2099 Unlimited #10: "Chameleon 2099"/"Machina Jones"/"R-Gang vs. The Gargantuoid or, [sic] Pride Before the Fall"

*** (three of five stars)

Summary
Miguel is attending the last weekend of Woodstock 2099 with Gabe when they hear a great roar.  The source is a guy named Bobby growing so much that he bursts from his clothes; his friends scatter, saying that he got his hands on "some bad stuff."  Gabe assumes they they're rapture addicts and Miguel pops into a port-o-john to change into his costume.  Spidey heads to the raging man, who seems to view everyone as "night creatures" that he must destroy.  After vowing to kill everyone, Spidey feels he has no choice but to stop him, first trying to entangle him in his web, but, when that doesn't work, punching him.  The punch makes the kid cry, resulting in him shrinking to the size of a mouse.  He flees Spidey in fear of getting hurt, but gets stomped by a scared woman, reverting to his regular size but dead, "like he was hit by a maglev bus."  The Public Eye arrives to arrest Spidey and he leaps over their dune buggies and flees; he luckily finds himself in a crowd of Spiderites, who help cover his escape by telling the Public Eye that they're each Spider-Man.  Miguel changes into his civvies in the port-o-john and he departs with Gabe, who tells him that the kid might've not been on rapture.  Gabe's heard whispers on the Net about some new designer drug that makes your body "pliable" so you can become whatever you're feeling; so, Bobby became a mouse because he was scared.  Miguel now recalls reading about "chameleon:"  Alchemax developed it, but it was too unstable, even for it.  Gabe says that it's sold in small capsules that activate when you snap them between your fingers.  Gabe surmises that someone stole the formula and is selling it on the street.  Miguel concurs; once home, he heads to his lab in Alchemax, where he learns that the engineer who designed chameleon had his employment terminated and now lives Downtown.  A woman named Jade arrives and asks Miguel to go to lunch, but he asks for a raincheck.

At St. Pat's in Downtown, two men are threatening Father Jennifer with a knife to give them something -- food, credits, etc. -- when Spidey arrives; then in turn flee.  Father Jennifer asks if Spidey's her own personal guardian angel and, after a conversation about the quote "the Lord works in mysterious ways," asks why he's there.  Spidey asks if she knows the aforementioned engineer and, when she asks why he's looking for him, he tells that he wants to stop chameleon's release before anyone else gets hurt.  Father Jennifer says that she's never heard of the engineer, but she's heard of chameleon; she sends him to the distributor, a guy named Major Jones.  The two men who were holding up Father Jennifer get a packet of chameleon from a window in a door, just in time for Spidey to arrive and take the packet from their hands with a Web-Line.  The guys flee (again) and, when the person behind the door opens fire on Spidey, he disables the guns and uses his talons and Spider-Strength to rip off the reinforced-concrete door.  Inside, he finds Major Jones, a man dressed like the Mad Hatter, and four associates.  When Spidey refuses his offer of drugs and threatens to stop his operations, Jones tells him that his employer would find it uncool.  Telling them that Spidey wants to take away their "mind candy," Jones' four associates then snap their fingers, transforming into monsters.  Realizing that the angrier they get, the more they lose control, Spidey tells one of them that her pals don't think that she's good enough to stop him.  When she pauses, he tells her that they're all jealous of her and laughing behind her back; she launches into a rage, attacking one of the other associates.  In the chaos, Spidey plans to go after Jones, but he attacks first, leaping on Spidey's back.  Spidey flips him onto a table of chameleon, which activates, casing him to disintegrate into a pool of goo.  Realizing that the associates are all dead, Miguel departs, with his eyes to finding Jones' employer.

