appear to be approaching the secret identity conversation.
Revenant may actually be the safer option.
Bryan Hill writes the issue, with Nico Leon on present-day art, Valentine De Landro handling the flashbacks, and Bryan Valenza on colors.
FINAL GRADE: B+
A villain-origin chapter that gives Revenant something more dangerous than superpowers: a legitimate reason to hate the world. Heavy on exposition but strong on character, it leaves Miles facing the hardest kind of Spider-Man problem—the truth about someone he loves.
