Speaking Of Miguel, I Thought I Had No Idea What Was Driving This Man To Keep Moving Forward. BUT:

Speaking of Miguel, I thought I had no idea what was driving this man to keep moving forward. BUT:

Peter had Uncle Ben and Aunt May, who loved him, raised him well, and said something that Parker would remember all his life as a mantra. As for Miguel, he has no one. Literally no one who cares about him and whom he loves. Parents are pieces of shit, the biological father is literally the worst enemy, the brother is canonically dead, the second half-brother is another enemy, one girlfriend is gone forever, the other died because Miguel could not save her, he will never be able to see the third one again, as with their son, the daughter disappeared along with the whole alternate universe.... Good God, everything he touches is dying.

"With great power comes great responsibility," Peter has been telling himself all his life. "With great power comes great guilt," Miguel is sure. Because always, no matter how hard he tries to do something good, it is not enough, and he loses people close to him, and the world does not get better.

And if no one told him wise thoughts, like Uncle Ben did for Peter, if no one was ever around, if no one raised Miguel to be a good person... Then why is he trying so hard to be one? Why doesn't he try to give up everything, why doesn't he become a villain, why does he continue to help people? Where the hell is this inner core coming from?!

And when I think about it, I have only one idea: Spider-Man.

Miguel lives in the future, in year 2099, but at the beginning of the century, even before the catastrophe that wiped out half the world's population, there was an era of heroes. Spider-Man was one of them, the memory of him is alive even years later, and in the 1992 run, Miguel has Spider-Man comics. The ones he read with his brother Gabriel. This is partly why he will try to recreate these spider superpowers in his project at work at Alchemax.

Miguel remembers Spider-Man, he considers him one of the most outstanding heroes of the past, he literally CRIES when he accidentally encounters the real Spider-Man during his first time jumps. Miguel is a fan of his. For him, Spider-Man is an example of perhaps everything he is trying to achieve. He is a hero, a symbol of hope, which Miguel will never become.

But he keeps trying anyway.