Wherein Miguel’s attempt to do good blows up in his face again.
Creative Staff:
Story: Peter David
Art: Will Sliney
What They Say:
Miguel O’Hara finds himself in the middle of bidding war between Parker Industries and rival Alchemax! Not only that, but his traveling through time has put the people he cares about in the year 2014 in imminent danger!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Spider-Man 2099 draws to a close here and the book is like a lot of the series was in that it felt like it really had no purpose. The only purpose I can sort of find with it is that in the end, it created Alchemax proper in the present continuity so that it’s there in the future, but who knows what’s what with Secret Wars on deck now and everything potentially up for change. Beyond that, Miguel’s presence was mostly felt in the Spider-Verse storyline as he got to be involved there leaping across things, but that largely took place outside of this book. And when it shifted here, it had its fun moments but also just ended up adding to the chaotic nature of it all as things continued to change and there was no firm footing for him.
With this final issue, mostly what we get is action with a nice little nod that again may not mean anything after it’s all said and done here. With Miguel having tried to do the right thing by Tempest by curing her cancer, it ended up turning her into the Spider-Wasp creature with little memory of who she was and just a big old desire to eat spiders. That makes for some fun action across the city, which Will Sliney certainly knows how to provide with the layouts and angles for the viewer to take it all in, but that’s all that it really is. A series of fights that go on as Miguel tries to understand what happened and how to stop it. Lyla does at least provide a little insight for him that helps in that it’s a temporary problem and not one that was intentionally caused by anyone, so it’s just a matter of waiting out this very angry and hungry creature.
The fight naturally has to involve others a little bit, which is what happens when Miguel decides Central Park at night is the place to take this since few people will be around. It does draw in a cop, one of the only good cops in the city going by Miguel’s narrative about it and the state of things in the news in the real world, but we do see that it’s still very much a shoot first ask questions later scenario. The fight with Tempest in this form underwater is about as awkward as you can imagine since it’s a lot of thrashing about, but it does bring it all to a close eventually, with his secret getting out no less, but still kept because reasons. It’s not bad per se, but with this the end of the series due to Secret Wars and the Secret Wars 2099 series, there’s a very anti-climactic feeling here.
In Summary:
Migeul and Tempest haven’t been much of a thing overall when you look at this series as a whole and the importance of what happens here is minimal overall. Not to Tempest of course, and I doubt Miguel has really learned his lesson about bringing things back from the future, but the series as a whole is one that has left me wondering why it was greenlit. I really like the character and I loved the 2099 universe itself from the old days, and there was certainly potential with using Miguel in the present with Alchemax’s true formation and seeding other things. But looking back at the run that we have, there’s nothing memorable here and nothing that feels like it adds anything in the long run. it was fun and had its moments, again notably with the Spider-Verse elements, but that’s not enough to salvage it. Hopefully the next 2099 book will actually be in 2099 beyond the Secret Wars series.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: May 13th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
