A Retrospective: Spider-Man 2099

Thirty and some years old, how does the Spider-Man of the future look today? A look back on his origins, major characters, and how much of his story holds up in the year 2023.

“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.”

Ursula K. Le Guin’s forward to The Left Hand Of Darkness holds the test of time, and holds true for the reality of what science fiction is, and how it can influence us. The future is a metaphor, and we are grasping at it, hoping it holds some greater purpose than where we find ourselves now.

In Spider-Man 2099 (1992), it seems as if not too much has changed. The poor still struggle, hidden away from those with the resources to better their lives. Companies and corporations own the land, the power & even the people. The police force of the time, called the Public Eye, are anything but in the public’s interest. The futuristic New York City, aka Nueva York, is essentially a police state with pretty retro futurism to make the average citizen forget that they live under constant surveillance. And the people themselves? Tired, downtrodden, trying to get by in their day to day lives, not daring to imagine a time where things could be easier.

Science fiction, as Le Guin reminds us, is not predictive, but descriptive. And envisioning a world a hundred years removed from the 1990s, where people still struggle and hurt and blindly hope, doesn’t seem that far off the mark. And when reading something from the past, even if it is about the future, it has to be remembered that it is still a part of the culture of its time. Progress, while we wish it was linear, is rarely so. There are pieces of the original 1992 run that age like a fine wine, between the dangers of a corporate police state, the understanding that community is power, and the deep, dark loneliness that can manifest in losing ourselves along the way.

Even 30 years removed from the original run of Spider-Man 2099, there are far too many similarities to the lives of those in Nueva York and the people of 2023. It holds a fragmented mirror to the culture of the 1990s, while some things were worse in Spider-Man’s time, most were all too familiar. In the beginning of Spider-Man 2099, aka Miguel O’Hara’s origins, we see that the all-powerful Alchemax is using prisoners as test subjects for their genetic experimentation.

Alchemax wants to bring back the heroes of yesteryear, or as they refer to them, saviors from the “Heroic Age.” They want their own personal branded Spider-Mans, Captain Americas & any number of superheroes to the year 2099. Because what’s better than a military paid to serve a corporation? Genetically modified humans created to do the same. No pay, no worries about the cost of human life, especially if the company has written off any “subjects” as surplus population.

Miguel and Aaron Delgato discuss the original Spider-Man (above, Spider-Man 2099 #1).

It’s a pretty bleak existence, all things considered.

Enter one Miguel O’Hara, a geneticist working for Alchemax. Like the company towns of old, and eerily like too many modern-day companies, the science-based corporation paid for his schooling, his housing and his salary. As his boss, and (discovered much later) biological father, loves to remind him that everything he has, he owes to Alchemax. It’s explained briefly that he has recently become the head of the Genetics department, even while being so young. He’s smart, but he’s a bit pompous about it.

The year 2099 is structured to make everyone who lives in it isolated, fearful and a bit paranoid. A person cannot trust their neighbor or their coworker or even the kids down the street. Miguel lives in a hellscape entirely created by corporate greed and wealth inequality. And because he comes from next to nothing, he holds on as tightly as he can to what he is given. Even when people like his brother, Gabriel, try to change his mind about where he works and how he can turn a blind eye to the pain around him, he stays at Alchemax.

Our protagonist is dismissive, rude and self-interested.

He even admits to himself in Spider-Man 2099 (1992) #10 (picture above) that he doesn’t see the broken world he lives in until he was forced to, until he had to live as Spider-Man.

Like all good comic books, the layers on why Miguel O’Hara is like this are slowly pulled back. A strained relationship with his brother that started all the way back when they were kids, with Gabriel be the “lesser” of two siblings and Miguel the perfect golden child. Even when they were pitted against each other by their father, George O’Hara, years down the road Gabriel still wants his brother to be well. Sometimes this truth is lost in Miguel’s narration, a man who thinks he’s alienated everyone around him, and while he has tested their trust in him, his loved ones still see something good in him.

Abuse plays no small role in the backstory of Miguel O’Hara. There is no Uncle Ben and Aunt May, no loving but poor home. Instead, there is an angry, cruel man who controls the house. George O’Hara, Gabriel’s father and Miguel’s step-father (who would never know he wasn’t Miguel’s father), is unkind and openly violent to his wife, Conchata O’Hara. There was upwards mobility at some point, because in later issues Conchata will reminisce about her time living in Downtown Nueva York, a place where the rejects and people too poor to live in upper Nueva York are forced to live.