Richard Welk, a bio-tech guy from SquidCo. clutching a briefcase to his chest, walks through a deserted parking lot and finds Machina Jones, "cyborg-for-hire."  Welk confirms to Jones that he wasn't followed, but then he's shot.  Jones returns fire, taking out the assassin.  However, she's surprised by how easy it was to take down the assassin and goes to investigate the body, discovering that it was an older woman.  She realizes that it was a "meat puppet," an indentured servant of "Puppet Masters, Inc.," a company that pays off your debts for two years of service, installing wetware that can override your conscious will to turn you into anything from prostitute to assassin.  Jones calls an associate to transport her to Pagoda General, a black-market hospital staffed by a gang of criminal bio-techs.  (They were apparently a chop-shop in the 20th century, but the gang's interest changed with the times.)  Jones brings the still-alive woman there to have her re-wired so she doesn't complete her programming when she awakes and tries to take out Jones again.  Jones then meets with her employer, Mr. Smith, though still wondering who hired the woman, since SquidCo. has its own "crack team of corporate hitmen."  After receiving payment, she gives Smith the briefcase; he opens it to reveal Mr. Fizzi, a "spokesclone" created as a result of a process that can turn "every registered trademark into an actual living breathing entity."  Smith informs Jones that these spokesclones would live in shopping malls to push their products directly on consumers.  Mr. Fizzi asks where "Daddy Welk" is and then panics when he sees Smith, calling him a bad man.  He tells Jones that he's really "Abelard" and asks for help.  Abelard realizes that Welk had upped Mr. Fizzi's cognitive abilities and pulls a gun on him.  Abelard exposits that Welk invented the spokesclone process, but Abelard told him that SquidCo. was going to cut the trademark project and dispose of Mr. Fizzi.  Abelard knew that Welk was attached to Mr. Fizzi, since he used his own genetic material to create it, and offered to arrange for it to be smuggled to safety.  He then hired the meat puppet to kill both Welk and Jones during the exchange, since he could return Mr. Fizzi and move up the corporate ladder.  However, with Mr. Fizzi knowing too much, his plan to return him to SquidCo. was complicated; his only choice now is to try to brain damage him.  Abelard tries to take out Jones, who attacks him, but he uses a neural taser to disable her.  Jones fights against her systems rebooting and manages to use an overdrive sequence to get two minutes of "bezerker" rage.  She delivers a kick to Abelard that sends him through a window to his death.  Jones then grabs Mr. Fizzi and tells him that he's worth a bucket full of credits.  But, he begs her not to return him, and, recalling her grandmother's expression, "Live free or die," leaves the building with him on her shoulder and taking Abelard's sweet car.

The Review
Honestly, this issue was a lot better than the last few editions.  (I think that I've only ever given one other issue of this series three stars.)  All in all, though, I feel like this series suffered from the same inconsistencies as "Spider-Man Unlimited" and "X-Men Unlimited" from the same time period did.  They should've been an opportunity to showcase new talents and different takes on established characters, but they just wound up covering similar territory -- usually with less finesse and skill -- as the main series.  To that end, I can't say that it was really worth it as part of my "Spider-Man 2099" project, since I didn't really gain a new understanding of him or see a character or a story that wound up making it into the main series (yet).  In terms of the 2099 Universe writ large, its greatest contribution was Hulk 2099; even though those stories weren't the most elegantly written, they did give us some insight into the West Coast at least.  With this series ending, it's also a reminder that I'm getting closer to the end of this project.  Sad trombone.

The Good
Making the 2099 equivalent of the Chameleon be a designer drug that helps users morph into something that reflects their feelings was really a clever 2099 take on a modern character.  But, if I'm right, Wein actually took it even one step further, delivering a Chameleon 2099, assuming that Major Jones ODing on "cham" means that his body is now able to morph into anything.  With only 11 issues remaining in "Spider-Man 2099," I wonder if we're going to see him or Jade again.  For example, we've never seen Mutagen appear in the main series, despite appearing in two of Spidey's six appearances in this series.  I guess we'll see.

The Meh
The Machina Jones story was fine.  My main complaint is that Collins used way too much exposition, particularly when it came to the meat puppets, given that they didn't really wind up having that much to do with the story.  I mean, I get why she had to have the villain reveal his plans through exposition (though, it's still pretty lazy writing to do so).  But, she spent so much time on meat puppets that I thought that the point of this story was going to be Jones trying to shut down Puppet Master, Inc.  However, we never really hear about them again after she drops off her would-be assassin at Pagoda General.  Ultimately, I put this story in "The Meh" category because of that excessive exposition and the fact that, at this point in the 2099 universe and "2099 Unlimited," these sorts of stories about unchecked corporate greed and double-crossing are pretty old hat.  But, given how awful some of these "2099 Unlimited" stories have been, the fact that it made sense at least wins it a "meh."

The Unknown
I wasn't totally clear on whether the Major Jones' associates killed each other or eventually died from the chameleon.  It's important in the sense that Miguel would have a little more culpability in the outcome in the first case, since he did set raving lunatics after each other.

