HERO HISTORY: Spider-Man 2099

Or – “Power And Responsibility Transcending Time And Space…”

The modern Heroic Age of the modern universe gave rise to legends that have endured for decades, both in-universe and out.  Among those is the legend of Spider-Man, a colorful hero whose battles against foes large and small taught everyone a lesson involving the responsibilities of having super-powers.  About a century later (depending on comic-book time, of course) a new hero rose, taking his name as a tribute to the old and heralding, like his predecessor, a new heroic age.  And, like Peter Parker, he was considered an unlikely hero, but one who quickly came to embody the best that his generation had to offer.  This, then, is your Major Spoilers Hero History of Miguel O’Hara of the year 2099, who took up the mantle of a fallen legend to become Spider-Man 2099!

Our tale begins in the future, a world where corporate entities are all-powerful, and the most profitable are run as fiefdoms until themselves, with names like Stark-Fujikawa and Alchemax carrying the weight and authority of our modern nations.  The all-seeing Public Eye sentries are quick to take down any hint of dissension in the populace, and the masses are numbed with the historical one-two punch of bread and circuses.  Aaand, in the midst of it all, the Spider-Man comes a’callin!

The appearance of such a bizarre figure sets the Public Eye in motion, trying to bring the new menace down, but like his predecessor, this Spider-Man is fast, strong and agile, and leaps from building to building.  Can he swing on a web?

You’re darned tootin’ he can!  He can also make the jack-booted foot-soldiers who forcibly keep the peace look like schmucks, something that the average man in the streets of 2099 New York has never seen.

After his first foray in the (you should excuse the expression) public eye, Spider-Man returns home to his apartment, revealing himself to be the genius bio-geneticist Miguel O’Hara, an employee of the mighty Alchemax conglomerate.  Miguel, like Peter Parker before him, is brilliant, but not exactly the most socially adequate of people, meaning that Lyla (the artificial intelligence who runs his home) may be his closest friend, and even his own family doesn’t really know what’s going on in his head.

Miguel’s powers, like those of his legendary predecessor, were entirely accidental, stemming from an experiment designed to genetically engineer corporate raiders (or, more honestly, superhuman cannon fodder) for whatever nefarious purpose Alchemax might intend.  Miggy’s initial idea for their abilities comes from the mists of what is his history, a remnant dating back to the original age of Marvels…

Though highly respected at Alchemax, Miguel is not universally loved, but he DOES have more of a conscience than many of his compatriots.  When a test subject dies as a result of his experiments, Miguel is moved to tell his boss, Tyler Stone, that he is quitting and leaving the business to find a less morally ambiguous line of work.  Stone’s response sets in motion the events that will lead Miguel to the rooftops of NYC…

Having dosed Miguel with the hyper-addictive drug Rapture, Stone believes that he now has a perfectly loyal lapdog, that Miguel will now toe the company line and give him the superhumans that he desires.  What he DOESN’T count on is O’Hara’s brilliance.  Recalling that he recorded his own genetic template in an earlier lab test, Miguel sets off to use his clearance and his invention to rewrite his own DNA, without the Rapture addiction…

Reminds me of what television scientist David Banner did right before he was irradiated with enough gamma rays to make Australia glow green.  Like Doctor Bixby Banner, things quickly turn bad as one of his scorned subordinates finds O’Hara in the lab, and sets about getting his revenge on the brilliant man who (correctly) implied that Delgado wasn’t up to his own level of intellect.

Since the machine was being used to replicate the powers of Spider-Man, Delgado cranks up the spider-DNA, and Miguel’s entire genetic structure is rewritten:  Half Man, Half…  Okay, you probably already figured out what the other half is.

