Everybody 2099
Writer: Peter David
Art Team: Will Sliney & Rachelle Rosenberg
Marvel Comics
Review by: Branden Murray
I have a very strange love/hate relationship currently going with this series. I’m actually hesitant to use the word "love" at all now that I think more about it. A more accurate description would be something along the lines of, "let’s continue to see each other and maybe things work out." That’s the type of thing going down over here between me and this title. I can see things I like, or used to, buried deep within a lot nonsense that I need to weed through. To be frank, I’m not one who exactly excels at weeding through comic book nonsense. So let’s see if Spider-Man 2099 and I will continue to see each other because we both have nothing better to do or if we're heading for a juicy breakup special in the future.
Piggy backing off last issues cliffhanger we pick things up here with Power Pack scouring the city of Nueva York as they return from a hunt for costumed vigilantes to capture. The group approaches a floating base and we find out Power Pack is reporting to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters!!!
I would love to provide a traditional recap from here on out, as I normally do for issues I review, however this issue has so many characters, with each provided about at least 1 entire page of dialogue or content, and with the story skipping around constantly it’s incredibly difficult to try and do so. I will however try something a little different to demonstrate to you beautiful readers how cramming everything and a kitchen sink into a 2099 book doesn’t always work so well at all.
- What I refer to as Hero Team 1, consisting of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, and Moon Knight, tries to track Captain America’s whereabouts while testing the limits of each other’s nerves.
- Captain America is sick of sitting in a crummy broken down RV and decides to go back out and about in pursuit of her long lost husband and family.
- Nickki Fury and Power Pack have a chat about what they were sent out to do. We discover Nikki Fury’s grandpa (Nick) wouldn’t be happy with the current way heroes are being treated.
- We find out Power Pack and other mutants are working for the government in pursuit of costumed heroes and villains.
- Punisher, on his flying motorbike, gets jumped by Spider-Man as if he’s was wearing Robin Underoos™ on a New Jersey Boardwalk stuntin’.
- Hero Team 2 consisting of Hulk, Hawkeye, Hercules, Black Widow, and two other characters I don’t care enough about to look up, hear a knock on their not so secret RV. Spider-Man comes walking in like he owns the joint asking where Captain America is before the RV is attacked.
- Bloodhawk, Luna, and Skullfire (apparently X-Men 2099?) are the ones attacking the RV, because the government said to.
- Captain America finds her husband who is immedietly freaked because she should be dead. Captain America then freaks as well because her husband doesn’t have their two children and apparently they don’t exist in this new 2099 timeline.
- Hero Team 1 and Hero Team 2 join forces to take on the former heroes turned government agent X-Men.
- Spider-Man demands everyone stop fighting or he will kill the Punisher ... sure that works.
- The X-Men call his bluff but are then promptly taken and talked down by Shakti. Shakti is apparently one of the characters I didn’t care enough about earlier to tell you about, mostly because research was involved in discovering about her.
- Captain America is punched by a member of Power Pack in her husbands apartment. When she subsequently tries to escape she is foiled by the other two Power Pack members waiting outside.
- The cliffhanger reveal is that Mr. Jameson is the one orchestrating all this mumbo jumbo and still after Spider-Man … I immediately become impressed by Jameson’s ability to hold a grudge. Someone get this dude a new hobby.
At one point while reading this title I literally had to stop and count, for curiosity’s sake, just how many characters were actually in this single story. Every time I turned the page it was about someone new, doing something new, and had just become too ridiculous to follow. The answer for folks still with me is there were 19 different speaking characters in this title. Unless you’re sitting down to read the entire run of A Book of Fire and Ice, with a family tree sitting in front of you, that's just too much to keep track of in a 23 page comic and still try to comprehend everyone’s motivations. The book looked pretty though.
Bits and Pieces:
To sum things up this was a completely disjointed issue, which made some chaotic attempts towards the end of the story to try and pull everything together, but ultimately failed to succeed in anyway for this reader. I still remain a fan of Spider-Man 2099 but this book has turned into Everybody 2099 and that’s not what I signed up for.
3.5/10
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