Back to the Future: Marvel 2099

We’ve still got 88 years to see if “Shock” catches on as a curse word or a religion gets organized around Thor, but already Marvel’s 2099 line of comics—despite only lasting six years—has proven groundbreaking in its own way.

The 2099 imprint kicked off in 1992 as a look at the possible future of the Marvel Universe with four core titles centered around three new versions of familiar characters and one all-new creation: Spider-Man 2099, Punisher 2099, Doom 2099 and Ravage 2099. It was an interesting mix with Marvel’s most recognizable figure, one of the most popular stars of the 90’s, a classic villains featured as a protagonist for the first time ever and a wild card co-created by none other than Stan Lee.

All four pillars of 2099 were a mixture of familiarity and experimentation. Miguel O’Hara, aka Spider-Man, was a scientist and a wisecracker like his predecessor, but notably older and with a darker edge, his humor coming in the form of cynicism rather than quips and his motivation having as much to do with revenge and survival as responsibility. The new Punisher, Jake Gallows, emerged from virtually the same circumstances as Frank Castle—his family being killed by criminals—but lived in a world where corruption generally trumped law and thus coming off far more sympathetic in his violent approach to justice than his counterpart. Doom’s origins were tinged in mystery, as he claimed to be the original bearer of the name, but in this time he acted more as a hero than a tyrant. Paul-Phillip Ravage—showing that Stan Lee had weaned somewhat off his alliteration addiction by the 90’s but not completely—was a corporate CEO forced into a life of fugitive vigilantism when he questioned his corporate masters and was framed for murder.

As far as my personal experience, I sampled Spider-Man 2099 and would check in occasionally, but wasn’t a regular reader. I bought the first issue of Punisher 2099—the first Punisher comic of any kind I ever purchased, I believe—and was intrigued, but for whatever reason did not get #2. I didn’t pick up any of the early issues of Doom 2099 or Ravage 2099, despite the concept of Doom as a hero and a new Stan Lee creation grabbing my attention at least in passing.

X-Men 2099 was the book that brought me into the imprint—as detailed here—as I was buying anything X-Men at the time and also loved the work of artist Ron Lim. When the five titles crossed over in “Fall of the Hammer” I got every chapter, which prompted me to buy a few more issues of Spider-Man 2099 as well as at least one non-Stan Lee-written Ravage 2099, but I disengaged quickly and then stuck with X-Men until Lim left before departing myself.

There were many additional points I contemplated checking out more 2099—when Doom took over America or when he got deposed and half the original characters got killed—but I never took that leap. It’s only now, having read a bit more of the imprint in trade and random issues as well as having the whole of its span to step back and look at, that I can see how prescient 2099 was in many ways.

Building the world of 2099 was not that unlike building the original Marvel Universe in the Silver Age must have been, with distinct and disparate characters linked together by their shared world. Where Stan Lee and his collaborators used the familiarity of New York City and little touches like newspaper headlines and cameos, the founding fathers of 2099 created an elaborate and thought out landscape where corporations became king and the comfortable heroes we knew were elevated to mythic proportions as avatars of an idyllic age. Big business as the ultimate villain and embodied by Alchemax, the company where Miguel O’Hara worked and came into his abilities, took central root in Spider-Man 2099, but played a major part in Ravage, influenced the creation of the Punisher, and would eventually show up in Doom, X-Men, Hulk, Ghost Rider and the rest. The Thorite religion was first touched upon by Jake Gallows, but would again spread across 2099 and serve as the core of its first crossover.

By 1992, the idea of an editorial office coordinating multiple titles was not a new one, as the X-Men fielded a minimum of four books at any given time and regularly crossed stories from one to the other. A fledgling imprint where characters shared aspects was not groundbreaking either, given the New Universe a few years earlier, Valiant hitting its stride and Milestone around the corner. Yet the cohesive future world imagined by 2099 and the ways in which the series within seemed to mesh so naturally and remain able to still stand on their own certainly merits some kudos.

It’s also interesting to look at the range of creative voices when it comes to the writers responsible for the 2099 books and impressive how in step such a varied group was. You had the already veteran Peter David on Spider-Man, relative rookie John Francis Moore on Doom—and later X-Men—the British duo of Pat Mills and Tony Skinner on Punisher, and of course Stan Lee on Ravage. Chuck Dixon and Len Kaminski would be among the others to dip their toes in the 2099 pool, and Warren Ellis made some of his first major contributions to American comics with a run on Doom 2099 that would revamp the entire line. It’s a testament to editor Joey Cavalieri that he was able to mesh these disparate voices into a comics symphony.

Speaking of the Ellis-helmed Doom 2099, it led to the kind of line-wide overhaul we see frequently today, but was not common practice in the mid-90’s. Ellis revealed Doom to conclusively be the original and then had him take over the United States, sending ramifications through every 2099 title—the whole imprints was renamed “2099 A.D.” standing for “2099 After Doom”—from the Punisher becoming his enforcer as leader of a reconstituted S.H.I.E.L.D. to the X-Men receiving their own West coast “Utopia” nearly two decades before it was trendy. Major characters like The Punisher, Ravage and The Hulk met their end when Doom got ousted from office and every title again underwent seismic changes (this is about the time I jumped off, as I was getting out of comics for a bit altogether).

