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Title: Spiderman 2099, Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
Series: Spiderman 2099 #1, 2 & 3
Author: Peter David
Artist: Rick Leonardi
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 68
Format: Digital Scan

Synopsis:

Miguel O'hara, brilliant geneticist, is working for Alchemax, one of the Mega-Corporations. He is working on genetically imprinting various aspects of other creatures onto humans so as to make them more fit for various Alchemax jobs. So far none of the prisoners assigned as test subjects have survived.

Due to his smart mouth and bad political sense, Miguel gets on the wrong side of Tyler Stone, CEO of Alchemax. Stone injects Miguel with a synthetic drug that bonds to his dna and forces him to keep working for Alchemax, or he'll die of withdrawal symptoms. In desperation, Miguel returns to his Alchemax lab and re-imprints his own dna pattern onto himself in an effort to cleanse himself from the drug bonding.

Unbeknownst to Miguel, one of the other scientists, who has taken the brunt of Miguel's acid wit, is also working that night. Said scientist sabotages the imprint program by overloading it with spider dna. A huge explosion happens, Miguel lives but with talons, fangs and messed up vision. He escapes the lab but a bounty hunter is hot on his trail.

Realizing he has to throw the cyborg bounty hunter off of his trail so he won't know it is Miguel O'Hara he is chasing, Miguel puts on a mexican day of the dead costume made from unstable molecules, which will allow him to use it without slicing it to ribbons with his talons. He attacks Venture, gets captured, escapes and defeats Venture and comes across a cult to Thor.

The origin story ends with Miguel taking a phone call from Tyler Stone, who wants to discuss “Spiderman”. Thus a new Super Hero is born.

My Thoughts:

Holy smokes!!! I had totally forgotten just how short comic books were. These scans had all the ad pages removed, so they're only about 22-24 pages each. I think most comics ran about 30 pages back in the 90's, so you're talking an advertisement every 4th page. Glad I don't have to deal with that now.

This is my first time reading Spiderman 2099 so let me back up and give just a bit of history about me and the 2099 comic line. I'll be as brief as possible. I started seriously reading comics in 1991 and in 1992 started my first subscription with Silver Sable & Her Wildpack. This took up all of my money but I began haunting the semi-local comic stores and the grocery stores where comics were sold. I saw Doom 2099 in December of '92 and that was my introduction to 2099. I bought the first 4 issues of Doom then bought the first couple of issues of Punisher 2099 from my friend Cam who had bought them but he didn't like them. That brought me to mid '93 and I was just plum out of money. So while I realized that things were really hopping over at Spiderman 2099 I just couldn't afford it. Plus, the first several issues sold out wicked fast and trying to get back orders was, while not impossible, much harder than it was today. I've always liked Spidey, I've always wanted to see what Spidey2099 was all about and since I'm in a manga funk, I figure this will be a good break from that while still keeping my toes in the visual medium.

I bet this would have blown the socks of my teenage self. Flying cars, armed police/guards using flying cycles, cyborg bounty hunters, evil corporations, evil CEO's personally injecting drugs into their most brilliant workers. Check, check and checkity-check! Now, I am reading this as an “experience” and not as just a book to read and review. If I just read this, it would be very hard to overlook the puerile nature, the complete lack of logic, the utter and complete “boy'ishness” of it. As an “experience” though, it sure is fun. Memories, memories, memories.

These first 3 issues comprise the Origins storyline. We'll see how future volumes pan out. I will not be surprised if I just up and quit in disgust at some point or just let it peter out [ha, get it, Peter Out, Miguel In?]

★★★☆☆ ( )