“Because Tempest thought it would be fun…”
WRITER Peter David
ART Will Sliney
COLOR Frank D’Armata
LETTERER VC’s Cory Petit
EDITOR Devin Lewis
Spider-Man 2099 picks up in the pieces of whatever the Hell post-Hickman Wars Marvel is now, with Miggy leading a new life. But is his new happiness destined to be short lived?
SUMMARY: The story opens up with Miguel O’Hara taking part in ‘Ninja USA,’ an obstacle course show, and of course he nails it because, after all, he’s Spider-Man. Well, one of them, anyway! But his new boss, international business tycoon and CEO Peter Parker, isn’t thrilled with Miguel going on TV. He’s also not thrilled with Miguel hanging up the webs in the 616 (or is it 717 now… who the hell knows anymore) and he’s not at all happy with the influence Tempest (Miggy’s superintendent and girlfriend) is having on Miguel.
Later, we find out that Parker Industries has taken Alchemax out of the running for a new New York super prison, and that a group called Empire Unlimited is the only firm building one now – so apparently Parker Industries is out of the super prison business as well.
Back down in the bowels of Parker Industries, Miggy uses a time portal to check back on the 2099 timeline which, last he saw, had been completely devastated. Miggy had thought that derailing Alchemax would change 2099’s fate, but alas, it didn’t. 2099 is still a wasteland. Miguel resolves to figure out what’s still causing his home timeline to be ruined.
Across town at Alchemax, Liz Allen, Tiberius Stone and former Scorpion Mac Gargan are approached by the ‘Department of Internal Security’ (or DIS – heh) to build a prison for super powered terrorists where they can be ‘questioned.’
Our story closes with Miguel and Tempest talking over dinner, mostly about their relationship over the past few months… but before Tempest can tell Miguel that she’s pregnant, a car slams into the restaurant and explodes – and Tempest may have become a casualty.
ANALYSIS: The second volume of Miguel’s adventures, which were hijacked by the Spider-Verse and Hickman Wars events, was a better Spider-Man book last year than Amazing Spider-Man. And, held against the most recent ASM #1, that remains true.
In fact, there’s even a moment here which underscored something very important for this Spider-fan: Peter Parker as we knew him is dead (again). And he’s been gone for quite some time. Ever since OMD, Peter Parker has been mishandled and bungled, and reinvented again and again, to the point that he’s no longer recognizable. Marvel has a fetish now for many heroes getting “reimagined” with a Tony Stark template. We see that here with Peter (as well as Doctor Strange #1, unfortunately). The original Spider-Man has been damaged so much from Marvel’s “throw everything against the wall and see what slips down the slowest” attitude, and Peter Parker as a character has suffered tremendously for it.
This isn’t Peter David’s fault of course; he’s writing Peter consistently for how he’s currently being presented in other books. But it did make me sad to see. Quite honestly though, I would have preferred for Miguel to have remained at Alchemax with Liz instead of working for Peter. That way Miggy could be more of his own man and less of yet-another-Spider-character living in the shadow of Spider-Man 1 (Peter), Spider-Man 2 (Miles), Spider-Gwen, Spider-Silk, etc. etc.
Speaking of Alchemax and Liz, I am glad they’re sticking around. Especially Mac Gargan, who Peter David is starting to make me like almost as much as Fred ‘Boomerang’ Myers. David is doing a great job making Gargan more than just a two-dimensional villain. And here’s hoping Tempest pulls through. David did such a great job fleshing her out and making her enjoyable in the last volume.
Will Sliney’s art continues to be strong and he’s such a great match for Peter David’s work. It looks like he had a lot of fun with the Ninja USA sequence!
REVIEW: B+
An action-light story does a great job of staying true to Miguel O’Hara as a character and setting a new stage for Miggy to swing through new adventures. Let’s just hope it’s not derailed and commandeered by yet another Marvel event anytime soon.
–George Berryman!
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I think the car hitting the restaurant is going to be tied in with Miguel revealing himself on that TV game show. A sort of consequences for being irresponsible type story line.
@#7 – I didn’t notice the look of those two future people being important. Good call on that. I thought there was something about that panel that I should have gotten, but I just didn’t connect those dots.
Whats wrong with the new Dr. Strange, George? I thought it was pretty good..but to be honest I haven’t been following Strange that long so you do have a better grasp than I do.
I call it the save me money universe since I am not buying this gimmick crap. Marvel needs to clean up it’s act to get me interested in buying much now.
Oh, so I suppose Empire Unlimited is Regent’s company, and he’s going to house supercriminals whose powers he can drain. So he’s infiltrated his way into Spider-man 2099, too. Oh, well. It makes me wish the Miguel stories existed in a universe completely unaffected by Dan Slott’s influence.
#6 That was absolutely Roberta (and her family members remain the same), especially since in the last panel of Roberta and the family, we see Cap 2099. Although how this plays in remains a major question mark, though since PAD also wrote SW2099, I’ll safely assume he’s had this planned out at least since then.
I’ve not heard universe 8 anywhere. As far as I can tell the Multiverse has basically been restored aas it was pre-Secret Wars except that some characters from AUs are in what is effectively 616. It’s 616 in all but name basically, it’s not even really a soft reboot. Since 616 got comined with ultimate 1601, let’s just call this the 61610 universe now.
