“Utopia Attacked”
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Orlando
Art: Ibraim Roberson, Jose Luis, Oren Junior
Colors: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
What They Say:
THE IMPALER SCORNED! DRACULA has conquered a world determined to quash him! Now, with an army at his back, he sets his sights on the new vampire homeworld – DOMUS DRACONUM! What he discovers will shatter his dark heart!!! What tragic event sets him on a collision course with NOVA, SPIDER-MAN…and the SPIDER-WOMAN of 2099?! Featuring the first appearance of SPIDERCIDE 2099!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I’ve long been a sucker for the 2099 books going back to when they were first introduced. There have been various attempts at keeping it relevant over the years and we’ve seen some renewed interest thanks to the second Spider-verse film that featured the most prominent of the characters. This five-issue series had me interested since Steve Orlando is the right kind of writer to tackle works like this and keep it fun and moving but also play with the Marvel pieces in the right way. We also get a solid team of artists on board to handle it along with Andrew Dalhouse on the color design to make it quite cohesive. It’s got the familiar look of a lot of the 2099 books but that’s largely a plus as there’s a lot to like and work with here in this weirdly complicated and complex future.
With some of the recent Spider-Man 2099 material talking about Dracula and his heading to a new world, the bulk of this opening issue is involved with that. But we do get some time on Earth as well, though it’s pretty much all at Oasis X where Migeul has come to deal with Shockpile as he’s causing trouble while trying to find some refuge as a mutant in order to save his hide. It’s a decent bit that fills us in on how this part of the world is set up and some time with Cyclops and Phoenix that’s interesting, but it shifts quickly to the arrival of Spider-Woman from Mars where she’s come to warn of impending danger in regards to her species. But even that gets sidelined because then Nova shows up looking for her to basically interrogate her hard to get information so he can deal with this threat from her species. It’s a lot of machismo floating here with the tough guy act, which doesn’t go over well with anyone, but Miguel’s protective nature just makes it worse as Spider-Woman can handle things herself.
When it comes to Dracula, his story is pretty interesting while journeying to the world he was supposed to join his kind on. Unfortunately, he and his captains ended up being captured by another world with a ladder named Mathus that attempted to destroy him only to have Dracula get revenge by converting the entire world to vampirism. The narration covers it well and while it’s basically an info dump it conveys where he stands as he finally starts his journey, with a massive influx of new vampires, to this promised world. Finding that it and his people have been overrun by the Araneon, and his own daughter in such dire straits, now moves him to a kind of conquest mode that will have galactic ramifications – hence what we see with Nova on Earth. It’s a good setup to show that Dracula really does just want a quiet peaceful life – and his people achieved it on this new world until the Araneon’s showed up, but he’s now putting back on his Vlad the Impaler person to deal with what’s happened to his kind.
In Summary:
A vampire-based story just after the Blood Hunt storyline doesn’t exactly thrill me but it being in the future helps a lot since it’s working with some very different ideas. I do like the general presentation of Dracula here and how he keeps getting pulled into things that have nothing to do with him and just make everything else worse. You do feel for the guy, though he does take things to extremes himself. The Oasis X side is interesting enough but it comes with a lot of history that we’ve got a smidge of here whereas the Dracula side is more deeply explored. It’s chaotic since it’s trying to bring in not just Miguel as our entry point to the place, but also Spider-Woman and then Nova as well. It’s doing a lot in a short amount of space overall and this is where it suffers. Which is fine as nailing the Dracula side of the story is more important right now.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: October 9th, 2024
MSRP: $4.99