Looking back, while Doom conquering America is the type of thing that would never fly in the Marvel Universe circa 1994 or so, it made for a great story 15 years later with Norman Osborn in a similar—albeit fairly different—position. I’m not saying Dark Reign was a retread of After Doom—beyond the surface similarities there’s far more different than the same, and the basic trope is a pretty well-worn one—but 2099 was in some ways Marvel’s testing ground of the early-to-mid 90’s; the place you could try stuff out and go wild with familiar but not identical toys, not totally unlike the Ultimate Universe of today.

2099 would only really have a four-year golden age, then two years of false restarts and final epilogues—after a tidal wave destroyed most of the world, Miguel O’Hara eventually found a frozen Captain America, restarted the Avengers, then became a figurehead who secretly had Thor’s hammer while the formerly dark corporate future became a paradise—but it left an indelible mark. Alternate reality storylines nearly always make a detour to 2099. Events by Robert Kirkman and Brian Reed have put new spins on the line. Miguel O’Hara frequently makes appearances in toy and video game form, including the upcoming Spider-Man: Edge of Time. And Jesse Thompson sent me this Jason Young cover of an old issue of Ravage 2099 that got me thinking about all this in the first place.

Despite a limited amount of time in the proverbial sun, 2099 made its mark and lingers as an influential and trendsetting imprint more than we likely even realize. There were also some darn good comics in the bunch that are probably not too hard to get your hands on.

Underrated/Overlooked: X-Men 2099

For a line of comics more often than not dismissed as a footnote or even derided as a punchline for 90’s publishing excess, Marvel’s 2099 imprint ended up producing some pretty impressive material. Yes, there was a decent amount of junk as well, but Peter David’s Spider-Man 2099 is held in high esteem by a fair number of people who would know (including this very blog’s Kiel Phegley) while Warren Ellis’ short run on Doom 2099 was not only one of his earliest American successes, but also hailed widely as being cutting edge and ahead of its time. I can even recall Ghost Rider 2099 gaining a decent cult following on the strength of its out-there “literal ghost in the machine” concept and the trippy art of Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham.

However, when I was growing up, the first two years of X-Men 2099 stood out to me not only as an impressive offering for a hit-or-miss corner of the Marvel Universe, but also as one of the most consistently entertaining monthly comics on the market.

As opposed to the conventional “it’s all your favorite heroes—but with grey hair and jetpacks!” caveat of many other super hero venues set in the future, 2099 offered a pretty unique landscape ripe for the creators to mess around in with its dystopian land of excess ruled by mega corporations where Thor had become a religious icon and people escaped their every day lives in virtual reality paradises (at a point before all that became the plot of dozens of movies and TV shows). And to the point, the 2099 characters and books that always seemed to do better and become more popular were the ones that borrowed a name or look from a contemporary concept but then veered sharply in another direction.

Miguel O’Hara, 2099’s Spider-Man, was a darkly sardonic adult very much entrenched in the coroporate lifestyle, in contrast to the perpetually put-upon, constantly wise-cracking and forever in his mid-20’s Peter Parker. Even though Doom of 2099 was ostensibly meant to be the same guy he was in the present day, the lack (until near the end) of a Fantastic Four and the changed world stage adapted the character into a far more enigmatic and Machiavellian figure who hemmed between good and evil rather than cackling and building death rays. On the flipside, Punisher 2099 was basically a carbon copy of Frank Castle but with laser guns, so it didn’t much surprise me that he never really caught on.

The X-Men of 2099 most definitely occupied a different space than the traditional Children of the Atom which accounted for a lot of their appeal. Though some lip service was periodically paid to the whole Charles Xavier “humans and mutants leaving in harmony” routine, for the most part, that wasn’t the end goal for these X-Men. They were a disenfranchised minority more concerned with finding somewhere they could be safe rather than trying to “protect a world that hates and fears them.” They weren’t super heroes in the traditional sense, just a group of people with powers who didn’t even really wear costumes—people just dress that way in 2099—looking for a place they could crash without being Indeed the characters’ goals shifted fairly often as they moved along on the fractured road trip that was the first 25 issues of the book, with there being a vague larger mission statement of tracking down a fabled mutant safe haven, but for the most part they just got into trouble for a variety of reasons and fought bad guys not so much because it was the right thing to do but because they didn’t want to die.