Even though he now has the powers that he sought to create, Miguel isn’t happy, mostly because he’s a criminal, a freak AND his boss wants to harvest his abilities and use him as a template for an army of obedient spider-freaks.  Luckily, O’Hara thinks well on his feet, and decides to adopt a disguise…

Using his old Dia De Los Muertos garb, Miguel quickly builds a costume, intentionally or unintentionally emulating the original Spider-Man.  He even takes advantage of future technology to build in abilities that neither spider nor Spider-Man has ever been able to harness, such as the power of short-range glider-wing “flight”.

Interestingly, even though he idolizes the wise-cracking style of the Wall-Crawler, O’Hara is a much angrier and more sardonic presence (probably because of his up-bringing in a crapsack future dystopia), right down to his choice of motivational catch-phrase…

The people of 2099 New York, however, respond to the Spider-Man in their midst as a beacon of hope.  Some are amazed that anyone would defy the public eye, some are entranced by the idea of the return of heroes to their oppressive world…  Some are convinced that his presence is a sign, a harbinger of the return of the Mighty Thor, worshipped once again by a sect of Thorites.  Spider-Man continues to use his alternate identity, at first just seeking a cure, but eventually working to undermine the corruption of the corporate states that run his world.  When another Alchemax scientist uses his own tech to call forth the mysterious Net Prophet, the worshippers of Thor are whipped into a religious fervor…

Of course, things are never simple for any Spider-Man, and the presence of the Prophet (who, I should point out, is actually John Tensen from the New Universe) is complicated by the presence of Thanatos, whose motivations are unclear, but who doesn’t want anyone to get too comfortable in their belief that Thor is going to return and save the world.  The battle with Thanatos also allows Spider-Man to realize that his new abilities are more even than he realized…

Spider-Man finds that other heroes are rising around him (though, to be honest, most of them are particularly ineffectual, not mentioning any names called Ravage), and Miguel and his fellow super-types are all shocked when a visit to Alchemax’ floating city called Valhalla reveals that Thor has indeed returned from beyond the pale, and he’s brought Heimdall with him, presaging the return of the Norse Gods!

It’s kind of a double-edged sword for Spider-Man, as the same people who support him in his crusade against his bosses and the other overlords are supporting Thor and Heimdall, but O’Hara finds something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark and similar provinces, a suspicion that becomes more distinct when Thor tries to hammer his brain in.  (When your only tool is a hammer, you hammer people like a tool…  Or something.)

When it becomes clear that the “gods” are nothing more than a ploy by Alchemax to cash in on the new heroes with their own powers, and he teams up with his new fellows to take down the threat.  Being the genius that he is, O’Hara is even able to play the public’s faith to his own ends without crushing the hope of the common man, using his head as well as his web-shooters and claws.

Things take a sinister turn for Spider-Man, when he accidentally eavesdrops (thanks to his wall-crawling) on a conversation between his jerkass boss and his controlling mother, a conversation which changes his perspective on BOTH halves of his double life!

Mama O’Hara has come to Stone to argue for the freedom of the lady-friend of Miguel’s brother Gabriel, but Spider-Man is horrified when the first conversational bomb drops…

Before he has the chance to fully process that his own rash actions led to him becoming the Spider-Man, and that without those actions, he’d still be a normal human, his mother takes the conversation nuclear…

His sense of self shattered, Spider-Man flees Alchemax, and even the streets of New York, making his way out into the United States of 2099, trying to find himself (or, to be honest, his SELVES) in the highways and byways of America.

Even in the badlands, the shadow of Alchemax is a long one, and he ends up battling yet another of their experiments gone bad.  His vision quest even leads him to team up with Strange, the young Sorceror Supreme of the future to confront a plague of the undead!

