Your Toddler Will Never Know Spider-Man Was White
Miles Morales breathed new life into the stale Peter Parker coming-of-age story. Children who look like him can now strongly identify
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“You’ll believe a man can fly,” promised the movie poster. Back when Richard Pryor was the funniest black man in America and “Le Freak” by Chic topped the pop chart, a Loews theater stood at the center of the Parkchester projects in the Bronx. With my eighth birthday fast approaching, my parents made a wintertime date night out of Superman: The Movie, starring the late Christopher Reeves as the big blue boy scout. Adults giggled when Supes used X-ray vision to tell Lois Lane her panties were pink; whatever else he was seeing never dawned on me.
Up past bedtime, I flew down the snow-lined block afterward, adrenalized over the first real superhero blockbuster. I’d never felt more like Superman in my young life, with senses on high alert and gas-guzzling cars gunning out the parking lot, kicking up grey wet slush. That’s when my mother said five words, a beam of green kryptonite from her lips. “Be careful. You’re not Superman.” No paraphrase necessary; when your heart sinks that far…