The Bad
I generally don't even talk about the third story, but, man, this one had to be one of the least coherent stories that I've ever read in a comic.  'Nuff said.

2099 Unlimited #9: "Night of the Impaler"/"The Secrets of Spider-Man 2099"/"Steel Rain"/"The Dump"

** (two of five stars)

Summary
Public Eye officers burst into Miguel's laboratory, demanding that he come with them.  With co-workers watching with a mixture of suspicion and sympathy, Miguel is marched down the hallway, wondering who discovered his secret identity.  He's then presented to Stone, who reveals the reason why he had Miguel arrested:  some "reliable information" indicated that an aggressive corporate head-hunter firm was coming to poach him.  Although Stone claims that he knows that Miguel is loyal to Alchemax, he declares that he's not taking any chances.  Miguel asks why someone would try to steal him from Alchemax and Tyler informs him that he simply knows that some intercepted intelligence said that they were after an O'Hara.  The Public Eye officers then take Miguel to his home where he'll be under house arrest.  However, they're attacked en route by the head hunter, Vlad the Impaler, who destroys the flybike that one of the escorting Public Eye officers was using.  Unwisely, the other officer (the one carrying Miguel) fires on Vlad in revenge for the loss of his partner, but Vlad disarms him and grabs Miguel.  However, upon scanning Miguel, Vlad realizes that he's not after him.  Vlad hurls Miguel from him and Miguel breaks his bonds in free fall so that he can shoot off a Web-Line and stop his fall.  Miguel is then collected by the remaining Public Eye officer, who brings him home, where a message from Tyler confirms Miguel's hunch that Vlad is actually after his brother, Gable.  Tyler informs Miguel to stay home and not do anything "foolish" to try to warn Gabe.  In reality, Miguel's options to do so are limited, since other Public Eye officers are on the scene (and rummaging through his apartment).  When one of them finds his Spider-Man costume, Miguel convinces him that it's a Day of the Dead costume and then sends him and the other officers to the kitchen for food.  He then has Lyla release a tryptophan gas in the apartment so that he can escape while they sleep.  (He exposits that the tryptophan function came with the apartment as an anti-insomnia device.)  Instructing Lyla to tell them that he's in his lab when they awaken, Miguel heads downtown.

His thoughts exposits that head hunters track down talent for a client, kidnap talent and sell them to the highest bidder, or hold them for ransom.  Since they're often "rough customers," Miguel is worried about Gabe, who he discovers just as he's being attacked by three thugs.  Miguel makes short work of them, only to discover that they're not head hunters but Fenris gang-members.  Miguel instructs Gabe to stay put while he collects Gabe's stuff from the Thorite camp where he's been saying, since he figures Vlad has probably staked out the place.  At the camp, Vlad finds his target, a young boy whose parents are preparing him for a scholarship interview so that he can go to school uptown at Alchemax.  Miguel saves the boy's father from Vlad's attack and then chases Vlad into the sky, using his Web-Lines to grab him.  But, Vlad uses his spears to cut himself free, sending Miguel plummeting to a nearby rooftop.  Vlad doesn't recognize Spidey, mistaking him for a rival head-hunter, and plans on killing him.  The young boy, who's hanging from a tower by his cape, feels badly that Spider-Man could die for trying to save him and hurls his helmet at Vlad, ruining his aim as he hurls his spears at Spidey.  Vlad grabs Spidey and attempts to use his tentacle ribs to...do something to him, but Spidey uses one of the spears that Vlad shot at him to fry his circuits.  He then fills Vlad's "ROM drive" with Web-Fluid, sending him careening uncontrollably into the sky.  Meanwhile, the boy's cape snaps and Miguel catches him while he falls.  Telling Spidey that he's "Gedde O'Hara," Miguel realizes that he's the "G. O'Hara" that Tyler said was Vlad's target.  Miguel returns home to discover that Lyla has won the officers' clothing in a rousing game of strip "Go Fish."