Because of Miguel’s intelligence, he is sent away at a young age, to Alchemax’s private boarding school. From the beginning, Conchata does not want this, and openly rebels against her husband, trying to convince her son from otherwise attending. But one does not anger the angry man in the house. Instead, he goes along to school and his mother deems him a lost cause. Nothing more than a child, and his mother watched him become another cog in the corporate machine(below, Spider-Man 2099 #18).

Gabriel, who was compared to his older brother his whole life, demeaned by his father and eventually betrayed by the one person he looked up to, still loves him.

There are many finer points to be made, maybe deeper connections to be felt within this story, but the brotherly bond seems the most powerful. After all, when they no longer have their father or their mother, all that’s left is the history between them. And Miguel can be as cruel and heartless to his little brother as he wants, to try to push everyone away from him because he may not think he deserves to be loved, but Gabriel will do it anyway.

There is underlying tension between the two brothers, not just because Gabriel thinks Miguel works for a satanical enterprise, but because of the latter’s own romantic tryst with his brother’s girlfriend.

Comic books have never shied from the more dramatic, at times operatic nature of these stories.

And Dana D’Angelo, Miguel’s now-fiancé and Gabriel’s former fiancé seems a character better suited for the likes of Sex and the City or even Days of Our Lives. From the start, she just seems to be present to create more conflict in Miguel’s life. At first, it looks as if she will simply be another loved one who can never know who wears the mantle of Spider-Man. But between her casual dalliances with Tyler Stone (cannot stress enough that he is Miguel’s biological father and that a net total of two people know this for like, 25 issues) and her dismissive nature of finding out that Tyler drugged Miguel… it doesn’t paint the best picture of her.

In a strange way, she is protected by the narrative. Innocent Dana couldn’t possibly do anything wrong, could she? Even when she openly decides to meet with Miguel’s boss against his wishes, kisses Gabriel, or seemingly starts dating Tyler just to get a rise out of Miguel, there is an underlying current that somehow she is in a protective bubble. Not only does she knowingly co-mingle with a man who drugged “fiancé” and wanted to essentially trap him to do his bidding forever, she doesn’t take any of Miguel’s past traumas seriously.

Her actions are only deemed questionable by Miguel’s hologram agent, Lyla a LYrate Lifeform Approximation and Xina Kwan, Miguel’s childhood best friend, ex-girlfriend and creator of Lyla. It is all too convent to write-off any critiques about Dana by Lyla or Xina, because of the dynamic created (below, Spider-Man 2099 #25).

It’s very odd to see neither Gabriel or Conchata have any lasting feelings about Miguel entering a relationship with Gabriel’s girlfriend, least of all because they are now allegedly getting married. From the get-go, we see Conchata unafraid to call out either of her son’s behaviors if she finds them unsavory. So the fact that Dana continues to be protected by the narrative, untouchable by even Conchata, is strange. And Gabriel, angered by his brother all too often, should seem to have some sort of resentment. Especially as it is peppered in throughout several issues that he seems to have lingering feelings for Dana.

But no, it’s all water under the bridge. Can’t have anyone upset at our perfect narrative creation, Dana D’Angelo, who will continually find herself in terrible situations she put herself in and never once question if she might be the problem.

The audience is introduced to Xina through the reveal of how Miguel and Dana got together: by having an affair(below, Spider-Man 2099 #22).

It’s interesting to note that in said affair, Dana would repeatedly say she just found his little brother so boring, and so disinterested that she would tell Gabriel… eventually. Well, “eventually” came around in the form of Miguel’s then-girlfriend and first real friend from his time at Alchemax’s private boarding school, Xina Kwan. She came home early to surprise him, only to find the two of them together.

And even then, when the jig was up and at least one relationship ended, Dana didn’t tell Gabriel. Xina, who would likely be anywhere then in the presence of an O’Hara brother, had to tell the younger brother his relationship was over.

Even in editorial, and in descriptions of Spider-Man 2099, the narrative admits that Miguel only ruined his relationship with Xina because he was afraid of how she challenged him as a person. In Dissecting Spider-Man they say the following: “He knew he had a girlfriend, Dana, she suited his needs. Oh, once he had a relationship with a girl, Xina, who was this intellectual equal, but he had ended that. He had felt somewhat disconcerted, his master of his environment threatened, whenever Xina was around.”

