Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – Spider-Man 2099 Comics History Explained

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a huge hit at the box office, bringing millions of fans into contact with Miguel O’Hara, the character better known as Spider-Man 2099. First appearing onscreen in a post-credits scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the character has a complex backstory in the comics, and it begins as one of the odder chapters of the early ’90s speculator boom, in which comics companies released big, splashy “event” stories and enhanced covers in an attempt to draw in casual comics buyers, many of whom were not actually fans, but “investors,” hoping to drop $4 on a chromium cover-enhanced superhero book so they could flip it for a big profit down the line.

Originally created by Peter David and Rick Leonardi in 1992, Miguel O’Hara was the title character in Spider-Man 2099, a comic set more than a century in the future (at the time), in which Peter Parker is gone, but his legacy lives on through his namesake. O’Hara was a scientist who, after trying and failing to recreate Spider-Man’s powers in humans, gets involved in a freak lab accident and has his DNA spliced with that of a spider.

Spider-Man 2099 came at a time when there were more monthly Spider-Man books than most readers could keep up with — but it was more than just another excuse to put the ol’ Webhead’s name on the cover of a book. Marvel actually launched an entire line of 2099 comics, in the hopes that if they were a big success, it could be a whole, second shared universe that could run simultaneously alongside the standard “616 universe” of the comics. This was years before the Ultimate Marvel line, and so the idea felt fresh.

The world of 2099 was a high-tech world run by mega-corporations, who controlled nearly every aspect of everyday life and acted without consequence. To varying degrees, the heroes of 2099 either worked to makes lives better for people within that system, or to tear it down completely.

The 2099 line launched with four titles: Doom 2099 (a reimagining of Doctor Doom), Punisher 2099, Spider-Man 2099, and Ravage 2099. Ravage, a totally new character created for the line, was created by Stan Lee and Paul Ryan, and marks the last significant creation by Lee for Marvel. Each of the titles featured similar trade dress, complete with cardstock covers and a foil border that looked like circuitry running all the way around the front cover image. 

After the initial success of the 2099 publishing line, Marvel rolled out Ghost Rider 2099, Hulk 2099, and X-Men 2099. The line lasted for about four years, but collapsed in 1996 when Marvel, struggling financially, let editor Joey Cavalieri go, and most of the creative staff of the 2099 line resigned in solidarity. The original Spider-Man 2099 series ran for 46 issues, with the first 44 written by David.

Marvel tried to keep the line alive with Fantastic Four 2099, a series that starred a team implied to be the classic Fantastic Four, shot into the future; and X-Nation 2099, an X-Men spinoff. Finally, when they saw the writing on the wall, Marvel cancelled the books and put all the remaining characters into 2099: World of Tomorrow, which ran for only 8 issues before being cancelled. The universe was wrapped up in a one-shot, 2099: Manifest Destiny, in which Steve Rogers is found in suspended animation and, teaming with Miguel O’Hara, founds a team of Avengers, which help transform Earth’s future into a more positive one than the corporate dystopia of the 2099 titles.

The 2099 line, ending as it did in a series of increasingly embarrassing messes during an era that wasn’t very good for Marvel as a whole, was more or less erased from fans’ collective memory for a while. In 2002, David was writing a Captain Marvel title, and in it featured both Miguel, and a version of The Maestro, from David’s other dystopian future story, The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect. That was as close as David would get — at least for a while — to resolving Miguel’s story, which he had cut short in 1996.

A few years later, in 2006, Miguel ended up joining the multiverse-hopping team The Exiles for a while, after they stumbled into the 2099 timeline (by then officially designated Earth-928). This version of Miguel came from early in the publishing history, long before the Manifest Destiny story had given 2099 a “happy ending.”

In 2009, an alternate version of Miguel appeared in Marvel’s Timestorm storyline. In that story, the main-line Marvel Universe and a new version of the 2099 timeline collided, with that version of Miguel being a teenager, closer in premise to the early stories featuring Peter or Miles. That version, along with the one from The Exiles, who presumably was also another variant, died in the Spider-Verse storyline in the comics, which took place after another — the “real?” — Miguel showed up in The Superior Spider-Man and then got his own ongoing title from 2014 to 2015 (once again, by Peter David, this time with artist Will Sliney). 

By the time he returned to the 2099 timeline, it had been altered by Timestorm and other subsequent events, offering a version of the 2099 timeline with a more open-ended, unknown future, so more stories can be told there going forward.

Miles Morales returns to the big screen with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse now playing in theaters after premiering on June 2nd. Miles (Shamiek Moore) reunites with fellow heroes Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) for another web-swinging adventure through the multiverse, finding himself at odds with the Spider-Society led by Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac). Other new heroes include Spider-Woman Jessica Drew (Issa Rae), Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), and Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni), while new villain the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) also enters the fray. The sequel to Sony Pictures’ hit 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, and written by the team of Chris Miller, Phil Lord, and Dave Callaham.