Spider-Man 2099

• 1. Introduction

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  Spider-Man 2099 made his first appearance in a five-page sneak preview printed inside the 30th-anniversary issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Readers met a hero who lived about 107 years beyond the Marvel Universe of that moment. His creators were writer Peter David and artist Rick Leonardi, and the year was 1992. David named the lead after his friend, the actor Miguel Ferrer. That borrowed name now belongs to a fictional geneticist in a corporate-ruled New York that has been renamed Nueva York. How does a scientist in that world end up with half a spider's genetic code? Why would a future built to be Marvel's official destiny leave its hero marooned in our own present? And how does a comic-book hero from the early 1990s end up in a post-credits scene at the movies?

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• 2. Marvel's Official Future

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  Four names appear in the credits of Spider-Man 2099 #1. Peter David wrote it, Rick Leonardi pencilled it, Al Williamson inked it, and Rick Parker lettered it. Leonardi designed the character first. David was then brought in to flesh out Miguel O'Hara and the people around him. That debut issue remains the best-selling single issue of any comic David has written.

  The world around the hero was bleak by design. Spider-Man 2099 was one of many classic Marvel characters re-imagined for the Marvel 2099 line. When the line launched, its stories were meant to show the real future of the Marvel Universe. It was a dystopian America governed by corrupt megacorporations, with cyberpunk elements throughout.

  The series sold more than 100,000 copies an issue. Even so, the whole line lurched in early 1996, when the 2099 editor Joey Cavalieri was fired. Marvel's finances and future were unstable then, and sudden firings were common. Like nearly every other writer in the line, David resigned in solidarity with his editor. He left the book with issue #44.

  Fill-in writers and editors took over. The last two issues were made without David's input, and the series ended with issue #46. A few months later Marvel announced 2099: World of Tomorrow, a new bi-monthly title under a new staff. It ran for eight issues and was meant to be the finale for the entire line.

  The character did not stay buried. Captain Marvel volume 3, issues 27 to 30, written by David himself, brought Miguel back for a cameo. So did Exiles, across issues 75 to 99.

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• 3. Half a Spider

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  Alchemax, the megacorporation that also controlled local law enforcement, ran the genetics program that Miguel O'Hara eventually headed. The program aimed to produce controlled super-powered soldiers called corporate raiders. Miguel was inspired by surviving records of the original Spider-Man. He hoped to create a person with similar powers.

  Then a human test subject died during an early experiment. Miguel told Tyler Stone, Alchemax's Vice President of research and development, that he wanted to resign and drop the research. Stone would not let him walk away. He tricked Miguel into taking Rapture, an addictive drug that bonds genetically to its user.

  Stone also set a trap with the law. Only Alchemax could legally distribute Rapture, so if Miguel left, Stone would have to assume the drug came from the black market and report him to the police. Miguel remembered that he had once entered his own genetic code into the machine's databanks as a human test sample. He sneaked into Alchemax and used the gene alteration machines on himself. His plan was to overwrite his current biology with that older, purer template.

  His jealous subordinate Aaron Delgado sabotaged the machines. They rewrote Miguel's code as 50 percent spider DNA. Miguel survived and soon discovered he had spider abilities. Tyler Stone, realizing a person now existed with powers like Spider-Man's, sent agents to hunt him down.

  Miguel hid behind a bodysuit and mask he had once worn at the Mexican Day of the Dead festival. A group of Thorites, worshippers of the Marvel hero Thor, watched him in action. They decided he was the legendary Spider-Man returned from the dead, and a harbinger of Thor's return.

  At first Miguel only wanted a cure. Each adventure showed him how ignorant he had been, and how long he had ignored the pain that the corporations caused. He then proclaimed himself an enemy of every megacorp. He vowed to use his powers for ordinary people against those who abused their authority.

  Soon he found that Alchemax scientist Jordan Boone was running Virtual Unreality experiments to open a doorway to another dimension. Two mysterious figures came through, the Net Prophet and a megalomaniac named Thanatos. Years later, in Peter David's Captain Marvel series, the Time Flies Saga revealed their true identities. The Net Prophet was the hero Justice, John Tensen. Thanatos was a corrupt version of Rick Jones from Earth-9309.

