Spider-Man 2099 in the 1990s
The 2099 brand of Marvel books was the brainchild of Stan Lee. Typical of a Stan Lee creation, he came up with the idea and let more talented people come up with the rest of it. One of the titles of the original 2099 line was Spider-Man 2099. The majority of the title was written by Peter David, with Rick Leonardi penciling most of the first 25 issues. He was followed by Joe St. Pierre until issue #29, Roger Robinson until issue #33, Andrew Wildman until issue #43, and Ron Lim doing the final issue of David’s run in issue #44.
David was tasked with creating Spider-Man and the additional challenge of worldbuilding this future version of New York City in the year 2099. That’s quite the feat. The whole esthetic of the 2099 series was highly influenced by cyberpunk sci-fi. Unfortunately, the book suffers from being incredibly dated even though it was written about the future. The internet was becoming a big thing and the writers tried to cram in then-current internet lingo into this future world. Lingo that, almost 30 years later, is not part of the internet nomenclature anymore. Adding to this is the typical problem with older writers trying to use slang when writing younger characters. You know how it is, it all sounds clunky and bad, like what an adult thinks young people speak like. It’s only made worse by the fact that the writers of 2099 developed a whole new set of slang that people use in the future. Get ready to hear a lot of characters screaming “what the shock!” because apparently, in the year 2099, people don’t say fuck anymore.
Anyway, I’ll give David some credit when he created Miguel O’Hara, who starts off as a really unlikable piece of shit who gets thrust into the role of a superhero. He hates it and tries to resist it until he eventually learns what it takes to be a hero.
That’s the nice thing I have to say about Spider-Man 2099.
The rest of the series is haggard by a few things. First Peter created a needlessly complicated love triangle between Miguel, his ex Xina Kwan, his current fiancee Dana D’Angelo. Worse, D’Angelo used to be the girlfriend of his younger brother Gabriel, so there’s also tension there as well. Which, eww, don’t date your younger brother’s ex-girlfriend. There was also the needless addition of Miguel actually being the bastard son of Alchemax CEO Tyler Stone, Miguel’s ruthless employer. Apparently it wasn’t enough that the man Miguel thought was his father was an abusive piece of shit, David went that extra mile by having him be the love child of a soulless corporate asshole. The personal dynamics in this story are such a maze of interpersonal relationships. It’s needlessly complicated and usually used to lurch the plot ahead.
Then there’s the Peter David trope of including some aspect of faith or religious iconography to his stories. In this case, it’s a huge part, with an entire religion worshiping Thor and how they see the appearance of a new Spider-Man as a sign that the Age of Heroes is returning. David also digs into these themes of blind worship, faith, and denied divinity by plopping in the Net-Prophet into the middle of all of this.
Net-Prophet is later revealed to be the New Universe character called Justice (a character that David wrote in the 1980s) who ends up crossing time and dimensions to end get from the New Universe to 2099. As the Net-Prophet he becomes a reluctant Christ-like figure. David never really gets a chance to fully form whatever the hell it was he was planning on using this character for. Since there is no real explanation for him or a proper resolution to his story arc, his inclusion in these stories just feels like an unnecessary addition, which brings us to the next flaw with Spider-Man 2099..
Editorial interference.
This was the biggest problem with the whole 2099 line. At first, the writers were given carte blanche to do something different with pre-existing ideas. It’s pretty clear from the onset that this wasn’t supposed to be the case where they were making 2099 versions of every conceivable character. In fact, early on in the run, the only Spider-Man foe to get the 2099 treatment was the Vulture. The rest of the time, David tried to create villains that fit the narrative of the world they exist. However, fans demanded more 2099 versions of pre-existing characters and it became this exercise to give futuristic takes on other characters. I figure this is why Peter David created 2099 versions of Venom and the Green Goblin.
The other thing interfering with Peter David’s work was what was going on in the other 2099 books, such as when Doctor Doom becomes the President of the United States and when New York is flooded by the Atlanteans. I get the feeling that David did not like these plot elements as they are absent when he revisited the character in the 2010s in the 2nd and 3rd volumes of Spider-Man 2099 (There are some in-universe mysteries about that which I address at the end of these summaries)
While the 2099 books started off strong, readers lost interest pretty quick and Marvel decided to cut back on the books. This led to them firing Joe Cavalieri, the editor for all the 2099 books. As an act of solidarity, Peter David and the other writers on these books quit, leaving plots to be finished by other writers. This is where things hit the fan quite a bit. The rest of the Spider-Man 2099 run (all of two issues) was written by Ben Raab and Terry Kavanagh and beautifully drawn by Mike McKone. Raab and Kavanagh probably weren’t too big on details because they completely missed the clues that Peter David left that would have revealed that the Goblin was actually Father Jennifer D’Angelo. Instead, they opted to make the Goblin turn out to be Miguel’s brother, Gabriel. Something that is plausible given the relationship the two characters had, as long as you ignored all the clues David left. Still, they only did two issues to wrap up the lingering plotlines as all of the 2099 books were being canceled for a condensed title titled 2099 World of Tomorrow. That only lasted for 8 issues and a final epilogue to all of 2099 was completed in a graphic novel titled 2099: Manifest Destiny. That story is now considered as happening in another reality, but I digress.
Spider-Man 2099 has been a bit of a cult classic of the 90s era. Peter David revisited the character during his run on Captain Marvel in the 2000s. The character also appeared in the Exiles and in the Timestorm event (both of these Spider-Men of 2099 were from alternate realities). Spider-Man 2099 saw a resurgence in popularity in the early 2010s when he appeared in Dan Slott’s run of Superior Spider-Man and was a main character in the Spider-Verse event. Peter David was even brought back to write the character for two more volumes of Spider-Man 2099. In early 2020 Marvel rebooted the 2099 universe again, giving us a new interpretation of Spider-Man 2099.
