Spider-Verse continues from Spider-Woman (vol. 5) #1…

On Earth-928, in the year 2099 AD, Tyler Stone — the CEO of Alchemax — tells Winston, his assistant, that he is having a good day. This is mostly because he has stranded Spider-Man in the past. That’s when Winston directs his attention to a report coming in from the Public Eye. Tyler is horrified to see that his Spider-Man is back and has returned with two others: A six-armed version of the modern-day Spider-Man, and a woman wearing equipment straight out of the late 1800s.

Tyler can’t understand how Spider-Man can be back after being stranded only a few hours earlier. However, Winston points out that this Spider-Man could have been stranded in the past for years and is relieved that he came back now and not before he was stranded in the past as it would create some huge time paradoxes. Tyler decides that Spider-Man is probably too distracted with whatever he’s doing to be on guard and tells Winston to get the Public Eye to destroy the web-slinger once and for all.

Elsewhere in the city, Gabriel O’Hara is fielding a phone call from his overbearing mother, Conchata. She hasn’t been able to reach her other son, Miguel, and asks Gabriel where he could be. Unfortunately, Gabriel doesn’t know where his brother has gone and finally gets her off the phone with a promise to call her back if he finds Miguel before she does. Incidentally, this is when Miguel — as Spider-Man — arrives at his window and introduces him to his two friends, Spider-Man and Lady Spider, and explains that they are from other dimensions.[2] Lady Spider even goes so far as taking off her mask and introducing herself by her real name, May. Gabriel is instantly smitten by May but is embarrassed when she points out he has been shaking her hand longer than the others.

Gabriel asks what’s going on since he just had an encounter with Peter Parker, the Spider-Man from Earth-616.[3] Miguel is about to correct him but decides it is too complicated.[4] Instead, he gives Gabe the short version and says that there are a ton of different Spider-Man crawling around Nueva York and that someone is trying to kill them. The spiders quickly tell him about Daemos and how his family is killing spiders across the multiverse.[5] Miguel apologizes for coming to Gabe’s place first but he needed somewhere to start before gathering the heroes of this reality.

That’s when Daemos comes crashing through the wall and demands that the spiders return his old body to him.[6] The spiders refuse and the six-armed Spider-Man is the first to attack. Spider-Man 2099 and Lady Spider then watch in horror as Daemos overpowers their six-armed ally and drains him of his life force, killing him. Lady Spider attacks next, telling Miguel to make a run for it. Daemos easily overpowers her as well, but discovers that Lady Spider isn’t actually a spider-totem and her abilities appear to be all mechanical. That’s when Gabriel blasts Daemos out of his home with a massive laser cannon. He then tells Miguel to get going, Lady Spider joins him but not before pausing to kiss Gabriel for saving her life.

On the street below, Daemos recovers from the blast and when he is surrounded by Public Eye fliers, he commandeers one of their hover crafts and begins opening fire on the others. Spider-Man finds the discarded Public Eye officer and talks to Tyler Stone through the officer’s helmet cam. He tells Stone to allow him access to one of Alchemax’s labs in exchange for a one time favor. Thinking it over for a moment, Stone decides to comply and orders Winston to prepare the lab. Spider-Man and Lady Spider then lure Daemos to the lab where they hold him in a contaiment unit that Alchemax used to confine Venom.[7] With his foe trapped, Spider-Man tells Daemos that he won’t be going anywhere anytiem soon.

… Spider-Verse continues Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #11.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man 2099, Lady Spider, Six-Armed Spider-Man, Daemos, Tyler Stone, Winston, Gabriel O’Hara, Conchata O’Hara

Continuity Notes

1. Tyler Stone stranded Spider-Man 2099 in the modern age of Earth-616 after Miguel saved the life of Tyler's father and Miguel’s grandfather, Tiberius Stone. See Superior Spider-Man #17-19.

2. The six-armed Spider-Man states that he accidentally took a formula that caused him to grow four extra arms and that he is stuck like this. This Spider-Man hales from Earth-92100 where, unlike his Earth-616 counterpart, Spider-Man wasn’t able to cure his condition. See What If? (vol. 2) #42, or Amazing Spider-Man #100-102 for the Earth-616 version of events.

