Spider-Man 2099 #13: "Prophet and Loss"

*** (three of five stars)

Summary
The man who emerged from the inter-dimensional portal last issue asks how long he's been trapped in there.  Spidey answers that it's 2099, and the man seems confused (and asks Miguel why he's wearing a mask).  Two figures (maybe Public Eye officers) whisper about the possibility of him being the Prophet of Thor, following Spider-Man, the Harbinger of Thor.  Thanatos overhears the conversation and tells the two figures that Thor is dead, because he was there.  The Prophet recognizes Thanatos, though he can't place him as anything more than a creature of evil.  The Prophet tries to take out Thanatos, but only manages to create some light around his hands.  Thanatos informs the Prophet that his "internal powers have run dry," though stressing that, even at full power, he wouldn't have been able to defeat him.  Thanatos tells the Prophet that he used to be formidable, but that Thanatos won't allow him to remember it.  Meanwhile, Dana speeds towards Alchemax, worried that Miguel would be concerned about her after seeing Thanatos burst into her office last issue.  She wonders briefly if Miguel would've just been happy that her plans with Tyler Stone were ruined, but then stops herself, assuring herself that Miguel would've been worried about her, even if he wanted to see Stone harmed.  On her way, Dana notices that Alchemax is crawling with Public Eye officers and expresses frustration when her car is slowed by the traffic authority to "ensure proper traffic flow."  At Alchemax, Spidey defends the Prophet against Thanatos while Stone escapes the room, telling the Public Eye to take down the guy "with a brush on his head," save the "silver-haired one" for questioning, and hold Spider-Man for him.  In the lab, Spidey is stunned when his talons don't penetrate Thanatos' skin at all.  Thanatos further surprises him when he confirms that they don't and that he read Miguel's mind to know it was what he was thinking.  He then punches Miguel across the room.  The Prophet tries to intervene, but Thanatos, telling him that his transition to the 2099 world has either robbed him of his powers or mutated them being his understanding, slashes him.  Thanatos observes to no one in particular that he could've disemboweled the Prophet if he had wanted to do so, but that leaving him bleeding profusely was sufficient.  Thanatos then asks Spidey if he recognizes him, telling him that "we set you up."  Spidey is still dazed from the punch and Thanatos is poised to throw him in the portal when the Public Eye opens fire and blasts both of them into it.

Elsewhere, Kasey has a dream where she blows up Alchemax and is subsequently saved by Spider-Man.  She tells him that she can't stop thinking about him and he reveals that he's Gabriel, who expresses frustration that Kasey had feelings for Spider-Man, even though he's him.  The dream is interrupted by a knock.  Elsewhere, Miguel is falling through a blank space, seeing images of people in his life.  He hits bottom and, looking around him, observes a sky made of "a zillion colors."  He begins walking until he hears voices and realizes that he's walking on his own enormous (costumed) body.  A voice tells him that the crowd surrounding the body (the source of the voices) is mourning his (though not Miguel's) passing.  The voice informs him that he's in "interspace," which is everywhere at once, "one stop removed from the nexus of all realities."  The voice is revealed to be a giant-sized Thanatos, who tells him that interspace is his second home and that he's been marooned on Earth since the end of the Heroic Age, existing as a discorporated, powerless entity who was awakened when the virtual-unreality portal came on-line a few weeks earlier.  He used the energy coming from the portal to possess the body of a "newly deceased vessel..one whose last thoughts were hatred for you, Spider-Man."  Thanatos tells Spidey that, in his host's honor, he will abandon Spider-Man in interspace and go to devastate the world of 2099 to make him pay for whatever he did to the host.

In Downtown, Kasey discovers that the knock was a guy named Raff at her door.  He tells her that she doesn't look so good and offers to lend her money so that she can go to the clinic.  She tells him that she's fine, but then vomits, telling him that, on second thought, she might be ill.  At Alchemax, the division heads meet with the C.E.O. to review their performances.  The C.E.O. threatens to take over Stone's affairs since they seem beyond his control.  Stone says that he can handle them and the C.E.O. tells him to do so, noting that the "nets" are flooded with rumors of the "Net Prophet" emerging from the virtual-unreality portal.  He informs Stone that he doesn't need another hero running around New York and, in fact, notes that it's the sudden rise of the heroes that inspired the meeting.  He says that the division heads need to take out the heroes rather than arguing among themselves.  Elsewhere in Alchemax, the Prophet is being escorted by the Public Eye, muttering to himself that he has to help the "man in black."  The Public Eye tries to restrain him, but he re-discovers his powers, firing blasts at the officers and then throwing up a force field when they fire on him.  Back in interspace, Miguel attacks Thanatos, who then grabs him in his huge fist.  He tells Miguel that he was never in the same league as the original Spider-Man or his foes, like Venom, and that he can ask the original Spider-Man about it when he sees him after he dies.  However, before Thanatos can crush him, Miguel bites him.  Thanatos is paralyzed and Miguel announces that he realized when Thanatos mentioned Venom that spiders inject venom into their prey with their fangs; figuring that he had fangs, Miguel figured he might also have venom.  He then begins to run while Thanatos is paralyzed and sees a hand suddenly appear.  He hears Thanatos screaming behind him and decides to go with the devil he knows, grabbing the hand  The hand pulls him through the portal and Miguel appears in his apartment.  Taking off his mask, he's relieved to be home...but shocked when he realizes that the hand belonged to the Prophet, who's bleeding next to him.

