2099: Manifest Destiny #1

* (one of five stars)

Summary

Zero Cochrane narrates a history lesson from 1999, informing the reader that some aliens placed a "barrier of absolute interdict" around Earth about the time that humans rose against super-humans.  As the super-humans fell (mainly because many of them refused to kill the humans attacking them), some soldiers put one of the super-humans into suspended animation in the hope that he'd remind future generations of something that they lost.  The humans win the war and the Age of Heroes comes to an end, plunging Earth into a dark period for 20-30 years.  We then switch from Zero's narration to a prophet seemingly talking about an alien invasion (or, at least, "soulless credheads [that] crawled in from the outer darks an' took over hereabouts") that drove Thor and the rest of the gods from Earth.  Cochrane continues his narration, focusing now on the Blue Area of the Moon; the reader learns that Black Bolt opened up Attilan to refugees from Earth during the dark period.  We see a bunch of people smuggling out containers having to do something with the "conversion of Terrigen Mist into polydochloric euphemol." However, they're stopped by Moon Knight 2099.  She fights them, but one of them throws her into the Watcher's domain, which she exposits has been dark for a century.

Meanwhile, underwater, Gabe and Xina follow a "treasure map" that "somebody" got in his e-mail (presumably from Zero) to the location of the capsule containing the person put into suspended animation in 1999, who, not surprisingly, turns out being Captain America.  Meanwhile, Moon Knight conveniently hears Uatu narrate his story to no one in particular (maybe he does it a few times a day just in case an adventurer might hear):  he was stripped of his sight for "compulsive participation in events."  He laments his most egregious crime against his pact of non-interference:  creating "trans-temporal duplicates" of the Fantastic Four, believing them to be Earth's last hope for salvation.  Moon Knight stops him as he's about to euthanize the Fantastic Four, saying that the original Fantastic Four would've preferred fighting against "insurmountable even hopeless odds" than embrace the peace of death.  Uatu agrees, wondering if his eyes are the only thing that have been blinded.

At Alchemax Tower, Miguel converses via video conference with Xi'an, the leader of the Last Refuge, now called Xavier City.  (New York seems to be re-inhabited thanks to a series of bridges connecting the buildings above the water line.)  Miguel and Xi'an argue over the "meta-genome project," which appears to be an abandoned project that sought to map super-human genomes.  Xi'an says that his people prefer to be left alone, telling Miguel that he knows nothing about being persecuted for his genetic code.  Miguel tells him that he'd be surprised and presses the point that it's better for him to start up the project again than someone with more nefarious intents, like Latveria.  Xi'an argues that some information should stay lost, but Miguel disagrees, noting that they still don't know what ended the Age of Heroes or crashed civilization.  At that moment, he's alerted to Gabe and Xina's return.  He meets them at the hanger, where the reader learns that he's married to Xina and that Conchata is alive and using the money that she gained from a lawsuit against "Doc in a Box" for mistakenly declaring her dead to find the shape-changer that framed Gabe for being the Green Goblin.  (Yup.  You read all that correctly).

Cap is awakened and Miguel tells him that they face a similar series of events -- an explosion of technological innovation and a proliferation of super-humans, followed by a a total collapse of civilization -- as the one that happened at the end of the Age of Heroes.  He wants information about this era to see if they can stop the collapse of civilization this time.  Cap tells the story of the end of the Age of Heroes, adding to Zero's narration that shadowy figures consolidated control over the media and used it to foster the war and hide their actual agenda.  Eventually, they stored away the knowledge and technologies that "threatened the status quo," hence the loss of technology that the 2099 series have often mentioned.  Miguel bashes the table over the loss of that information and the cost to the future that it entailed, saying that humanity deserves extinction.  However, Cap counters that they only managed to delay the future for 100 years, showing faith in the fight that the people in the room have.  Later, Miguel approaches Cap, saying that he had another reason to awaken him.  He reveals that they've found the walking stick that Thor used to switch places with Donald Blake and hopes that Cap will use it, because he once was deemed worth enough to wield it.  Cap balks at the responsibility but Miguel pushes, saying that the synthesis of these two symbols would be inspiring and that he understands the burden, telling him that he, too, used to wear a mask.  Cap realizes that Miguel understands what he's asking him to do and agrees.  He becomes Cap-Thor and does indeed inspire people, particularly when he wins over doubters by inviting anyone who asks to see if they're worthy enough to wield the hammer.