The kind of difficult questions of what kind of man he was, who wanted to be, were directly asked of him by a character like Xina, who scared him so much he self-destructed his relationship. And as fate or Marvel editorial would have it, it didn’t matter that he didn’t want to be challenged, because becoming genetically half-spider and effectively Spider-Man of 2099 would make that choice for him.

Xina is both a treasure of a character and something of a conundrum. She’s quick-witted, has a strong sense of self and a firm belief in right and wrong. Not only that, but she has a long-standing obsession with the Twentieth Century, or as it’s referred to in 2099, the TwenCen. She can stand alone as a character, smarter than Miguel (who even admits it), and lights up the page every time she’s around. Not only is she a fun character, but she brings out the better side of Miguel. Sure, one could say that that’s because he isn’t thinking about the burdens of Spider-Man, of Alchemax or all of the mess waiting for him back home. But there is a sense of trust and honesty between the two, even if some of their past is clouded by his poor choices.

Now, the conundrum comes in the form of her being both a best friend and ex-girlfriend. It’s no small secret that women in comics, especially women of color, get treated unfairly. Even in her introduction in the back-up comics describing Miguel’s childhood, she has an unsavory interaction with Miguel’s father. The man is overtly racist to her, and she plays back into his own hand, making him unknowingly look like a fool to his family. She has always seen George O’Hara for what he truly is: a foul, abusive and offensive man. Xina isn’t afraid to defend herself, leaping into action against bullies like Mr. O’Hara or Kron Stone, Miguel’s half-brother and short-lived terror in private school.

Even with people like Gabriel and Xina, who both push Miguel to question his allegiances to Alchemax, it takes something directly impacting him to open his eyes to the world around him. After his genes are spliced 50% with a spider in an accident caused by a disgruntled co-worker, he has fangs, talons & can create organic webbing. He feels like a monster, spending his entire first three issues running around Nueva York, trying to shake-off Alchemax goons try to bring him back to the lab to study.

Above: Spider-Man 2099 #10

Miguel says time and time again in his run that he doesn’t want to be Spider-Man, that he keeps finding himself put into scenarios where he has to act, even if he doesn’t want to. He even quips on the old motto, saying ‘that with great responsibility comes great guilt’. So often, especially in modern comics, characters are excited to take on the mantle, being fans themselves or wishing for power to change the world. Miguel O’Hara never wanted to change anything, least of all the world. He was content to stay a corporate stooge because it meant a cushy life, he liked his apparently docile girlfriend who never pushed him out of his comfort zone, and he liked keeping his family at arm’s length.

But circumstances can change someone, even someone as hard-headed and self-possessed like Miguel O’Hara.

While Peter Parker may have always had an intrinsically good heart, Miguel O’Hara had to actively try to be a better person. Half the time, that change came in the form of him being dragged nearly kicking and screaming into a new world view, but he got it. The New Money man saw what the wealth gap did to Downtown Nueva York, how people with no “social class” like his brother Gabriel couldn’t get help from medical centers or detectives or even emergencies services.

Above: Spider-Man 2099 #2

The world broke with the mega-corporations taking over, and even if he cannot tear it all down, the Miguel O’Hara who rose up out of Downtown wanted to try.

There are aspects of this 40+ issue run that don’t age well, between depictions of both Black and Asian men, comments made by various characters towards women, and the dismissive nature of both acknowledging but then making light of a woman’s abusive marriage. There are probably more things, knowing that this comic ran for several years. Nothing is perfect, and there are clear markers for where the world was in mid-1990s. But comics have always been written in response to the culture, and this, like our modern comics, hold a mirror to what the world was like at the time.

Miguel O’Hara’s family and connections to his past are intrinsic to his character. Without them, he doesn’t have the opportunity to grow or change. Like anyone, he needs a community to help him dig past the muck and darkness swirling around in his brain. People have a tendancy to refer to Spider-Man 2099 as the darker and edgier Spider-Man, that doesn’t seem to be true. In the end, the message is clear: people are stronger together. Caring about people is not an inherent weakness, but the reason so many people get up in the morning. Digging a hole so bottomless it seems as if one will never escape isn’t possible, someone will always come along to lend a hand.

He is a cynical person, given more than enough reasons to be that way. But the overall themes are still what Spider-Man comics have taught us for decades: loving other people is a strength, doing the right thing in the face of fear is power, and yeah, anyone can wear the mask.