3. Gabriel assisted who he thought was Peter Parker in Superior Spider-Man #32. About that….

4. Miguel decides against explaining that the Spider-Man Gabe encountered was Doctor Octopus in Peter Parker’s body. This version of Otto is the one that possesses Peter Parker’s body from Amazing Spider-Man #698 until Superior Spider-Man #31. However, circa Superior Spider-Man #19, Otto was pulled forward in time. He will be sent back to his proper place in time in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #15.

5. For more on Daemos’ spider-hunt, see Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #9-10.

6. As explained in Scarlet Spiders #1-3, whenever an Inheritor dies their mind is downloaded into a cloned body, making them effectively immortal. Daemos was seemingly killed by the Doc Ock Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #10. Unlike other Inheritors, his body didn’t crumble to dust thanks to being put in stasis.

7. Alchemax used this lab to contain Venom in Spider-Man 2099 #35-38. There are some problems with this. See below.

Continuity Errors

• Tyler calls his assistant/bodyguard Wilson here. However, his name is actually Winston, per Spider-Man 2099 #5. This is clearly an error as he calls him Winston later on in the same story.

Topical References

• Tyler Stones states that he stranded Spider-Man in the year 2014. The year in question should be considered topical.

Continuity Issues

As I’ve stated elsewhere, it’s my opinion that the events of Superior Spider-Man #17 diverged Earth-928 between Spider-Man 2099 Meets Spider-Man #1 and Spider-Man 2099 #26. For more on that reasoning go here. But in a nut shell, I made this distinction because it’s the only time where (a) Tyler Stone is not in a wheelchair, (b) Miguel knows Peter Parker, and (c) Miguel also knows that Tyler Stone is his biological father.

Some references in this series conflict with what was established in Spider-Man 2099 volume 1.

The first one is that when Spider-Man rhymes off different heroes he was seeking to contact, he mentions Strange 2099. Miguel met Strange 2099 in Spider-Man 2099 #32. At the time, Miguel had run away from Nueva York and gone on vacation in Mexico. At that same time, Tyler Stone was tapped by Doom 2099 to be Minister of Megacorporations, See Doom 2099 #30-34, not long after being assigned this post he was shot by Conchatta O’Hara in Spider-Man 2099 #34. Miguel is still away from Nueva York when this happens.

Likewise, the reference to containing Venom 2099 at Alchemax creates some problems as these events did not happen until Spider-Man 2099 #35-38. At that point, Tyler Stone is still confined to a hoverchair, and Miguel is in charge of Alchemax. Not long after this, Tyler Stone is killed in an explosion in issue #46, he was still in a hoverchair.

One could assume that Peter David/Dan Slott’s intention for Spider-Man 2099 was to ignore everything after Peter David stopped writing Spider-Man 2099 at issue #44, it still does not reconcile all of these conflicting references. For someone like Peter David, who usually pays close attention to continuity, these oversights are somewhat sloppy.

It doesn’t help that Marvel hasn’t shed any light on this (the last time Spider-Man 2099 had a profile in a Handbook it was in the 11th volume of the A-Z hardcovers.

As Marvel has yet to clear all this up, these discrepancies don’t have an official explanation.

In lieu of an official response, this is my theory on what’s going on: When Miguel is first sent back in time in Superior Spider-Man #17, it was at a point when time had been broken in the modern age from too much time travel (thanks to among other things, Age of Ultron) Miguel’s own timeline was at risk of being erased and it was converging with different eras in history. When Miguel was first sent back in time there was also a period of disorientation when he appeared in the modern era. As we saw in Superior Spider-Man #32-33, Otto Octavius’ own trip through time was bumpy as fuck and he saw glimpses of all sorts of alternate realities before he ended up on Earth-928.

It’s my theory that when Miguel went back in time when time was broken, he was shown visions of his original future (the one that doesn’t happen since Earth-928 has since diverged) and he got those visions of the future mixed up with his own memories, that’s how he could know about meeting individuals he actually hadn’t met yet.

This theory can work because it doesn’t necessitate Miguel having met Strange or Venom 2099. More over, Miguel could have still known about the containment unit to trap Daemos because it pre-existed their attempt to incarcerate Venom in there.