Reilly2040's Blog

Spider-Man 2099 is one of my all-time favourite comic series. Written largely by Peter David, it follows Miguel O’Hara, one of the top research scientists at a corporation called Alchemax, as he is the victim of a lab accident which gives him powers and he becomes the Spider-Man of the year 2099.

While Spider-Man is hunted by the corporation, Miguel continues at his job, hoping to find a way to reverse what happened to him, and throughout he discovers the harsh realities of the world he lives in,  as Spider-Man becomes a hero to the underclasses who have been forgotten by the corporations who rule this futuristic world.

Its a brilliant series. Peter David did everything he could to make it completely different to the Peter Parker Spider-Man and it works beautifully. The world of 2099 is well-crafted, and there’s a lot to be had from Miguel discovering how sheltered his life has been from working at Alchemax.

The great news then, is that Marvel are going to re-release the series in a set of trades. And to mark this, Newsarama conducted a series of interviews with Peter David, talking about his time on the series, what worked, what didn’t (especially decisions made after he left the title which went against what he’d carefully setup) and what he might do differently today.  Its just a pity they don’t ask him about Flipside.  He was a great villain that sadly only appeared the once, but to me seemed to clearly be setup as the Venom to this Spider-Man.

If you’ve never read it, its well worth taking a look. And you can find the interviews here:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

The great thing about a controversial comic is you can always be guaranteed a few good parodies

Twinkies!

Must check and see if I can find any full-issue parodies. There were some good ones floating around out there for Civil War.

Loved the 2-page parody in this week’s Lying in the Gutters (first item, headed Brand New Art)

Marvel have just put this up.

Clear as mud really. Presumably Norman Osbourne is one of those who remembers that he used to know Peter’s identity. Harry doesn’t remember ever being the Goblin (so is he now in a similar situation to Norman’s pre-death stories?).

Spider-Man is an unlicensed, unregistered hero. So bin those issues of Civil War then. No one knows his identity, even those who had discovered it pre-Civil War. So this seems to confirm that pretty much nothing JMS wrote still stands as one of his big story moments was Aunt May finding out the truth. Even MJ is clueless, despite being his girlfriend for all those years they were previously married. Hmmmm.

And the Coffee Bean is back.

It makes me wonder why they didn’t just completely regress Peter and the supporting cast back to college. Bring back Gwen and everyone else. As far as the rest of the Marvel Universe is concerned there was a previous Spider-Man (but his real ID is changed in their minds).

I still like the fix I saw on a forum post somewhere. Change the victim of the shooting from May to MJ. Suddenly the story is a lot more palletable (even if the continuity is still messed up).

Newsarama have a good editorial on the final issue of One More Day here.

I used to collect Spider-Man back in the days of the Clone Saga, and ironically at that point, using Mephisto to sort it out was deemed an unsuitable solution.

The flaws in One More Day are so staggering its unbelievable. By creating his new “more relatable” Peter Parker, Joe Quesada has badly damaged the character in the worst ways. Is there anyone here who could honestly say that Peter made the right choice in throwing his loving marriage out the window? I can’t see how that character is relatable in the slightest. In fact, most of the online community seem disgusted at the idea of Peter Parker at the moment.

I dropped Spider-Man, not after Ben Reilly was killed off (despite loving the character), but when Aunt May was sloppily resurrected the first time. Her death in Amazing #400 was a beautiful issue, and it was undone so callously, and unnecessarily that I couldn’t bear to support the title anymore. I occassionally try to get back into the books, but everytime I do, I find a glaring reason not to keep reading them, and its invariably had nothing to do with the marriage.

There’s an absolutely cracking bunch of creative teams coming onboard Spider-Man with “Brand New Day”, and I just feel sorry for them. Its a waste of good talent having their run tainted in this way. And poor JMS, who has just been forced to write a story retconning his entire run out of existance.

Make Mine Marvel? Not likely. Think God I dropped Spider-Man years ago, because it means I didn’t waste money on this dross. DC readers may complain about Dan Didio, but I don’t think anything he’s done is half as bad as this.

So, the story is circulating online that JMS tried to have his name taken off of the last two issues of Spider-Man’s “One More Day”.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened. During all the fallout over the Gwen & Norman’s kids debacle, JMS went on record saying he’d been against the idea, and had tried to compromise and have Peter as the father. But he’d been over-ruled.

Its no secret that despite being part of the Spider-Man mythos for 20-some years, Joe Q’s always had a thing about trying to undo the marriage. To be honest, I’m one of the many that thinks its an awful idea. Heck, its been tried before and didn’t work.

From reading the extensive online spoilers about One More Day, it does indeed sound pretty awful. What I find particularly amusing though, is the use of Mephisto as the one who is ultimately going to retcon everything.

So what’s amusing about that? Well, from reading the Life of Reilly column, we know that back in the 90s, when the writers were looking for a way to get out of the Clone Saga, Mephisto was one of the solutions they worked on. However, it was eventually decided that Mephisto wasn’t really appropriate to use in a Spider-Man book, who’d always had a more street, and less mystical feel.

So, in order to get out of the marriage, they’re using a solution that not even the Clone Saga would touch