In an indy city-state called Hollowpoint (an artificially created "shunt" island in the "intercorporate waters adjacent to the Alchemax seaborder"), a spy named Dawn contemplates dying if she gets caught.  She's there because Hollowpoint is developing a new "combatech and c-space raiding gear" and Alchemax wants her to steal it so that Hollowpoint doesn't get an edge.  However, she's really there because she's a wet engineer working in secret and hoping no one will steal her advances in "liquid machinery."  She exposits that, 20 minutes earlier, a cop tried to arrest her for crimes against the state.  He decided that she was resisting arrest, but, before he could kill her, she manages to grab his gun and shoot him in the face, since his "hardbonded bodysuit" is proofed against his own gun, but doesn't cover his face.  She races home, where she called her boss, who informs her that he's been demoted and someone named Payne Northedge has taken his place.  Her boss breaks into Payne's secret codes to help her escape from Hollowpoint, but discovers that Payne signaled to Hollowpoint that she was there.  Her boss tells her that someone is coming and then the line goes dead.  In the present, Dawn exposits that she's been building a wetsuit, "Steel Rain," which replaces the wearer's blood with the suit itself.  Calling it the terror of Stark/Fujikawa for its military and police applications, she decides to activate it on herself, since she had sunk exchange ports into herself for small tests.  She begins the transfer, which will give her an armor with four basic settings, and marvels at how cold she feels.  Hollowpoint guards attempt to break into her building, but she sets it on fire.  The guards fire on her, but she's proofed her armor against their repulsor beams, since Stark/Fujikawa has been using them for a century.  She uses her spitgun to kill one of the guards with "globules of wetmetal" and then her chaingun to disrupt the atomic bonding of things around her, killing the rest of the guards in the ensuing explosions.  She then takes to the air to return to New York and find Payne, seeking revenge for him making her leave her blood and innocence in Hollowpoint.

En route to New York, two Alchemax "Edgerunner" border-patrol jets identify her as a foreign body.  Before they catch her, she enters a stealth mode and drops off their screens.  Dawn enters a dive and lands on a rooftop in New York.  Finding some clothes, she discovers that Northedge has wiped his logs and her boss has gone missing.  Noting that he never knew her, Dawn decides to show him "what he sold [her] for -- Steel Rain."  She tracks down Northedge's address, a junk yard located in the middle of a clique of Freakers who act as his bodyguards.  Apparently also on site are the Priory of Iron, a "paramilitary sect of combat surgeon-engineers and metal fetishists."  Dawn runs a program to hide her presence, since she doesn't want to hurt anyone other than Payne; however, she trips an alarm that she didn't expect them to have.  She discovers her dead boss tied to a burning car just as she's attacked by the guys responding to the alarm, enabling her clash mode to repel them.  She uses her chaingun, but it's not enough to kill everyone.  She switches into her riot mode as the Priory is firing depleted uranium-shells at her, which her onboard computer tells her that she can't survive.  She's then attacked by the leader of the group, Saint Carcrash, who notices that she doesn't have any guns in riot mode.  He attacks her with his Wolverine-esque "adamantium lanxide blades," cutting into the wetsuit.  Carcrash gets the upper-hand, telling her that his "hide" is laced with flakes of an adamantium derivative.  However, Dawn deploys her "blue beams," which she notes were used by labs to cut adamantium derivatives in the first place.  Carcrash -- completely dismembered -- calls for help, but Dawn leaves him, discovering a Shudderbox, which exists outside time.  Dawn somehow enters the room, knowing that Payne is there by reading his "Kirlian aura."  Payne opens fire on her, telling her that it was all just pure business:  Hollowpoint offered him money and, since he opines that her life wasn't "real important," he sold her.  Dawn then uses her microwave ability to burn him.  As the junkyard burns behind her, she notes that, now that she quit, she's going to sleep in late in the future.  

The Review
Meh.  As I note in "The Bad," I've been really disappointed in the writing in these "2099 Unlimited" issues.  The Spidey story is completely forgettable and Ellis spends so much time in the "Steel Rain" story focused on finding new and innovative ways to use futuristic terminology that he forgets to tell a good story.  At its best, this series has the potential to give birth to dynamic new characters for the 2099 world, like Hulk 2099 (even though the scripts on those stories left something to be desired).  At its worst, we get the author using the opportunity to write a futuristic story to deliver a never-ending stream of techno-babble that gets in the way of enjoying said new character.  This issue is full of the latter, unfortunately.

(To be honest, the story that most stuck with me is Rick Parker's five-page cartoon at the end, where two guys discover a stash of comic books that they decide to burn for fuel.  One of them takes a couple of the issues to learn how to read and we later see him totally engrossed in them.  It's actually a somewhat sad and sentimental rumination of the emphemeral nature of possessions but also the power of comic books to capture the imagination.  You can imagine him carrying around those comics, the only ones that he'll get.  It makes me appreciate my 5,000+ collection more and understand why I'm so attached to it.  Too bad that this story is stuck at the end of a bad issue.)

