Who is the Spider-Man of 2099? // Comic History 101
When Sony announced their long-awaited sequel to the amazing Spider-Man movie Into the Spider-Verse, fans were utterly thrilled to see Gwen and Miles reunite once more. However, the second half of the trailer was then dedicated to showing Miles battling this massive, beefy figure coated in blue and red. Fans who’d seen the hilarious post-credits scene from Into the Spider-Verse would recognize this as the same costume as the guy who wound up pointing at 1966 Spider-Man, but little else.
That’s one hell of a glow-up.
Who is this guy? Is he a Spider-Man? What is his deal?
We rewind our clocks to 1993, to the dark age of comic books.
It’s unclear if the bug-eyes were going to be part of the costume or not.
This version of Spider-Man began as part of a one-shot issue project. Titled Marvel: The World of Tomorrow, it was a pitch concept from Stan Lee and John Byrne to explore the future of the Marvel Universe. This would expand into a deeper look at the future of the Marvel Universe when the idea was handed to the Editor in Chief of Marvel, Tom DeFalco. Giving the project to newly hired editor Joey Cavalieri, DeFalco asked him to make a new Marvel for 100-ish years into the future.
One of them would be an updated Spider-Man.
The cape remains a core piece of the design, but you can see there were some growing pains with the costume.
Earliest designs would come from Carl Potts and the pair of John Romita and Steve Geiger. Both would come up with the idea of giving this future Spider-Man a cape of webbing, but also had ideas that wouldn’t pan out. One of them being the idea of giving Spidey “mandibles” on his head that just looked like bad Batman ears.
Getting closer! I really love the updated look of the black Spidey costume on the bottom.
Rick Leonardi would be the man to be given the final stabs at the costume. Taking what had come before, he would at first consider updating the original black costume of the 80s before making a unique costume. The colors wouldn’t be finalized until later, and he toyed with making the spider emblem a black widow before realizing it made the costume a little busier than he liked. Finally, the costume was nailed:
Perfection.
Now that this future man had a costume, though, they needed to flesh out a name. Cavalieri would choose Peter David, who was well known to comic fans for being in the middle of his 9 year run on all things Hulk. The man had also written for Spider-Man in the 80s on the Spectacular book, and had been working on various Marvel properties for years. He was a pretty great choice to figure out this corner of the 2099 universe.
By this time, the idea that had been hammered out for 2099 was that the world had become taken over by mega-corporations and their interests. Considering how politics have gone by 2022, this is shockingly prescient. It would also be roughly 100 years since the age of heroes ended, with all the major heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe having died out, or been forced into hiding or retirement. Peter David would take the chance to also make this new Spider-Man reflect a further blended society, and would name Spidey after a friend of his. This Spider-Man would be the Irish-Mexican Miguel O’Hara, and he would work for the biggest mega-corporation: Alchemax.
With this decided, it was time to write.
This being the 90s, the first issues of all 2099 comics were coated in sparkly and spangly foil. This would take the border line, with a red sheen being found on this cover.
Miguel O’Hara is a geneticist, and his job at Alchemax is to research the splicing of genes. Comics being comics, he’s also good at a lot of other generic science tasks as well. The purpose of his genetics division is to make the best corporate raider possible for Alchemax. No, not investors who will then undervalue a stock to steal a company.
Our hero: a man with few moral scruples.
A literal superhuman who can invade an enemy company and steal what they need. In fact, Spider-Man is his key inspiration. However, Miguel is also remarkably sarcastic and cocky, showing no respect to his employer Tyler Stone. After all, Miguel figures he’s pretty much untouchable, and even figures he should take his talents to a competitor, like Stark-Fujikawa.
Until Tyler spikes his drink with an extra-addictive drug provided only to Alchemax employees.
…you know, most people would prefer tenure or health insurance as a job benefit.
As one does.
Also, this drug happens to bond to your DNA, hooking you for life. Luckily, Miguel has been using his own DNA for the corporate raider project, and decides to splice his old DNA to himself. Unfortunately, a jealous colleague messes with the system and splices in a spider instead.
Ah, he’s fine!
Miguel O’Hara’s genetics were spliced akin to Peter Parker and Miles Morales in their various origins. This means enhanced reflexes, increased strength, longer stamina, and some other powers. However, there were some decidedly different twists to the usual Spider-powers that resulted from being 50% Spider.
Like most Spiders of the multiverse, Miguel could crawl along walls. However, Miguel wasn’t able to actually cling to surfaces. Instead, his fingers and toes now had small talons that could puncture almost any surface and allow him to free-climb surfaces. Luckily for our hero, he was able to force these to retract by pushing them against himself. With practice, his talons could be retracted at will.
They could also be used as weapons, should Miguel get desperate.
Miguel’s eyes were also dramatically enhanced. This left him able to see in near-darkness, and possibly even seeing into both the infra-red and electromagnetic spectrum. This wasn’t really covered in his books, but has been speculated. However, this left Miguel with an extreme light sensitivity in most of his early issues, and he would wear sunglasses in his civilian identity for much of his comic run.
Unfortunately, despite being a minority character, Miguel is often colored to be an incredibly-white-passing character.
The Spider-Man of the future also has fangs, not too dissimilar to a vampire. Rather than drink blood, this allows Miguel to inject his opponents with a paralyzing toxin. While not lethal, it strikes opponents fast and is used as a desperation move. It also left Miguel having to talk differently to avoid showing off his fangs.
This was also rarely used, usually due to hygiene issues.