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• 4. The Circle Around Him

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  The Alchemax School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester is where Miguel first met Xina Kwan. The school is heavily implied to be a renovated version of the X-Men's headquarters. Xina was a computer specialist of similar intelligence, and she helped Miguel stand up to a bully named Kron Stone, son of Tyler Stone. They became best friends and later fell for each other.

  As adults they dated seriously, until Miguel cheated on Xina with Dana D'Angelo, the girlfriend of his brother Gabe. Miguel and Dana later became engaged. An editorial called Dissecting Spider-Man reads this as deliberate self-sabotage. It says Xina threatened his superiority complex by being his intellectual equal: "He had felt somewhat disconcerted, his master of his environment threatened, whenever Xina was around." Dana, by contrast, was ideal because she was "bright enough not to annoy him, but not so sharp that she was a threat."

  Miguel looks arrogant and confident, but he is a very private man. He trusts almost no one, with one exception. That exception is Lyla, an AI assistant that Xina built as a gift for him.

  His family was harder to trust. Miguel was born in Nueva York after his mother, Conchata, had an affair with his father's boss. He grew up with her, his younger brother Gabriel, and his abusive father, George O'Hara. Later, while eavesdropping on a talk between his mother and Tyler Stone, Miguel learned two things. The Rapture was only a short-lasting simulation that would have faded on its own. And Tyler Stone was his real father.

  Gabe, meanwhile, had worked out the secret. He recognized the Spider-Man costume from the Day of the Dead outfit Miguel once wore. He resented Miguel's new heroic career, partly because his girlfriend Kasey was enamored with the masked hero. Dana's trust frayed too. She accused Miguel of cheating with Xina after he asked Xina to repair Lyla, and she showed a growing interest in Tyler Stone. The couple split, and Xina and Miguel became companions again.

  A new villain called the Goblin soon began a smear campaign against Spider-Man 2099, using out-of-context evidence to paint him as a corporate tool. Miguel eventually unmasked the Goblin. It was his own brother Gabe, twisted by jealousy.

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• 5. Ruling Alchemax

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  Valhalla, a floating city belonging to Alchemax, is where Miguel and Dana found two men claiming to be Thor and Heimdall. Alchemax CEO Avatarr had turned ordinary people into duplicates of the Asgardians. His aim was to wipe out the growing public influence of the new superheroes. Doom, Ravage, the Punisher named Jake Gallows, the X-Men, and Spider-Man 2099 joined forces to beat the fake Aesir, and Valhalla fell.

  Then Doom 2099 took control of the United States and its megacorps. Tyler Stone became Doom's Corporate Minister, and Miguel was offered the CEO seat at Alchemax. Doom also offered Spider-Man 2099 the post of Minister of Supernormal Affairs. Miguel accepted the Alchemax job, hoping to improve the company from inside. He used his new influence to order law enforcement to leave Spider-Man 2099 alone.

  Power brought new fights. A version of Venom attacked Tyler Stone while he lay in hospital after being shot. In a later battle between Spider-Man 2099 and Venom 2099, Dana was killed. On the corporate side, bio-engineered Neo-Atlanteans rose up. They had been bred as workers to finish Alchemax's underwater colony, Atlantis. Their leader was Roman, the new Sub-Mariner, whose name reverses the spelling of Namor. Spider-Man fended them off. During this stretch Miguel's mother became his secretary and confessed that she had been the one who shot Tyler Stone.

  The finale of the original series was brutal. The Phalanx approached Earth and flooded New York, and the Atlanteans returned in force. Tyler Stone and Miguel's mother apparently died, and the Vulture destroyed the Alchemax building. Miguel and Dana's sister Jennifer were left aboard an Alchemax airship, unsure where to go.

  After the cancellation, 2099: World of Tomorrow showed the polar ice caps melting and a deluge killing most of the world. The techno-organic Phalanx then threatened the survivors. Spider-Man worked with Doom 2099 to end the invasion, and Doom gave his life for humanity.

  The 1998 one-shot 2099: Manifest Destiny covered the rebuilding. Miguel reopened Alchemax to recover lost technologies and restore civilization. He addressed Xina as "Mrs O'Hara," revealing that they had married. Together they woke Steve Rogers and offered him Thor's hammer Mjolnir. Rogers was jettisoned into space and passed the hammer to Miguel, who was also judged worthy to wield it.

