Peter Parker was still attending high school when he died, so there's a not a huge difference between him and Miles in terms of actual age. In terms of maturity, emotionally and mentally, however, the difference between Parker, the veteran hero, and Miles, the rookie, will be considerable.
"Peter was 15, Miles is 13 and as everyone whose lived through those years knows, there's a big difference between those two ages," Bendis remarked. "Someone joked that I picked that age because I'm Jewish and that's your Bar Mitzvah age, when you're told you're a man even though you don't really feel like one. I guess I did subconsciously give Miles a Bar Mitzvah when I had that spider bite him, because there's just something interesting about that age. He's not quite yet on the road he needs to go down, and that road could lead him in many different directions. When you're that young, your eyes are wide open. It's a perspective we haven't really seen before in superhero comics."
In "Ultimate Comics Fallout" #4, readers got a quick glimpse of Miles in one of his first outings as Spider-Man. In "Ultimate Comics Spider-Man" #1, Bendis and Pichelli rewind the clock to properly introduce readers to the new Spidey, revealing how he came to take up the mantle of the Web-Slinger. "We're going to show you exactly how he got his powers and where he came from. Then we will drive up to the moment of Peter's death, the moment where he first puts on the costume and the fallout in his life afterwords. That's all in the first arc of the series," Bendis said. "First, you're going to learn how long he's had these powers and what he has or hasn't been doing with them. He realizes all that's been a mistake once he discovers the true meaning of Peter Parker's life and sacrifice."
Miles may be following in Peter Parker's heroic footsteps, but the new Spider-Man will have his own opinion and outlook on the world he lives in. "Miles is coming from a completely different upbringing than Peter. He's going to look at everything that Peter has seen through different eyes and have different revelations about it. That's what's interesting to me," Bendis said. "Here's this kid whose decided to do the same thing Peter did, but everything about his upbringing and what's been instilled in him is different. Because he's so young, he's yet to put these thoughts together on his own and now he has to, in a very exciting way. Decisions have to be made quickly."
Unlike Peter, the biggest decision makers in Miles' life so far have been his mother and father. "The shocking news -- and you can see this in the art that debuted last week -- is that, in Miles, we finally have a Marvel character whose mother and father are both alive and still together," Bendis joked. "His father is alive and living in the house. He's not a bad guy and has not been killed by bad guys. Both parents are alive and well, and raising him.