Returning to New York, Miguel O’Hara finds that the man known as Doom has taken over the United States and given Tyler Stone a post in his cabinet, leaving the post of Alchemax CEO open to the young Spider-Man.  Using his influence, he convinces the Public Eye’s goons to stop chasing after the new Spider-Man.  Of course, that may not apply to ALL Spider-Men…

The appearance of the legendary original Spider-Man in the skies over New York is a bit disconcerting to the denizens of 2099, but their consternation is nothing compared to where Miguel finds himself…

…in bed with Peter Parker’s wife!  (Yes, he had one.  Shush.)  The two Spider-Men finds themselves in each other’s era, and eventually discover that Fujikawa Industries (in 1999) and Alchemax (in 2099) have each been experimenting with time-travel equipment, causing the gods of irony and counterbalance to swap Arach-Knights future and past.  The heroes each find out the truth, and end up standing side-by-side to put the timestream right…

Fighting alongside his ancient idol catalyzes Spider-Man, and also reminds us that the future may or may not be what we think.  Returning home, Miguel finds that his own actions may have altered the timestream and changed the original age of heroes!

Not long after his return, Miguel finds out that he isn’t the only one with a thing for the costumes of the past, crossing swords with a new Venom before finding himself facing any Spider-Man’s worst nightmare:  The Green Goblin!

At first, it seems that the Goblin is his own brother Gabriel, but things are more complicated than it seems, and twin invasions from space and Atlantis cloud the issue even more.  Miguel is nearly killed himself, but is forced to watch as his biological father, Tyler Stone, dies in the chaos.

Alchemax Headquarters is also destroyed, and the world is flooded by the melting polar ice caps, and Spider-Man teams up with Doom himself to destroy the invasion of the alien Phalanx once and for all.  Returning to Earth, Miguel takes over Alchemax and seeks out the body of Captain America, which was reportedly frozen sometime after the Heroic Age.  Amazingly, he is successful in his attempt…

O’Hara gifts Captain America with the actual hammer of Thor, allowing him to once again become the awakened central figure of the new Heroic Age, while Miguel uses his brains and leadership abilities to make the world a better place.  Then, tragedy strikes…

Though Captain America seemingly perishes again, he gifts Mjolnir to Miguel, who strangely finds himself unchanged by the hammer’s enchantments.  Nonetheless, he is worthy to wield it, and use it in his attempts to reinvigorate the ruling class of the future into something less “Zardoz…”

For nearly a century, Miguel stands as a wise and benevolent ruler, before eventually dying himself in the year 3099.  Still, his heroic deeds are known far beyond his native timeline, as he participated in the Destiny War, fighting on the side of the heroic Avengers…

And when the mysterious time-travelers known as the Exiles arrived in 2099 A.D., Spider-Man was a staunch ally in their battle against the evil of Proteus.

 Strangely, when the battle ended, Spider-Man chose to leave the future with them…

This Miguel diverted an alternate timeline, but still fought alongside the Exiles across the breadth of time and space, proving that even an alternate Spider-Man is a hero born.  Of course, he also met and fell in love with a young doomed woman named Gwen Stacy, proving that not only the GOOD parts of being a Spider-Man carried through the centuries…

As The Exiles travels came to an end, Miguel found himself jettisoned from the timestream into a strange world where he met another mysterious woman, this one a red-head…

The future is another country, so they say, but it’s not so alien that there aren’t heroes ready to stand up and do the right thing in the face of oppression and adversity.  Miguel O’Hara may have come from a world full of liars, opportunists and utter bastards, but he proved that even the most unlikely of heroes can have long-lasting effects on the world.  Spider-Man 2099 may be inspired by the original, but he’s no ripoff, and he stands proudly as the central figure of his own Age of Heroes.

**If you’ve enjoyed this Hero History, you might want to ‘Read All About It’ at your Local Major Spoilers! You can just click “Hero Histories” in the “Columns” section on our main page, and read an ever-increasing number of other guys and gals who are likewise awesome as heck. The adventures of the Spider-Man of 2099 are published by Marvel Comics, and solicits indicate that he’ll soon return to confront the Superior Spider-Man, so don’t miss the inevitable big 2099 revival…

Next up: Even *I* Have NO Idea!

Watch.

The.

Skies.

(SCIENCE!)