  Secretly aided by Zero Cochrane 2.0, who is Ghost Rider 2099, Miguel ruled for a thousand years. In that time peace, morality and progress spread from Earth to the surrounding worlds. In 3099 Rogers was revived once more and took back the hammer, and Miguel retired beside Xina. The one-shot also said his mother had survived. Years later, in Superior Spider-Man #17, his father was revealed to be alive as well.

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• 6. Body and Gear

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  Miguel once suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs and major abrasions, and still made it to a hospital. The doctors said only his amazing constitution had kept him alive. He never took combat training. Yet his superhuman agility, strength, senses and intellect let him quickly build an effective fighting style. Access to these abilities is largely instinctual, a result of his rewritten genetic code.

  He heals a few times faster than a normal human, though he has no healing factor like Wolverine's. He also lacks the extra-sensory spider-sense that warns Peter Parker of danger. Instead he has enhanced vision and hearing, which Peter does not. He can see in complete darkness and zoom in on distant objects. His eyes are so light sensitive that he wears tinted glasses, which he passes off as a side effect of the Rapture. His irises turned red, and when he zooms in on something far away, his eyes often go completely white.

  Spinnerets in his forearms fire an organic adhesive from the top of his wrists. He swings on web-lines and ensnares enemies with the webbing, which loses its tensile strength over time. Pressure on his forearms has sometimes released webbing by accident.

  The original Spider-Man can stick to surfaces with any part of his body. Miguel clings only with his hands and feet, using angled talons about an inch long. They are not retractable, but they fold down when he concentrates and automatically when he touches his own skin. They slice easily through flesh and plastic, and they can rend metal armor.

  He also has venom glands and pointed canine teeth. A bite releases a toxin that temporarily paralyzes a foe, strong enough to affect Thanos. Because he cannot retract his fangs, he has learned to speak without showing his teeth, and others sometimes accuse him of mumbling.

  His costume is made from Unstable Molecule Fabric, or UMF, invented by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. The fabric was designed to be indestructible and to work with super-powers without hampering them. That is why Miguel picked his festival outfit. It was the only clothing he owned that his talons would not shred. The costume gives limited protection from energy weapons, but he still feels the impact. It also does not cushion a fall; it simply does not tear.

  On the back of the costume sits a small web-like airfoil made from "Lyte Byte," taken from a Thorite's hang-glider. It captures and directs air currents and gives off a low level of anti-gravity particles. That gives him limited gliding across the vast gaps between New York's skyscrapers. By the second volume of the series he had added anti-gravity material that let him fly. He often reinforces his mask with webbing so enemies cannot remove it, then cuts the webbing off with his talons.

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• 7. Out of Time

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  In the 1995 one-shot Spider-Man 2099 Meets Spider-Man, Miguel woke up next to Peter Parker's wife, Mary Jane. Peter, meanwhile, found himself in the future. The cause was experiments on a temporal energy generator, run by Fujikawa in the Modern Age and by Alchemax in 2099. Peter fought the Vulture of 2099, and Miguel faced Venom, Eddie Brock. Miguel realized the anomaly was the event that, according to history, wiped out the heroes of the Heroic Age. A time-traveling female Hobgoblin from 2211, Robin Borne, was a major cause of the chaos. Her father, a Spider-Man named Max Borne, helped end it, and everyone returned to their own time.

  The lasting stranding came in the 2013 Necessary Evil story in The Superior Spider-Man. Tyler Stone left Miguel stuck in the present. Miguel took the alias Michael O'Mara, with Lyla in a holographic wristwatch, and became assistant to Tiberius Stone. Tiberius turned out to be Tyler's father and Miguel's grandfather. Miguel stayed to watch the new Alchemax, which Norman Osborn was running. Along the way he met Liz Allan, and a time-traveler from 2211 tried to kill him over their future interaction. Miguel refused to let the agent kill either of them.