While the Peter Parker of 1992 invented his own webshooters, Miguel didn’t have to worry about that. Thanks to the extreme splicing of genetics, Miguel grew spinnerets in his arms. This not only allowed him to shoot webs whenever he needed, but also made him the first Spidey to use organic webbing.
Humor was still a major part of this Spidey, though it was often a darker humor.
Miguel also has a limited healing factor, able to heal small wounds and injuries fast. This also results in a longer lifespan, though that might also be due to the medical advances of the future. While he lacks a traditional Spider Sense, it is speculated that Miguel has a limited form of telepathy… but this could also be completely due to the wonkiness of mid-90s Marvel comics.
Miguel’s costume comes from a Day of the Dead celebration, itself being the lone item of clothing he owned made of unstable molecules. The same materials that make the Fantastic Four’s clothes nearly indestructible and form-fitting became a fashion statement of the future, amusingly enough. This allows Miguel to use his talons without shredding the costume over his fingers and toes, but it could still be ripped or torn in extreme situations.
Miguel is fighting the Vulture of 2099. He’s a cannibal. Twists like this were common for the line.
The costume of Spider-Man 2099 also features an airfoil on the back that looks remarkably like webbing. This allows him to glide through the air, something Miguel prefers over the more traditional web swinging.
Amusingly, the suit was originally described as (and intended to be) black and red. This was despite the fact that it was colored with a lot of blue, however, as comic coloring styles of the day did this to save costs on black ink and provide more detail. Modern coloring techniques can provide multiple shades of black, but 1992 was a different time. Eventually, the comic dropped calling it black, and embraced the idea of it being blue. This happened to the X-Man the Beast a few decades earlier when he evolved into the “blue” furry incarnation of himself.
Miguel would spend most of his run in 2099 fighting both the evils of man and of his employer Alchemax. This ranged between bounty hunters like the cyborg Venture to new incarnations of Spider-Man villains like the Vulture and Venom. Most of Miguel’s time would be spent trying to stay out of trouble, but going into action anyway. After all, as the old saying goes:
Ah, yes. The Yiddish version of Spider-Man.
Yeah, there was no dead uncle to inspire Miguel to be a hero. Injustices surrounded Miguel on a daily basis thanks to the decrepit nihilistic future of Nueva York, and Miguel would be there to right some of the wrongs as other heroes and anti-heroes would rise up alongside him. One of his more memorable adventures was fighting the spoiled children of the ultra-rich, who would go down to the slums of Nueva York and hunt the poor for sport.
I figure we’re only a few years off from this.
Miguel would even rise to the seat of Alchemax CEO when Doom took over America. It’s a long story, but the time-displaced Doctor Doom overthrew the mega corporations that ran America and took it over for roughly six months of publication. The status quo of every comic was changed dramatically, and thus included Miguel becoming Alchemax’s CEO. This would remain when Doom was overthrown, but life would change again when climate change raised the sea levels dramatically enough to bury Nueva York underwater.
Maybe the governments of the world would take climate change more seriously if we had marauding Atlantians invading our major cities, too.
…and Atlantis invaded, which doesn’t help things.
Miguel would help the remnants of humanity survive in the Savage Land, a small wild enclosure of jungle on Antarctica. Don’t ask, it’s comics. Working alongside Doom, Miguel would fight off the threat of the techno-organic alien menace known as the Phalanx.
The final comics of the 2099 continuity got weird and bad. Very, very bad.
And that was mostly that for Miguel’s time as Spider-Man. There was a crossover with the Spidey of the present, and an epilogue that tried to explain what happened in the world of 2099 once the line got canceled due to Marvel’s money woes of the mid-90s. He would show up as an alternate costume for Spider-Man in the two PlayStation 1 games, but an attempt at a 2099-centric game was canceled and a cartoon pitch for Spider-Man 2099 was retooled into Spider-Man Unlimited.
It kept a lot of the costume concept, to say nothing of the style for the setting.
Miguel did have guest-appearances in Captain Marvel in 2002 (once more written by Peter David), and in Exiles in 2006 (not written by David). Both were fairly forgettable, with the latter turning Miguel into a future Peter Parker in all but name. However, that seemed like it for Miguel: two guest appearances, some costume skins, and a bunch of canceled and retooled projects.
Activision would resurrect Miguel in the minds of many fans with 2010’s Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and the semi-sequel Edge of Time. Miguel would be one of the major characters, and the game would make great use of the setting by throwing in new incarnations of old villains and generally being excellent stories overall. While they are long out of print, fans should check them out.
Miguel would return once more to the pages of Marvel in 2013, during Dan Slott’s time on Amazing Spider-Man… or, rather, Superior Spider-Man. Sent back in time to prevent the timeline from unraveling, Miguel would be stranded in the present day and eventually work alongside Peter Parker as an employee of Parker Industries. It’s a long story, but the self-titled book that would come from it was excellent and once more written by its original author. And it also gave us an alternate costume:
And that’s where we sit to this day. While he’s had a few weird variations, Miguel O’Hara is a Spider who isn’t necessarily out for the greater good, but one who will take the quickest path to what he feels is the best solution.
Ah, being rich. The original superpower.
This can also involve bribing his foes. Miguel may be a genius at science and tech, but he’s also thickheaded and has a nasty temper that’s gotten him into trouble on numerous occasions. Whether or not this character trait will remain for his Across the Spider-Verse incarnation remains to be seen, but the fact that he (or someone in his costume) is seen brawling with Miles without trying to talk first suggests we’re in for a fairly faithful Miguel O’Hara.