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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 4 years

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Spider-Man 2099 v4 #1 and 2099 Omega Thoughts

This is literally the third time I’ve purchased a comic book called Spider-Man 2099 #1 in 5 years. Technically more if we include reprints. Isn’t that kind of ridiculous?

Fun fact, I wasn’t buying any comics (sans some pre-OMD Spidey and Deadpool Classic trades) between 2009 and 2014. It was the 2014 Spidey 2099 run that got me back into the game, for good or ill.

This issue wasn’t nearly as good at series. And Omega was…lol…it was so bad and essentially an extension of Spidey 2099 I’m covering them together.

I remember fondly my hype when I saw Miguel in ASM v5 #25 and my hype for this one shot, back when I didn’t realize it was just part of a larger event.

Oh boy did this let me down.

Let me start with some superficial praise.

The art for Spidey 2099 and Sandoval on Omega were decent. And there was some interesting ideas pertaining to the world of the future, such as the removal of money and instead having everyone’s value depend upon what they can contribute. A society built upon meritocrisy, albeit with harsh reprisals if you can contribute little. Also the idea of corporations fixing things so only insiders can gain employment speaks to the corporatocracy of the 2099 universe (one severely undermined when we consider Doom is ultimately in charge anyway…). People intentionally using drugs to keep up their work productivity is another great idea, and a genuinely interesting twist upon the original depiction of the rapture drug from Spidey 2099 v1 #1. Finally people essentially enabling identity theft in exchange for drugs was an interesting sci-fi concept.

But beyond that…this was bad.

When I began covering this event proper with 2099 Alpha my dominant critique was ‘who is this for’.

A reboot of the 2099 line over 20 years since the original line ended and less than 3 years since the revival of it ended? A reboot intended to modernize the 1990s’ take on the future, a take that frankly proved 99% accurate anyway. And finally a reboot that alternated between doing spotty world building, killing off new characters, tie-ins to modern canon events and most of the time communicated its ideas in confusing and baffling ways.

I put forward that it was doomed to displease the old 2099 fans like me because it was erasing what we knew and loved. But it was also so poorly communicating its rebooted vision that new people were going to be alienated.

I’m only slightly going to backtrack on what I said. Because the Punisher 2099 issue was if you like the greatest argument in favour of the reboot. It wasn’t just the best issue in this mess, it was a bona fide awesome story just in general. It actually dived into an aspect of futuristic sci-fi that the 1990s 2099 series (to my knowledge) would’ve struggled to cover as it pertained so much to 2010s life and technology.

More poignantly though, the problem with this event is that there was no over arching vision between the titles. Not every one shot had the same problems but they all in different ways displayed problems that smacked into the very premise of this event.

F4 2099 was literally pointless as it spent a whole issue introducing a new F4 then killed them.

Conan 2099 could’ve been virtually the same if Conan was like 20 years in the future not this new future we rebooted.

Arguably Punisher 2099 relied upon familiarity with the Jake Galloway Punisher 2099 before it subverted your expectations.

Ghost Rider 2099 was fun but the writer clearly LIKED the original take on the character to the point where he essentially minimized changes to the rebooted version making the act of rebooting the character pointless in the first place and failing the mission statement of the event.

Venom 2099 was a weird tie-in for Cates current Venom mega arc involving Knull that was nonsensical as it proposes that Knull is still en route to Earth and thus in theory there is no tension in Cates’ run. Moreover it wasn’t much of a futuristic take on Venom himself and fundamentally hurt as there was no Spider-Man for Venom to act as a dark reflection of.

Doom 2099 in fairness had a cool twist, but a cool twist that didn’t make sense in and of itself and was also reliant upon familiarity with the original 1990s character.

And then we come to these issues.

These issues I’m sad to say just absolutely fundamentally fail conceptually.

He’s incredibly passive and very bland as a character so newer fans coming in with no knowledge or attachment to the Miguel O’Hara of old are unlikely to warm to him. His defining trait is being someone who cares enough about the suffering of others that he will not actively take part in it, but will also not actively do anything to help like his brother Gabe. This is then set up for his brother to die, cue a less good retread of Peter Parker’s origin story but minus much action of Miggy in costume. On paper the idea of a guy experiencing Peter’s ultimate failure and from this being motivated to OBTAIN super powers is interesting but it’s just not examined all that much in the story. What I’m saying is at a time when there is a sea of Spider-Heroes to read about on the stands this version of Miguel O’Hara is lame, derivative and the execution of his character half-hearted.