  In July 2014 Marvel launched a second Spider-Man 2099 series, with Peter David writing again and Will Sliney drawing. It tied into the Spider-Verse crossover. Spider-UK, Mayday Parker Spider-Girl of Earth-982 and Spider-Ham recruited Miguel into the Spider-Army. Its enemies were the Inheritors, who hunt and devour Spider Totems across the Multiverse. Back in 2099, Miguel and Lady Spider, May Reily, trapped the Inheritor Daemos in an energy field. Six-Armed Spider-Man gave his life to buy them time. They later repaired Toei Spider-Man's robot Leopardon and carried it to Loomworld, where the Superior Spider-Man killed Master Weaver.

  Going home failed. Miguel landed instead in the post-apocalyptic 2099 of Earth-9200, where Maestro mistook him for that world's Peter Parker and imprisoned him. A woman named Strange helped him escape, but he ended up in 2015 of Earth-616 again. After the Secret Wars storyline he was stranded once more. He took a job at Parker Industries and vowed to improve the world without being Spider-Man.

  A time portal he built kept showing a devastated 2099. His lover Tempest was killed in a terrorist attack, so he hunted Doctor Chronos, who worked for an organization called the Fist. Tempest turned out to be alive, in a coma. The Fist planned to bring its scheme to fruition on the 15th of May 2019, so Miguel traveled there to stop it. He was killed when a hypnotic suggestion planted by Stone made Tempest stab him. Doctor Strange 2099 resurrected him, with help from Roberta Mendez and Tempest's son Gabri. Volume 3 ended with issue #25 in September 2017, and Miguel back in 2099. The final arc also introduced a second character using the Spider-Man 2099 name. As Miguel recovered, his allies told him that the world was finally entering the year 2100.

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• 8. Other Worlds and Screens

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  In The Amazing Spider-Man #439, two archaeologists in the year 2998 dig up relics belonging to Spider-Man, including his webshooters. They discuss the heroes he inspired, among them Spider-Girl, Spider-Man 2099 and Spider-Man 2211. Many other Miguels exist across the Marvel multiverse.

  In the Exiles run, the villain Proteus unmasked Miguel before the public. Guilty about sending Proteus to a parallel Earth, Miguel left his world to join the Exiles. A parallel Mary Jane Watson later found him on a beach, and the two fell in love. The other Exiles decided he deserved a normal life and left him there. When Morlun began hunting spiders years later, he killed that Miguel in front of the Miguel from the original timeline.

  A Destiny War version of Spider-Man 2099 appears in Avengers Forever #12. In the Earth-2099 reality, Miguel hallucinates other Earths and becomes Spider-Man after Alchemax destroys his brother's apartment. That version later helps start the Spider-Society with Madame Web and Lady Araña. During Secret Wars, the Battleworld domain of 2099 had Miguel as Miguel Stone, the legitimate son of Tyler Stone. He led an Alchemax-sponsored Avengers team that included Hercules and future versions of Iron Man and Captain America.

  The four-issue 2009 miniseries Timestorm 2009-2099 gave him a different life. This Miguel is a high school student at Pym Academy who lives with his scientist father and has no siblings. A Timestorm accident mixed his DNA with that of a spider he was working on in class. He has a spider-sense, and no talons. His classmate Kron Stone, caught in the same accident, became Scorpion 2099. In the Warp World, Spider-Man 2099 merged with Ravage 2099 to become Arachknight 2099. And What The--?! #26 features Piguel O'Malley, a Spider-Ham version from Earth-8311.

  On television, a Spider-Man 2099 animated series was considered in 1999. It was dropped because Batman Beyond, another futuristic series, had premiered earlier that year. Creator Will Meugniot made Spider-Man Unlimited instead. Miguel later appeared in the Ultimate Spider-Man episode The Spider-Verse, voiced by Freddy Rodriguez, and animated in CGI while in his own universe.

  His cinema debut was in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018. Oscar Isaac voiced him in the post-credits scene, where he and Lyla learn about the film's events while building a watch for safe dimensional travel. He tests it by visiting Earth-67 and quickly argues with its Spider-Man. Isaac returned in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in 2023, where Miguel has formed the Spider-Society to protect the multiverse.

  Video games gave him many roles. Marvel 2099: One Nation Under Doom would have made him playable, but it was cancelled mid-development. In Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, voiced by Dan Gilvezan, Madame Web grants him a spider-sense to help recover pieces of the Tablet of Order and Chaos. In Marvel's Spider-Man 2, released in 2023, his black suit is an alternate costume for Peter Parker.

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