COMIC BOOK REVIEW - Spider-Man 2099: Spider-Verse
By The Masked Medic
Occasionally, when I’m looking for a series to read, I’ll find some that intrigue me in terms of the characters involved. Usually, these novels are DC, but when I started reading Marvel novels there were a few characters that I really wanted to get to know more about. One of these characters was Miguel O’Hara, aka, Spider-Man 2099. So imagine my disappointment when I read the first novel in Volume 2 and found that it was not an exciting novel at all. But that was a while ago and redemption can be gained by any series! Haha!
‘Spider-Verse’ is an amalgamation of several different stories involving Spider-Man 2099. It begins with a few issues from what I’m assuming is a crossover event. We see Miguel and two other ‘Spider-People’; Lady Spider, a woman from a steampunk world, and Six-Armed Spider-Man travel to 2099 to escape a being known as Daemos who apparently feeds on the life energy of ‘Spider-People’. After Six-Armed Spider-Man is taken down, both Miguel and Lady Spider attempt to capture Daemos at Alchemax, a futuristic corporation whose CEO was responsible for sending Miguel back into the past anyways. The two heroes realise that their only hope may be to travel to Lady Spider’s dimension to fight Daemos with a radioactive robot. We never find out what happened there because the novel then has a story that sees Spider-Man 2099 return to 2099 only to find that it’s now an apocalyptic land and being ruled by Maestro, an alternative older Hulk, who has brutally killed all of Earth’s heroes. Having just about escaped Maestro’s attempts to kill him, he returns to the present where he gives his next-door neighbour Tempest a cure from the future, for her cancer. It all seems too good to be true when she finds out the cancer is gone the next day. It is too good to be true right? Can Miguel fix his problems in the present and head back to a restored future?
‘Out of Time’, the first novel in the series was pretty subpar in my opinion, but ‘Spider-Verse’ does move in a way to counter a lot of the qualms that I had about the first novel. Firstly you see a lot more of Miguel in his element, rather than just being a Spider-Man copy. That being said I will say that there were certain points where I felt like he had this really ruthless streak to him which I didn’t like personally. I suppose I’ve not read enough novels to know what he’s like completely, but some moments seemed out of place to me. I liked that other characters featured in the novel, such as Maestro, because it gives you a wider scope of the Marvel universe. I think going forward I’d like to see more interactions with Peter Parker because it’d be cool to see how the two could teach each other.
In terms of artwork, it wasn’t bad at all. I think that certain issues, such as the Maestro one were perhaps not to my liking but the others were good. I have to say though, having read a second novel in the series, but I’m not a massive fan of the covers. Just my opinion. Overall, this novel does a lot to rectify its predecessor's mistakes, but the series needs to build on this momentum!
Favourite Panel:
Steampunk Kraven just doesn’t match up to 2099! Haha!
Favourite Character:
Right, so technically it should be Miguel, but completely honestly there were bits of the novel where he just came across as a bit violent unnecessarily and I wasn’t a fan of that.
Rating:
Story Arc: ★★★
Character Development: ★★★
Artwork: ★★★
Enjoyability: ★★★
Re-readability: ★★★
Level: Advanced