@#5: I found the American Ninja thing funny and actually in character for Miguel. He’s the more cynical Spider-Man who in a way doesn’t give a damn so why not just go nuts when he’s gotten to the point of just not caring anymore and ground down by stuff.
I agree about a reality show not testing for super powers but you could explain that away with it’s a really, really badly run show or the fact that its one of those things which doesn’t make sense in a superhero world along with why don’t we have flying cars if Reed Richards invented one in 1962?
I’m tempted to say that fridging Tempest is so cliché here that a writer of PAD’s calibre cannot possibly be pulling it in such an obvious way. I hope I’m right but I will admit it doesn’t look good.
I suspect the baby will survive though. The people Miguel battled in the future had Tempest’s pink hair and also wasp like wings kinda like she had in the last issue before Secret Wars when she turned into Shathra 2099. I am guessing that Miguel intermingling his spider DNA with Shathra’s wasp DNA will create a baby which will lead to those people and that has something to do with destroying the future.
@#4 – Considering Hickman’s not going to be very involved with it post-Secret War and it doesn’t look like anything’s changed that much from the old 616, I don’t think that would be very appropriate. I have no clue where they’re getting University 8 from, but maybe they’ve got a whole Mutliverse diagram like Grant Morrison did for Multiversity.
I was kinda disappointed in this issue. I loved and really enjoyed 2099 (both volumes), and was looking forward to getting back into the adventures of Miguel, but this issue kinda fell flat for me. Maybe because Miguel wasn’t Spider-Man in it or something, but it still feels like there could’ve been more “oomph” in the issue.
‘s weird that the Spiders are all on first-name basis with each other. It’s like, they’re trying to play off all the Spiders as one big Spider-family who know and work well with each other, when they’ve all barely interacted outside of knowing and being friends with Peter. Miguel talking about Miles sounds really weird since, despite being in Spider-Verse together, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them interact with each other
That seen with Peter suggesting Miguel try out a new suit…ugh. I can’t even count on PAD for writing a solid Peter anymore, or at least one that doesn’t seem like a bad Tony Stark parody.
It is nice to still see PAD using Gargan, who’s apparently now Stone’s no. 2 and a big part of Alchemax , and this has the potential to be the most done with Scorpion since he became Scorpion again way back in Big Time. Also interested to see if PAD will throw any complications Miguels way to get him and Liz to interact again, and I doubt she’ll take kindly to realizing he’s been helping to sabotage Alchemax. Though I wonder if this gitmo they’re building is related to the continually degrading future Miguel keeps checking up on?
Did anyone else notice Roberta Mendez (2099 Captain America) as the secretary to the secretary of that guy who works for Miguel? It seems like she survived Battleworld and ended up in the new main universe, stuck in her civilian personality, and seems to have found a new family (or did her family come with her?) Interesting…I wonder how she’ll react to Miguel considering her experience with his Secret War counterpart? Would she understand that they’re two different people?
That scene at the end with Tempest…I don’t want to accuse PAD of fridging a character, because he’s a far better writer then that and we haven’t seen what’ll happen next, but a random car swerving into the restaurant was very random and abrupt and seems like just an unnecessary attempt to instill some drama in the book. Perfectly happy with being proven wrong though.
So for me, this definitely wasn’t one of PAD’s stronger issues, but I hope it improves because I care about Miguel and want his book to do well and still be the solid Spider-Man title it was last volume.
Jason Latour and the guys working on the Spider-Women crossover in a recent interview called the main Marvel U “616” and Spider-Gwen’s universe is still called “65.” In the Web Warriors backup in ASM, “1602” is still being used so, yeah, sure Brevoort.
I was less than whelmed by the issue. Agree about the mischaracterization of Peter Parker, who bears no resemblance to his original character nor has be been replaced by anyone remotely interesting to read. I also thought Miguel appearing on American Ninja was as stupid as Not!Peter said it was, for many of the same reasons. He’s even working for Parker Industries, which is known to employ Spider-Man, so yeah, way to hide secret identity. Also, hard to believe a reality show in the Marvel U. doesn’t test for superpowers, but whatever.
I hope Tempest pulls through. It’s very sad to think that Peter David, of all writers, is resorting to fridging as a plot device in 2015.
@3 – That’s what Brevoort originally called it, so I’m kinda glad it didn’t stick. I’m toying with calling it Hickman’s Marvel.
@2 – I thought we were going to keep unofficially calling it the NuMU, but that didn’t really seem to stick.
@1 – Yeah Sliney’s art shows some kind of jaw reconstruction/surgery on Gargan. And yes, he’s out of costume.
“Also, I heard they’re calling the new Marvel continuity Universe 8 or something.”
Guess that means after next year’s bloated event we’ll have Universe 9 or ‘All New All Different’ Universe 8. This stuff parodies itself now.
Sounds like Peter Parker is in a nagging, mother hen role of sorts here. How odd.
Is Gargan just in this out of costume? I take it he got his jaw reattached after ASM #700? Always kinda liked Scorpion.
Also, I heard they’re calling the new Marvel continuity Universe 8 or something.