Then on the other hand you have the older fans’ perspectives. Obviously old Spidey 2099 fans are unlikely to take to this new version just on principle. But when you realize you lost the old character for THIS guy…oh boy does that sting.

Original recipe Miguel O’Hara was cool because he zigged where Peter zagged. He was kind of an asshole, but one with limits on how little he cared. And he became more heroic over time, but never the same type of hero as Peter. And above all he was a sarcastic, sardonic, cynic who you could tell was thinking ‘I can’t even with this Spider-Shit right now’. Case in point, he was okay with straight up killing opponents. He was more unique and much more compelling than this version, as were his cast. Lyla is basically the Aunt May of this story and not the source of humour that she was even in the first 3 issues of the 1990s run. She also lacks her iconic Monroe look, and isn’t even consistent with how she looked in ASM v5 #35.

Losing a cool character for a lame one would be bad enough but then the story straight up invalidates both itself and the entire goddam event.

It does this by having the rebooted Miggy start to see visions of the pre-rebooted (prebooted?) 2099 timeline, meet an aged version of his prebooted self and then have even more flashes of the prebooted timeline. *

Wow…Just….Wow…

Let’s pretend that the vision of 2099 in this event was a temporary thing, an Age of Apocalypse or a House of M just for 2099 and the plan was always to go back to how it was before when the story wrapped up.

That makes this entire event pointless. See the reason AoA worked (and HoM in theory could have worked) is because it was a temporary change of pace.

That doesn’t apply to the 2099 line, a nostalgic, discontinued line of comics and characters that are unlikely to get a full on revival and who’s last attempt at a revival wrapped up over 2 years ago.

THIS event should’ve been a nostalgia trip for the old fans and a chance to introduce that line to a new generation. Instead it discarded the old in favour of something new which was seemingly intended to go nowhere.

Good job Marvel, any new fans you MIGHT have gotten hooked just got fucked over and people like me who pre-ordered this event thinking we were going to get the characters we knew and loved also got fucked over.

And in fact the entire exercise was an example of intentional redundancy.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Oh and it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

So Miguel was thrown back in time when his timeline was starting to be erased and replaced with the rebooted timeline, then he was erased in ASM v5 #34, which began this new rebooted timeline…but he is alive in it, remembers it, can give his past self visions from the old timeline...

…I’m a Doctor Who fan and that’s not any kind of wibbly wobbley timey whimey nonsense. It’s just regular ass nonsense, just like the Man-Spider monster Miguel encounters who repeats ouroboros to him, the same word ReedDoom said in the Doom 2099 issue. How and why would the Man-Spider creature say that to Miguel. How would prebooted Miguel know it said that? How and why would rebooted Miguel see Spidey 2099 in costume spray painting that?

Shit what the fuck does ouroboros even mean?????????

*one google search later*

A snake eating its tail as a symbol of endless infinity…what the fuck does that mean?

That Miguel makes himself Spider-Man 2099 always?

There was a cool idea in the Omega issue wherein we learn Doom essentially erased everyone’s memories with magic so they’d forget the Age of Heroes altogether, but the rise of the characters in the one shots represented that spell breaking down. Too bad it doesn’t add up given how Venom was always going to exist and existed SINCE the Age of Heroes and people obviously remember Thor as there is an entire tribe dedicated to him!**

However the Omega issue’s biggest sin is showing us how truly pointless most of the issues of this event were. Honest to God you only need to read Doom scenes from Alpha and then Spidey 2099 and Omega. Those are the only plot relevant issues out of this whole event.

Over all, these issues and this event have been a humungous, insulting disappointment. Check out some of the art but literally nothing else sans the Punisher.

*I mean if you want to get technical the 2099 universe has technically been rebooted multiple times. The version of it presented from 2013-2017 actually differed from the original 1990s version in various ways, e.g. Miguel’s love life panned out very differently. When I refer to the pre-rebooted/prebooted timeline I’m referring to the version from 2013-2017, just to be clear.

**There are other contradictions in these 2 issues as well, like how poverty and bad health have been erased but…we see they haven’t as there are multiple examples of both in the one shots.

#2099 #Marvel 2099 #Spider-Man #Spider-Man 2099 #Miguel O'Hara #Doctor Doom 2099 #Doom 2099 #Doctor Doom #Victor Von Doom #Peter Parker

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