Another thing I dug about X-Men 2099 is that it very much had an ongoing soap opera feel to it, but you could tell writer John Francis Moore had a pretty tight roadmap in his head and was not to going to leave plotlines dangling for too long even when he was juggling quite a few at once and sending characters all over the place (literally). Those first 25 issues really do read a lot like the first season of an episodic sci fi drama on TV—I’d liken it to Buffy or the other Joss Whedon shows in many ways—in the sense that you got lots of little arcs focused on various cool ideas, characters or concepts, but it was all very much part of a big picture building to a climactic showdown. About halfway through the run, Moore splits up the entire team and sends small packs on various journeys, moving the “camera” around every issue, all the while skillfully amping up towards their reunion after a year apart to confront the threat that had been ominously looming in the background while they went about their business. As far as lessons on pacing and scope in a monthly ongoing comic book, aspiring writers could do worse than look to John Francis Moore on X-Men 2099.

Moore came up with a pretty compelling cast of characters who stood on their own rather than being future versions of Cyclops and Storm. I’ll admit that when I first picked up the comic as an 11-year-old I was pretty disappointed that Wolverine with laser claws wasn’t on the team, but in hindsight, it was one of the best choices Moore could have and did make.

X-Men 2099’s “Professor X,” Xi’an Chi Xan, was a former gang member and assassin who one day decided he had a greater purpose in life, namely serving as the prophet to the mutant race and gathering his people together so he could find them a promised land. At first, Xi’an seemed like an extremely bland character—by the way his powers were that he had one hand that could destroy things and another that could heal them—but this changed in a hurry after the first couple arcs when he began hallucinating his former bad boy self telling him how his new existence was futile and he needed to hand him back the reins or he’d get killed. It was actually Onslaught a few years before Onslaught in a way, and eventually Xi’an does end up in a situation where he needs to let his dark side take the wheel, and it completely shifts the entire series’ dynamic for the next year-plus.

The other main protagonist of the series was Timothy Fitzgerald, who is referred to by any article you’ll ever read about X-Men 2099 as Skullfire, though I’m not entirely sure he ever even used that name in the first 25 issues. An electrically-powered mutant who joins up with Xi’an’s crew in the first issue, Tim starts out as a wide-eyed innocent, then after being tortured by the psychic vampire La Lunatica in issue #4, suddenly becomes a devil-may-care wildman. Luna returns to the book down the line and actually ends up an X-Man, with her and Tim’s violently passionate Sid & Nancy romance proving another standout point of the series.

The rest of the X-Men were a little more straight and narrow than Xi’an and Tim, but none ever had a problem carrying their own arc for at least an issue or two. Meanstreak was a speedster with an awesome name and a genius-level intellect he only showed off when he felt like it. Krystalin was the relatively serene daughter from a family of militant Black Panthers who could weave objects out of crystal. Cerebra—who, like Tim, more often went by her real name of Shakti—was Xi’an’s second-in-command with an assortment of psychic powers who was the only one committed to keeping the team together when everybody else was going off on their own. You also had Metalhead—a musically-inclined Colossus knockoff who became far more interesting when he got disfigured by a bad guy then left the team to join their tenuous allies the Freak Show—Bloodhawk—the “designed-to-be-an-action-figure” red reptillian with big ol’ wings and claws who only helped out once in awhile—plus various other support characters, like Xi’an’s old Lawless gang buddies, including the traitorious Junkpile.

X-Men 2099 also had some pretty cool villains (and some pretty crappy ones as well). The big bad of that “first season” was Brimstone Love, an immensely powerful and gigantic devil-looking fellow who ran the Theater of Pain, a performance group that supplied its rich clientele with entertainment powered by the suffering of others and the group that first employed La Lunatica. There was also Master Zhao, a would-be successor to Xavier who was believed dead but instead had just gone insane due to power-enahcning drugs and built his own twisted versions of the original X-Men. Figures like The Driver, a mysterious shepherd who was supposedly responsible for bringing mutants to the fabled “Avalon” but instead downloaded them onto a giant computer in a misguided effort to “save” them occupied a grey area, as did Meanstreak’s old buddy Halloween Jack, a former Spider-Man 2099 supporting character who was granted the powers of Loki and used them to become a green monster and try to take over Las Vegas.

Really the best testament I can give to X-Men 2099 is how vividly I remember all the characters and concepts enough to write about them well over a decade later, and knowing that I’m barely scratching the surface of the expanded cast and barely summarizing any storylines for y’all. It really is incredible what a packed mythology Moore and artist Ron Lim—who never missed an issue—built in just over two years, and even more impressive how each new addition felt fully-realized and occupied a unique space despite the incredible pace and volume at which they were being unleashed.

I jumped off X-Men 2099 shortly after issue #25 both because I was getting out of comics and because it really did feel like I had received a full and rewarding story, beginning to end, so it was a natural place to stop. I’m kind of disappointed the 2099 concept imploded not long after, but at least I get to feel like I was along for the whole ride.

If I had to sum up X-Men 2099 in two words they would be “ambitious” and “consistent”—not too shabby for a book that from its title alone would probably conjure up “tacky” and “excessive” instead sight unseen. I recommend in this case you don’t judge a book by its cover—or its name.