This miniseries was Marvel’s way of rebooting the 2099 universe for a fresh set of readers. I could lie and tell you it’s possible for me to be impartial here, but it’s not. I get why people like the 2099 characters, but for myself I don’t love alternate future stories. I have enough trouble keeping track of all the guys in Earth-616.
But since this miniseries includes a few 616 characters, I have to cover it.
It opens with 2099’s Punisher, who is basically Butcher from The Boys, only more psycho. Super-heroes killed his family, so now he’s on a mission from God to kill all heroes. And he wants to start with Earth-616’s Spider-Man and Wolverine, so he creates a time-storm to bring them into the future.
This leads to anomalies in the time stream and an adventure in the future where Spider-Man helps Miguel O’Hara become 2099’s Spider-Man (because…I guess the previous 2099 universe doesn’t exist anymore?!?), yellow-costume Wolverine fights Hulk (again), and Marvel gets the opportunity for a bunch of new series. The 2099 Hulks end up attempting an invasion of Earth 616, but are stopped by Wolverine and Future Ghost Rider along with Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers.
In addition to four issues of Timestorm 2009/2099, there were two one-shots, one for Spider-Man and one for Wolverine. The former sets up a future Human Torch/O’Hara Spidey bromance because, I guess, the future is always similar to the past. The latter pairs Wolverine up with his even grumpier future self.
One of the nice things about this event is that it keeps a narrow cast, which allows for focus. Too often, events like this feel the need to show dozens of “versions” of familiar characters. I’ve only tagged Miguel because the rest of these guys aren’t heard from again. There’s an attempt to seed a story that one of them, an “internet character” named Lyla, is going to start another timestorm but…I guess sales weren’t good enough.
One of the not-so-nice things? As noted above, I’m pretty sure this is NOT THE SAME MIGUEL O’HARA. So now we have TWO alternate future Spider-Men.
Screw that, though. I’m using the same character tag.
English (US) · 