Eventually, the Watcher, accompanied by the Fantastic Four and perhaps some Inhumans, approaches Miguel and Steve, asking the former to gather Earth's heroes to make an assault on the barrier.  They head into space and the Watcher orders them to aim their energies at the barrier, hoping to destabilize it.  Screaming, "Avengers Assemble!" Cap-Thor leads the charge.  However, the barrier absorbs the energy and returns it in a greater amount; Uatu takes the blast.  Declaring that he rejects the Watchers' oath and accusing them of becoming "idle voyeurs," he sacrifices his life to destroy the barrier.  The resulting concussion wave scatters the heroes, with Cap drifting closest to "solar escape velocity."  Cap instructs Miguel to focus on saving the others, nothing that he'll have no oxygen left by the time that they get to him.  He then hurls Mjolnir to Miguel, saying that it was an honor to give three lives to his country and to some of the people who'll carry on the fight.  Miguel catches the hammer, but doesn't transform into Thor.  Instead, he realizes that he's not supposed to be a physical warrior, but a bureaucratic one, and runs Alchemax for the greater good, releasing the findings of the "metagene factor" project for free (to the fury of his advisors).

The remaining pages detail the next 1,000 years.  By 2199, Reed Richards has been put in charge of the space program that discovers that Europa's underwater seas are perfect for the Atlanteans to colonize, leading them to sign a peace with humanity, and nano-technology has allowed for the rapid reconstruction of the world  By 2399, the "metagene factor" study allows for the manipulation of DNA so that most of humanity becomes super-humans, allowing them to defend Earth against subsequent attempts at invasion.  By 2799, life extension and space migration are a reality.  In 3099, people gather at Emancipation, an enormous space station built where Uatu sacrificed himself, to hear Miguel, long retired for Alchemax and coaxed from his hermitage, speak on the 1,000th anniversary of "human freedom."  While he extols the virtues of Cap, noting that it was his moral compass and not powers that gave him authority, a ship embedded in a comet is discovered, containing the body of Captain America.  He's re-animated (again) and Miguel greets him as "Cap."  He says that he's no longer Captain America, a now 1,000-year-old myth.  When Miguel suggests that he's earned his right to retire, Steve makes it clear that he's just retiring the title of Captain America.  He wants to go to work on the frontier, where the societies are just taking hold, to help build something, hoping that he can serve as an inspiration just as America did to Earth during its darkest times.  As such, Miguel offers him Mjolnir, saying that "a carpenter needs a good hammer."  He suggests that Cap might meet Thor if he goes far enough and Cap wonders why the gods left.  Miguel suggests that maybe they left because a noble-enough people finally arose to take their place.

In cyberspace, Zero releases several artificial intelligences that he's used to run cyberspace for the last 1,000 years, allowing them to "transcend," meaning that he essentially is now the Internet.

The Review

This issue is...hokey.  First, it doesn't feel like a continuation of the story that Raab and Kelly told in "2099 World of Tomorrow."  Instead, it seems more like a hypothetical contemplation of the possible future of the 2099 world.  If it's actually meant to be the continuation of the story, then, on some level, I got what I wanted:  a hard reboot that ignores or, at least, de-emphasizes what Raab and Kelly did to the line in "2099 World of Tomorrow."  But, the problem is that Kaminsky goes too far in that reboot.  He not only messes with Peter David's Green Goblin story (an unforgivable sin, in my book), but he bends the space/time continuum to the point where it no longer makes sense, with Miguel living to see 3099 for no good reason.  It's hard to see anything that happens in 3099 being viewed as part of the mainstream Marvel Universe and, as such, it's hard to see anything in this entire issue as likely to stick if Marvel were to re-launch the 2099 line at some point.

But, it's most disappointing because, like "2099 World of Tomorrow," you're left wondering what could have been.  With an eight-issue series and a valedictory one-shot to end the line, Marvel could've done something that more or less left readers feeling a sense of closure.  Instead, we were treated to nine issues that focused on fairly minor characters at the expense of the more established ones:  characters like Doom, Spider-Man, and the X-Men were pushed into supporting roles in favor of Captain America (who we never saw in the line until the last issue), Strange, and X-Nation.  If we were going to see minor characters take a prominent place, I would've loved to see Miguel pass the torch as protector of New York to Daredevil 2099 or Doom cultivate Nostro as his heir (and not just announce him as such in his last will and testament).  It's these missed opportunities that make me feel like I've wasted time reading the "2099 World of Tomorrow" and "2099:  Manifest Destiny."  Sad, but true.

The Good

1) The revelation that Uatu created the Fantastic Four of 2099 in the hope of saving a world that he felt lost works on a few levels.  First, Kaminsky cleverly makes it the straw that broke the camel's back when it comes to the other Watchers, who finally punish Uatu for his constant intervention into Earth's affairs by blinding him.  But, maybe most importantly, it at least makes it less of an obvious question mark hanging over the 2099 line of where they went after they (or, at least, three of them) entered the Negative Zone.  After all, it's not like Ben Grimm disappeared from the "present" continuity and the now-Fantastic Three had all these memories of the 2099 Universe.  The only negative is that Kaminsky doesn't explain how Uatu managed to pluck the three from the Negative Zone or what exactly happened to Ben after he crash-landed on Mars.  It would've been nice to have spent less time on detailing the events of 3099 and more time on answering those pretty obvious questions.  But, overall, I'll keep it in the "Good" category for at least giving a plausible conclusion to the team's story.

