Steve Orlando Spreads Carnage on Marvel's Future in Spider-Man 2099: Dark Genesis (Exclusive)
How Carnage Fits Into 2099 World
ComicBook.com: The 2099 franchise is all about reinventing and offering new takes on classic characters. When you were developing Dark Genesis, how did you approach doing this with Carnage?
Steve Orlando: We wanted our Carnage to of course give folks what they love about the original, but with a new setup and flavor that fits into the world of 2099. So when Justin [Mason] and I got together with editors Mark and Danny to plan the character out, the key was to hone in on what makes Carnage who he is. And then we feed that into the lore that's been built into 2099 for the past thirty years. So now, with Carnage 2099, you've got the mayhem, you've got the blood and chaos. But you've also got a cyberpunk futuristic angle, where Carnage is now a creature who quite literally needs to kill to survive. While the original clearly ENJOYS it, this Carnage's heart burns blood like a car's engine burns gasoline.
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New Characters
It's fun to see that you're continuing to introduce new, 2099 versions of heroes. What can you tell us about characters like Daredevil 2099 and Blade 2099? How are they both similar and different to the current-day heroes readers are already familiar with?
I'm so so excited about both! And hope we get time in the future to work with them again, since they've become standouts for us on the creative side. DAREDEVIL 2099 is technically a reintroduction of the first DD 2099, created by [Warren] Ellis and [Dale] Eaglesham in 1995. But we've taken the advent of Earth-2099 and its combination of all 2099 timelines into one to reposition him a bit. DD 2099's senses are so strong that they're overwhelming anywhere except his specially retrofitted sensory deprivation apartment. To go out into the world, he dons the DD helmet, which buffers his senses down to a superhuman, but not overwhelming level. BLADE 2099 is all new, and is someone whose life is a natural extrapolation of what his mentor, the original Blade, went through. Blade 2099's struggle mirrors Blade's, but is... a bit more toothsome.
In both cases, you've got characters whose thematics and imagery recall the characters we know and love, but with twists that fit them right into 2099's kill-or-be-killed world of tomorrow.
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Big Appeal of 2099
What have you found most appealing about playing in the 2099 playground?
Marvel has always strived to show the world outside our window. What's fascinating to me about 2099, and what's always been so, is that it follows that tradition by offering folks a glimpse at how what's outside that window could change. Like the best speculative fiction, a lot of what was posited by 2099 at its inception has come to pass in one form or another. So now, playing in 2099 means continuing to play in a world that's a deadlier, even more exciting, and semi-dystopian vision of the future. As our "today" has changed over the past thirty years, so too must our "tomorrow" change with it. The fun is exploring just what could be, and what new dangers may come.
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2099 Post-Dark Genesis
Using one or two words, how would you describe the status of the 2099 world after Dark Genesis concludes?
Chaotic.
Hopeful.
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