The Good
1) I wasn't a huge fan of the Spidey story, since it's a pretty basic story.  But, I thought it was interesting that Tyler arrested Miguel to prevent him from getting obtained by another company.  It totally feels like something that Tyler would do but also something that would be a completely acceptable practice in the 2099 world.

2) One of the interesting things I find, in general, about the 2099 line is how well the authors do in predicting technology that would later be commonplace.  OK, sure, we see a computer with a floppy-disc drive in the "Steel Rain" story, but she also mentions "monatomic" computer chains, which essentially presages nanotechnology.

The Bad
1) I continue to be disappointed in the writing in "2099 Unlimited."  Of the four issues that I've already read, I only gave one three stars, with the others getting two.  Looking over those reviews, I'm generally cool with the plots of the stories, but the scripts really leave a lot to be desired.  Collins does a decent job in the Spider-Man story in this issue, but the dialogue and monologue in the "Steel Rain" story were clunky at best.  In retrospect, I remember thinking this way about a lot of the "Unlimited" titles from the '90s.  I always wanted them to be showplaces for new talent, but it seems like the "new" part of that equation meant that the authors were still too green to deliver on the promise that these issues held.  (Interesting enough, Warren Ellis wrote the "Steel Rain" story, so I can't blame it entirely on a novice problem.  But, I've actually always had problems with Ellis' dialogue, so it sort of makes sense.)

2) Why exactly were the Public Eye officers rummaging through Miguel's apartment?  OK, Lyla posits that they're bored, but Miguel is still Alchemax royalty.  He hasn't done anything wrong, as Tyler admits, so it's not like they've got broad license to treat him as a threat.

3) I'm not sure why Payne sold out Dawn.  She says that she's there to steal "combatech and c-space raiding gear," but later she notes that Payne sold her for "Steel Rain."  It actually makes sense that the combatech is Steel Rain, except for the fact that Dawn initially said that she was doing her real work in secret, making it seem like they're two separate things.

4) I also have no idea how Dawn gets into the Shudderbox.  She mentions that blue beams are actually "focused tachyon-guns" and that tachyons "travel backwards in time three seconds after their release."  Therefore, I think she somehow used the tachyons in the blue beams to enter the Shudderbox, which she describes as a room "that for every other second is two seconds ago."  However, it's really, really unclear.  By this point in the story, I was used to a certain level of techno-babble, so I just sort of went with it.  But, it would've been nice to have been able to focus on the final confrontation without being distracted by, "Wait, what about the tachyons?"

2099 Unlimited #8: "Public Enemy Number One"/"Behind the Eight Ball"/"Rumors of War"

** (two of five stars)

Favorite Quote:  "Are you calling us stupid?" "You don't need such an accusation."  -- A pitchfork-wielding villager and Doom

Summary
"They" have activated the White Dog, whose job it is to bring back "Red Dogs," one of whom, named the Public Enemy, is loose.  He is, in fact, walking the streets of New York, expositing that he survived a mob attack that left him as a "bloody pulp" because Red Dogs are indestructible and his tissue regenerated.  Satisfied that he proved his point that the public could act when inspired, he decides to retire from being the Public Enemy.  However, he overhears two people complain about the toxic rain, with one of them wondering why one of the superheroes doesn't do anything about it.  The Public Enemy is enraged that these men want someone else to solve their problems, believing that Alchemax isn't responsible for the acid rain, but the public is for not doing anything to stop it (or Alchemax).  He then witnesses a raid by the Eco-Cops on a playground, demanding that parents present their "parent licenses."  One woman tries to run and they stop her; using their bio-scanner, they discover that she doesn't have a license and has, in fact, been twice refused one.  The officer asks what made her think that she could have a child without passing the "parenthood tests" and, as she's dragged into custody, she responds that she has natural rights.  The other parents are outraged, since she's legally supposed to get the right to appeal, but they decide not to do anything, enraging the Public Enemy all the more.  His rage is personal, since he was apparently also separated from his parents at a young age.  However, he controls himself, reminding himself that he's starting a new life, one where he won't interfere in the lives of the "gutless public."

