About four month ago, we learned that a character from Marvel’s past and Spider-Man’s future would be popping up once again. That’s right, the Spider-Man of the future, Miguel O’Hara, would be making a comeback to the pages of Marvel Comics and he would be coming face to face with the Superior Spider-Man. Now, that time has come and the star of ‘Spider-Man 2099’ has been spotted in the year 2013 in the pages of ‘Superior Spider-Man’.
In issue sixteen, we saw the fall of the Hobgoblin and the rise of the Goblin Knight. After a citywide manhunt, Spider-Man tracked down Phil Urich and brought him to justice. That is, until he was broken out by the Green Goblin’s ever-growing army of henchmen and given a brand new villainous identity.
Now, with his foe subdued for now, Peter Parker has some time for R&R by playing in the company softball game and impressing his girlfriend. However, trouble isn’t far from our hero as the recent events at Horizon Labs that he’s been ignoring have finally caught up with him. This turn of events brings around an old friend by the name of Liz Allan back into Peter Parker’s life, but she and her son (who’s father is Harry Osborn) aren’t really here for a friendly visit.
First of all, I really have to say that Miguel’s dialogue is super corny. I don’t remember the phrases like “No shocking way!” from when I was a kid reading 2099, but now that I’m grown up a bit, it’s getting pretty annoying to see now. I sincerely hope that is not how slang evolves as the decades pass.
Despite the awkward dialogue, I liked the explanation of Miguel appearing in the present day. Much like what’s currently going on in ‘Indestructible Hulk’ right now, ‘Superior Spider-Man’ is feeling the aftermath of ‘Age of Ultron’. I was starting to wonder when those effects would be felt in more corners of the Marvel Universe. Yeah, the Guardians of the Galaxy have run into Angela and the time stream is breaking up in some places, but there haven’t really been many huge developments on that seemingly huge problem. I mean, it’s understandable that no one’s really addressing it since everyone is tied up in the wars going on in ‘Infinity’, but I’m glad to see that they’re not just forgetting about the immense damage that all this time travel is doing to their world.
Another thing about the return of Spider-Man 2099 that bothered me was that Olivier Coipel isn’t the one drawing him. It’s not that I have a problem with Ryan Stegman, but I really liked the artwork of Miguel that was released when the announcement of his return was made. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m just a little disappointed by it.
Anyway, despite some small grievances, I feel like Dan Slott did an excellent job of handling the exposition necessary in this book. A lot of readers these days have no idea who Spider-Man 2099 is (unless they’ve played ‘Spider-Man: Shattered Dreams’), so the writer had the tough task of throwing backstory into this issue. It wasn’t too over the top, though it came close a few times. But I can’t really fault him for that since most writers have trouble with that sort of thing.
However, with the exposition out of the way, I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here, especially when good ol’ Otto (presumably) gets his claws on this wall-crawler from the future to prove just who truly is the superior one.
Final Score:
SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #17
Written by Dan Slott
Art by Ryan Stegman, Livesay, & Edgar Delgado