2) I've said before that reading the 2099 line occasionally makes me feel like Marvel has had some sort of 30- or 40-year plan in action.  It happens usually as a result of people in the 2099 line mentioning events that hadn't happened when the issue in question was published, but actually did subsequently happen.  I felt this way here when Miguel tries to convince Steve to take up Thor's hammer (or, actually, walking stick) because he was the only mortal on record having done so previously.  As far as I know, the only time that happened was in "Fear Itself" #7, which happened almost 15 years after this issue was published.  Creepy.

3) I liked the revelation that the end of the Age of Heroes came when humans took up arms against super-humans.  Cap makes the point that they used to think that the humans hated the mutants due to bigotry but realized too late that it was actually jealousy.  It's a point that I'm always surprised isn't explored more often, so I applaud it being used here.

The Unknown

1) Although we know what caused the end of the Age of Heroes, I'm confused about the "end of civilization" aspect.  Cap says that the shadowy figures that stoked anti-super-human sentiment to provoke a war apparently stowed away all knowledge, seemingly because the chaotic status quo benefited them.  However, Kaminsky doesn't really explain how exactly they benefited from that.  Were they all in the Sentinel-manufacturing business?  Didn't they realize that, eventually, humans would win, so the status quo would change?  How would plunging humanity into a second Dark Age help them?  Kaminsky never explains and the story is unfortunately weaker for it.

2) I'm not sure how Cap returns the second time (or, well, third time, really).  When we last saw him, he was Cap-Thor drifting on his own outside Earth's orbit.  However, when they discover him again, he's stowed in a ship with short-range radio and in his original uniform (and not the Cap-Thor one).  I'm putting it in this category as if I just didn't follow what Kaminsky intended, but I think that it's actually probably just sloppy writing.

The Bad

1) Zero says that half of humanity survived the global flood and war with the Phalanx, but I'm pretty sure that "2099 World of Tomorrow" made clear that only 10 percent of the population survived.

2) Alchemax Tower is shown intact, if somewhat damaged, here, despite the fact that the Vulture destroyed it completely at the end of "Spider-Man 2099."  Talk about sloppy.

3) I'm pretty sure that Xi'an knows that Miguel is Spider-Man.  He wasn't exactly hiding it at any point in the Savage Land.  OK, sure, Miguel departed the Savage Land pretty quickly in "2099 World of Tomorrow" #1, so I don't think that they were technically in the same room.  But, it's not like Cerebra or anyone else there would've neglected to mention it to him, particularly given how important the new Alchemax clearly is to this new world.  As such, Xi'an's comment to Miguel, about him not knowing about being persecuted for one's genetic code, is bizarre.

The Terrible

1) It took me a second read to realize that the "barrier of absolute interdict" surrounded Earth, mainly because of Zero's techno-babble narration that Kaminsky employs throughout this issue.  That said, I'm still not sure what it was supposed to do.  The fact that Silver Surfer couldn't pass it to visit Earth implies that we couldn't leave Earth, which makes sense in the context of Earth's colonization of space only happening after the heroes finally destroy it.  But, Zero doesn't make it clear why the barrier was installed in the first place or why humanity didn't do more to remove it earlier.  Kaminsky seems to be implying that the wars that erupted on Earth around that time that the barrier was erected distracted everyone from worrying about it and that civilization then falling into chaos made space exploration a moot point.  But, civilization eventually recovered.  In fact, Alchemax colonized Mars, which presumably required passing through the barrier.  I'm not sure if Kaminsky is ignoring that development or I'm not fully understanding the barrier's intent.  But, if it was to keep us on Earth, it clearly didn't work, so why is it such a big deal?  The whole story smacks of a MacGuffin.

2) Cap had the power of Thor...but couldn't breathe in space or fly through space under his own power?  I guess that they don't make gods like they used to make them.

The Ugly

A shapeshifter pretended to be Gabe pretending to be the Green Goblin? Conchata was "mistakenly" declared dead after taking a point-blank blast to the chest and being left in a building that then exploded before the city where it was located flooded?  I nearly stopped reading at this point.  It got worse when Jake Gallows suddenly appeared alive in the splash page of Earth's heroes heading into space.  Strange also appeared on that page, with no explanation of how she managed to defeat Garrok.  I just...[sigh].

A Note on "Spider-Man #1/2":  This issue technically comes between "2099 World of Tomorrow" and "2099:  Manifest Destiny."  But, it's a Spider-Man focused issue, with Miguel briefly appearing in a flash-forward, non-speaking role.