The Review
As predicted, David was just setting up the story last issue, and, wow, he hits the gas in this one!  Although it's a fast-paced issue with a lot of interesting plot developments, I'm giving this issue a three because it remains to be seen where David goes with some of these plots.  I'm assuming it'll be somewhere amazing, but the lengthy "Unknown" section implies that we'll have to wait to see.  I think one of my issues is that Thanatos seems all over the place in terms of his motives, his powers, and his connections.  Once we get a little bit more clarity on that front, I think I'll be a happier camper.

The Good
1) OMG, Aaron Delgato or the Vulture is Thanatos!  I mean, we don't actually know that yet, but I'm pretty sure that it's one of them, given that Spider-Man was involved in their deaths (assuming the Vulture is dead).  As usual, David keeps an old sub-plot -- the fact that Delgato's body was never found after the accident in issue #1 and that we never actually saw the Vulture die in issue #8 -- and makes it a key part of a future plot.  Moreover, David answers almost all the questions I had about Thanatos last issue.  He "knew" about the virtual-unreality machine because it awakened energies that he previously channeled before he was expelled from "interspace," the dimension into which the virtual-unreality machine was tapping.  Although it's a little science-fiction-y, it works as an explanation.  I love how David didn't just leave that question unanswered, since so many other authors would've just made it seem like Thanatos just magically knew about the portal.  Moreover, David clarifies Thanatos' connection to Thor.  He's clearly not Thor, as David seemed to be hinting last issue, given that Thanatos informs the Public Eye officers that he was there when Thor died.  (He also mentioned last issue that he was there when God died.  The guy goes to a lot of funerals.)  David also shows that some of my doubts about whether or not Thanatos really had powers were premature, given that he's able to read Miguel's mind even when he's not in interspace (where, presumably, his powers are even stronger).  David obviously has some huge reveal still up his sleeve, like Thanatos being Loki or something, but I feel better that he started answering some of the questions that I had about Thanatos this issue.

2) OMG, the venom power is awesome!  I did NOT see that coming.

The Unknown
1) Although David answered a lot of questions about Thanatos in this issue, he also raised several new ones.  We still actually don't know Thanatos' plans, particularly what he was going to do with the "full lost power of the Heroic Age."  First, why is the full power of the Heroic Age lost?  Did some sort of even happened that took away the powers of all the super-beings?  Is that what Thanatos was somehow siphoning?  I actually wondered if Thanatos isn't Immortus or Kang, given that he refers to interspace as his "second home."  If it's his second home, where is his first one?  It doesn't seem to be our dimension, since he lamented the fact that he was trapped in it in the first place.  Moreover, what exactly did he plan on doing? He mentions in this issue that "we" set up Spidey.  He seems to be referring to his host as the second person in the "we" since he mentions that he was going to destroy the 2099 world in tribute to his host, because it would pain Spider-Man.  Is that really his motivation, though?  To get revenge for his host?  What would he do after that?  Moreover, why does he not seem to want to just stay in interspace?  He lamented the fact that he was trapped on Earth, but here he seems eager to leave interspace to return to it.

2) Continuing on the Thanatos/Prophet theme, one of the pitfalls of the 2099 premise, as has been discussed in the various letters pages, is that it would be easy to reduce every plot to a guessing game of how such-and-such character or such-and-such event is connected to the current (or, at least, current for when these stories were written) time line.  One of the reasons why David has been so successful so far is that he's avoided doing that, making the world about Miguel and not Peter.  It's why the world is so engaging, because it's not just a reflection of our world.  It also takes on added importance in terms of the fact that I'm reading these issues 20 years later.  They don't feel dated, because, so far, David hasn't tied anything happening in 2099 to an event in the past.  Given the way Marvel has rebooted events over and over again, it would be embarrassing if David made "Bloodties" (the Avengers/X-Men cross-over event that Marvel is hyping in the ads in these issues) into some sort of defining event, as opposed to a forgettable one.  I'm concerned about it in this arc (or the future arc where we learn what's really happening), because David is definitely implying that both Thanatos and the Prophet are present incarnations of past (or future) characters.  Already I find myself just wishing that he'd tell us, another drawback to this sort of story, because it's difficult to just let it take you where it takes you. 

3) Again, in the category of David not letting a plot drop, I like how he continues to show Thanatos switching back and forth when it comes to what he thinks about Miguel.  When Miguel tries to save the Prophet, Thanatos tells him that it's a pity that he threw in his lot with "losers."  But, Miguel (understandably) notes that Thanatos was willing to throw Miguel into the portal last issue, so it's not like, in Miguel's words, Thanatos has Miguel's best interests at heart.  Even after the later events of this issue, I'm not really sure what Thanatos' intentions are towards Miguel.  He seems to know all about Miguel, though it's unclear if it comes from his possession of the host who knew him or some other sort of exogenous knowledge, like he's from a future timeline.  I figure, at some point, David will show why Thanatos vacillates from seeming to be fond of Miguel to wanting to kill him.  Similarly, I'm not sure why Thanatos didn't kill the Prophet.  He tells us that he could've disemboweled him but didn't, despite the fact that he seemed to want the Prophet dead before he could remember who he was (and how powerful he was).  Why not just kill him?

4) I wonder what's up with Kasey.  It seems too obvious for her to be pregnant.

The Bad
Dana doesn't really seem to think much of Miguel.  She suggests in her drive to Alchemax that Miguel wouldn't be all that worried about her when he saw the explosion, suggesting instead that he would've been happier that her night with Stone would've been ruined.  Does she really think that of him?  Really?