Friday, March 14, 2014

CBR Timestorm 2009–2099

 

The future is in danger! The Timestorm is coming!!

For more stories of AMAZING FANTASY check those out!!

Comic title: Timestorm 2009–2099
Art by Eric Battle, Jon Bosco, Wesley Craig, Frazer Alex Irving & R.B. Silva
Story by Brian Reed 

Published by Marvel Comics
From 2009
Lineup Spider-man/Wolverine/Marvel 2099
Format: Hardcover trade paperback collecting the Timestorm 2009–2099 #1–4 as well as the Timestorm 2009–2099: Spider-Man & Timestorm 2009–2099: X-Men one shots.

Time for another Marvel Comics review!

Stories of alternate worlds within Marvel or DC are always fun to have a different look at familiar situations taking place in original settings.

Sometimes those get so interesting these What if..? or Elseworlds even get their own on-going series and spawning ever-lasting universe of their own. Among such were the Marvel 2099 or Ultimate Comics lines at Marvel.

The 2099 Universe left such a long-running impression it is still remembered fondly to this day and even referenced.

What if Marvel revisited it nowadays, from a more modern and current point of view? Giving a new fresh look at this future ever so much closer now?

That's what Marvel gave us in 2009.

As the pitch says: In 1992, Marvel introduced futuristic versions of its iconic heroes with the 2099 Universe. Now in 2009, that far-off future is now menaced, damaged by present day events.

Let's have a look!


The story opens with Jake Gallows, this Punisher from the year 2099 A.D.

For some reason, Gallows traveled in time to present day Marvel. He is after our Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The first one he comes across? Well, none other than our friendly neighborhood Spider-man! After a quick fight, Gallows dispatches of Spider-man with a futuristic gun and vaporize our hero!...

... Only he's not quite dead but instead displaced in time to 2099!!

2009 meets 2099!

As Spidey gets incarcerated by the local authorities, he meets this young mutant named Shakti Haddad. She has the ability to look both into the past and the future. Turns out time itself is in danger!

We find out the Chief Executive Head of the Alchemax Company, Ty Stone has been using a "Chronosphere" to send Punisher 2099 into the past to rewrite history for his own purposes. But it apparently seems that it is in fact Lyla, an holographic AI, who was controlling these events behind the scenes to actually ensure the 2099 timeline will come to pass despite the Marvel Universe's last changes over the years. The scientist George O'Hara is trying to reach Stone to prevent him from doing that, with no success..

Meanwhile a kid named Miguel O'Hara and his pal Kron Stone have an accident at school related to the Timestorm, due to Ty Stone's messing with time....


Miguel gets Spider-man-like abilities since they were messing with arachnids at Pym Academy in Genetics 101. But his buddy Kron is seriously disfigured by the experiment gone wrong and ends up at the Hospital...

The Punisher 2099 gets to Wolverine who also gets displaced in time...! Luke Cage and Captain America are finally able to capture this stranger from the future and try interrogating him.

Peter Parker finally escapes. He tries to keep Miguel under control, but the kid has all these Great Powers now. And with these usually comes Great Responsibility. And a lot of foolishness.

While Spider-man battles the police and an escaped Scorpion 2099 - Kron who originally was Venom 2099 actually - Miguel creates a quick costume on the spot and is able to join Pete as Spider-man 2099!

Wolverine finds himself in the middle of a Gamma-level threat! For good reason! The Hulk 2099 used to be the sole survivor of a bombing in Washington DC. But now it's an entire species that is crawling all over the wasteland. But they're coming to fully-inhabited cities! He joins the fight with the X-Men 2099 and his own future-self!

And soon it's all-out brawl as our heroes, both past and future, fight for tomorrow!

Timestorm 2009–2099 was originally a four-issue mini series which saw the release of two additional one-shots published simultaneously, one from the perspective of Spider-man and the other from Wolverine's tying both later into the larger overall story-arc.


This crossover between the MU and the 2099-verse is not really the 2099 reunion some fans expected.

It's actually an all-new 2099, familiar but not quite similar. Reimagined by writer Brian Reed.

The actual 2099 future as we knew is in jeopardy. Over the last few years since it originally spawned there have been far too many divergences. So Reed decided to both explore a new alternate future and use that as narrative.

For example, since 2099 was first imagined back in 90s, the "real" Jake Gallows has been erased and replaced by this new similar incarnation. The original one is actually seen briefly near the end of the story, in his original costume/look.

The story doesn't feel like an actual revisit of the old 2099 Universe but more like another one of these parallel universe-kind of deals where heroes get to meet their alternate-self while taking over their roles for a while. A sort of similar situation to Identity Wars I reviewed before.

This means our regular Spider-man gets to meet "a" Spider-man 2099 (which he mentions changed since the last time), well at least this 2009 version of a Spider-man from 2099.

The one-shots get to explore both sides, the Spider-man one's Spidey's side for example as Peter Parker tries to knock some sense into this young Miguel O'Hara.

The world depicted now is not the same 2099 anymore, more of an Ultimate-ysh take on it with Miguel a teenager now since everything's happening much sooner (his dad still alive, Kron not his half-sibling yet).

Several things survived yet, such as the Church of Thor. Other characters got all-new redesigns.   Shakti Haddad aka Cerebra is now younger and a central character here. Doctor Doom "2099" has a short cameo just to see how things diverged with the Timestorm. He is kept alive in an underground facility. Ghost Rider 2099 pops up (although the artists here just can't get this Cyber-Ghost Rider right in my opinion). There's an all-new 2099 Human Torch as well.

There's some good things and some bad things of course.

A big part of the appeal behind Miguel O'Hara as Spider-man was that he wasn't just "yet" another kid superhero, but he actually had a career going on. As a younger Spider-man 2099 here, it's kind of lost in translation.

Also a lot of things seem to happen at random. Why did the gun send present heroes travel into the future? No idea... (or was all that part of Lyla's plan? it's kind of random...) Also Wolverine's presence really seems forced more than anything.

The art is very uneven, also similar to Identity Wars we get different artists per issues. While I really enjoyed the stunning art by Wesley Craig, the only real appeal of this book art-wise, artist Eric Battle was far from offering the best work included here... yet he was the one to actually draw most of this "event" in the main issues.. why!?


Overall, it's a fun Marvel Universe/2099 crossover.

Only one I wish was put in better hands. Or at least used through a more coherent and nostalgic tale. Afterall this story marked both a return to the 2099 Universe in over a decade, and was sort of exactly 90 to the actual 2099 year. Such a wasted opportunity.

Craig's art is truly the highlight in this book. Great, fun, dynamic. The 2099 aesthetic is not lost through his work and even more stunning nowadays to look back at. The other artists did pretty well all considered, but nothing too memorable or remarkable. I'm just not that a big fan of giving Eric Battle most of the main issues. That's all...

All in all the story is fun. Some "changes" in the timeline cause some new ideas to be used (such as the Scorpion 2099), but not explored...

It's a decent futuristic alternate reality story. Just don't expect to see the 2099 future you knew.

I give it:
2 / 3 Howards!

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)