Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Collection, Book 3
Brian Michael Bendis
A pretty strong entry after the weaker volume 2. Volume 3 starts off really poorly, with the “Cataclysm” story-line. It’s not integrated into the overall narrative at all, and in fact I think Galactus is never even named, much less described. I think it unfortunately had to be included because it introduced an important rift between Miles and his dad, but otherwise it doesn’t feel like part of Miles’s saga. After that, the story picks up well again with the story-line of Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, J. Jonah Jameson, and the mysterious return of Peter Parker (the last of which I wish had been given a little more room to breathe). I enjoyed the story of Miles’s girlfriend Katie Bishop and [spoilers removed], but I wish she had been a more active character in it. The back-story chapters of Miles’s dad’s past involvement with Kingpin and Nick Fury were really cool. I also love the character of Detective Maria Hill.
Having finished the “Ultimate Collection” series, I find it unfortunate that it falls into the trope of killing off women of color. By my count, exactly two of them appear in the series as named characters (Rio Morales and Monica Chang), and both of them are killed off as plot points without being developed into real characters.
Finally I want to give shout-outs to two awesome variant covers included in this collection:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/02/...
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4e/7f/...