[Interview with Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics Chief Creative Officer] The Birth of Miles Morales; ComicBookResources.com, 8/5/11

[Interview with Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics Chief Creative Officer] ComicBookResources.com; The Birth of Miles Morales:

"[ComicBookResources.com] On a personal level, you've drawn a lot on your own Latino heritage while working for Marvel with the Santerians characters being perhaps the most prominent example. What does it mean to have a character like Miles out there so prominently for you? Is this the kind of hero you feel you didn't have as a young comic fan?

[Joe Quesada:] Back in the '60s, my family was one of the first Latino families in our neighborhood. By the time I was old enough to play with the kids on my block, our neighborhood had grown into the proverbial melting pot. On any given summer day, you could find us, a ragtag crew composed of Asian, Black, Indian, Italian, Irish and Latino kids, playing stickball or hanging out on each other's stoops. I was very lucky as a young reader. My father exposed me to Marvel comics when I was 8 years old, and the reason I gravitated to them was because of characters like T'Challa and Luke Cage. While I'm not African American, as a Latino I could sense very early on that the guys at Marvel were writing stories about my world, about my friends and about my neighborhood. So in some ways I feel I did get characters like that from Marvel -- maybe not to the level of diversity we have today, but it was there nevertheless and significantly important to me."