My brain is a mess atm so I'm gonna try to keep this as cohesive as possible but god. I saw Across the Spiderverse for the second time yesterday night and I had completely forgotten the opening with the Comics Code Authority seal. My first time watching me and my friends laughed at that scene, "Haha lmao they're spoofing on the comics code authority a bit, hell yeah" I had thought, and I moved on to the masterpiece that was ATSP. The second time though, after knowing all the themes and ideas of the movie, the comics code seal hit me like a truck. Because Miles's story could NEVER be approved by the comics code. Neither could Pavitr's, nor Gwen's and definitely not Hobie's for that matter. And this ties back exactly to the themes of the movie because Miles's story is about rejecting conventional storytelling and the norms of what a Spiderman story should be. In the same way that Miguel is so obsessed with maintaining canon, maintaining the status quo of the Spiderman mythos, the entire point of the comics code was to restrict stories with new perspectives that didn't fit a certain agenda. It was when comics were able to break free from the code that we got so much innovation and diversity and complexity. And I know that morally Miguel and the Comics Code are definitely not a 1 to 1 comparison but in a meta sense, viewing ATSV's themes as a commentary on storytelling conventions, it fits perfectly I think.