Spider-Man 2099 (vol. 2) Primer

Spider-Man 2099 was making a come back. After reappearing in the pages of Superior Spider-Man, we found Miguel O’Hara trapped in the past. His return proved so popular, Marvel greenlit a new Spider-Man 2099 series. The series saw the return of Peter David, the man who created Spider-Man 2099 and wrote the lion share of the stories involving the character. This created some issues with continuity.

Whenever Marvel brought back Spider-Man 2099, it was usually an alternate reality version of the character. Prior to his appearance in the pages of Superior Spider-Man the last time we saw this version of Spider-Man 2099 was in the pages of Captain Marvel volume 4, also written by Peter David. The ones who later appeared in the Timestorm event and in the Exiles were alternates that either came from a unique reality or one that diverged from Earth-928, the reality where the events of the original 2099 line of books took place.

This time, however, it appeared that they were bringing back the Spider-Man 2099. It also appeared that they were going to ignore all of the stuff that happened when Peter David left the original volume of Spider-Man 2099. This has created some issues with continuity. Marvel has yet to clear up the tangled mess but the best one can determine is that Marvel intends this Spider-Man 2099 to still come from Earth-928, meaning that his arrival in the modern age created a divergence based on the rules of Marvel’s timelines/multiverse.

The problems come when you consider how tightly contained the events of Spider-Man 2099 were at the time they were originally published. I approached the lion share of these issues here. As far as my assessment, the original Spider-Man 2099 diverges between Miguel O’Hara’s appearances in Spider-Man 2099 Meets Spider-Man #1 and Spider-Man 2099 #26.

I get the feeling that Peter David only agreed to write the character again if he could “take back” the character, ignoring all of the stuff he didn’t write and do his own thing again. This come’s very apparent as the 2nd volume progresses, so I’ll get into it later.

The problem with this series is that Peter David writes best when he is allowed to stretch out his stories and fully develop them. Unfortunately, the 2nd volume of Spider-Man 2099 only ran for 12 issues. The series had to straddle what was going on in the rest of the Marvel Universe. The series had to sideline it’s ongoing plots to accommodate a crossover for the Spider-Verse event that was taking place in all of the spider-books at the time. The series was also cut short because Marvel was hitting the reset button with the 2015 Secret Wars event.

Peter David wrote a limited series titled Secret Wars 2099, however that title had nothing to do with the rest of the 2099 stuff he would go on to write. Instead, it was a story of an alternate reality that will just confound things even further, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The series was supposed to be about Miguel trying to prevent Alchemax from becoming the tyrannical mega-corp it becomes in his own time. However, David ends up trying to do too much all at once. On top of this mission, he also begins a relationship with a character named Tempest Monroe. This led to a very convoluted plot about Tempest getting pregnant with Miguel’s kid in a plot that was hastily cleared up in the 3rd volume. It wasn’t given the attention it needed and really, at the end of the day, it almost seems kind of pointless. It’s wrapped up as an afterthought in the 5th volume of Amazing Spider-Man (long story, I’ll get into it sometime)

As I said, the series gets sidelined by the Spider-Verse event which crossed over into issues #5-8. Issue #5 shows Morlun — one of the key villains in Spider-Verse — killing all the alternate Spider-Man 2099 characters that exist in the multiverse, leaving only one left, the one that we’ve been following since Superior Spider-Man #17. This really supports my theory that David was “taking back” his character by killing off alternate versions of him that had appeared since David stopped writing for the character. By killing off these alternates, the only version of Spider-Man 2099 left was Peter David’s version, and that version was whatever he was going to make it from that moment onward. It’s kind of ironic that the character was forced into a rush ending with another writer ultimately resolving the loose ends, which is kind of what happened the first time around, but I digress.

After Spider-Verse, Peter David then had Miguel take a look at the future and sees that it has been changed into a nuclear wasteland. It just so happened it was Maestro’s future, a nightmare version of the Hulk that Peter David also created in the classic mini-series Hulk: Future Imperfect. Whereas David was "taking back” Spider-Man 2099 before other writers “interfered” with his creation, this revisit of Maestro’s dystopia is played so fast and loose it can only be delegated as an alternate reality different from the one seen in Future Imperfect. I’ll get into that when we get to that issue. Another sticking point is the fact that we are also reintroduced to Strange 2099, who is apparently the same one that appeared in the first volume of Spider-Man 2099. This creates all sorts of problems with continuity which, again, I’ll address later on.

After this trip down dystopia lane, the series is wrapped up for an unnecessary story where Tempest is turned into a wasp woman to fight Miguel. It’s rushed to a conclusion because after issue #12 the series was canceled to make way for Secret Wars. Although Spider-Man 2099 came back for a 3rd volume, which ran almost twice as long as the previous volume but also suffered the same pitfalls, but that’s a story for another time.

At the end of the day, the 2nd volume of Spider-Man 2099 promised a lot and delivered very little. I can say that, for someone who is usually so focused on continuity like Peter David, it’s a little disappointing to see him cherry-pick elements of Spider-Man 2099’s history he wanted to keep and ignoring all others regardless of how it defies what has been previously established.