Elsewhere, the White Dog exposits that he's the one responsible for killing all the other Red Dogs after the war, since the government knew that they wouldn't be able to re-assimilate.  On the streets again, a man and his robot wife draw the glares of other pedestrians since she's not wearing her "synthi-skin" to hide the fact that she's a robot.  She justifies it by saying that she only cares what her husband thinks of her, noting that she gained "full legal rights of citizenship" when she became sentient.  However, a pedestrian throws a brick at her, starting a riot.  Suddenly, some sort of officer appears, knocking down the robot's husband and attacking her.  She implores him to stop since her programming forbids her from harming humans, but, before he can fire on her husband, the Public Enemy arrives.  He opens fire on the crowd, marveling how the public only bands together when they want to victimize someone for being different.  While the robot and her husband escape, the Public Enemy relishes the violence that he just committed.  His reverie is interrupted by the arrival of the White Dog, who informs the Public Enemy that he was sent to protect the population from "homicidal maniacs" like him.  The Public Enemy's bullets bounce off the White Dog, in no small part, he says, because he was designed to kill Red Dogs.  The Public Enemy exposits that he killed the scientists involved in the Red Dog project, since they had experimented on his parents to see how they had given birth to him.  White Dog exposits that his powers allow him use radiation to melt down Red Dogs; as such, the government gathered them all in a room after the war for the White Dog to use his powers on them all at once.  Proving his point, the White Dog begins to summon his energy to destroy him and the Public Enemy scrambles to pry loose a mag-lev track.  He wraps it around his hands and uses it against the White Dog, expositing that it is a super conductor, so it maintains a uniform temperature.  Feeding back the energy into White Dog (and nearly killing himself in the process), the Public Enemy manages to cause the White Dog to explode.  Pondering that he's stronger than other Red Dogs because of his parents' genes, the Public Eye hears the acclimation of the crowd of onlookers.  However, he's mortified by their affection, announcing that they are now his enemy.

Spidey arrives home and asks Lyla to fix him some dinner.  When she calls him "Miguel," he reminds her to keep it quiet, destroying a nearby surveillance camera to prove his point.  When Lyla has the robot drone fix his favorite dinner, Miguel tells her that he'd marry her if he could and realizes that he needs to get a gift for Xina from the upcoming auction of twen-cen artifacts for fixing Lyla.  Elsewhere, a man is reviewing the catalogue for said auction when he's called to dinner by his sister.  He expresses disdain that rich people would waste their money on such items when so many people are in need.  His sister says that it's not his concern what people spend their "hard-earned money on," leading his father to harangue his brother for not having a job, forcing the family to eat microwave dinners.  The brother retorts that his father could do something more than call his bookie, but his dad says that he can't help that he was downsized by Alchemax.  The man, named Michael, leaves the table to his room as his father and brother continue to argue, announcing that he'll soon be able to buy the family some real food.  He appears in a costume and calls himself Data Pirate, planning on making the rich "stand and deliver."  At the twen-cen auction, Miguel is sweating the expensiveness of the items on bid when Data Pirate arrives, using some form of telekinesis to grab the items.  He leaves behind a Coke bottle but makes the rest his "buccaneer's booty."  Miguel changes into his costume (after disabling a security camera) and goes after the Pirate, who laments that he's become a tool of the rich.  The Pirate fires off a blast at Miguel and then escapes into the night, heading home.  Miguel follows him, surprising the Pirate in his apartment.  Noting that he had left behind the Coke bottle at the auction, Miguel hypothesizes that the water would interfere with his technology, so he uncorks the Magic Eightball that was part of the "booty" and hurls the "water" at Pirate.  In so doing, he shorts the Pirate's system, causing the holograms to disappear and revealing that Pirate's "family" was actually holograms.  Miguel contemplates the sadness of that discovery, wondering if Michael had never had a family or lost one.  As he collects up the items and departs, he pledges not to get that attached to Lyla.

In Latveria, Doom expresses outrage (never a good thing) when his adviser informs him that his intelligence reports indicate that the Zefiro gypsies are speaking of a liberator who will deliver them into a golden age free of fear and persecution.  The adviser notes that Tiger Wylde had brought in "criminals and miscreants" who had threatened their freedom previously and Doom notes that their freedom is his to grant.  He heads to a device that cloaks him in the guise of a Zefiro so that he can gather intelligence firsthand.  That night, he approaches a Zefiro tribe, posing as a weary traveler.  Over dinner, one of the Zefiro tells of an "ambitious general" oppressing them and talks about Tranque the Terrible, the liberator arisen from his crypt to lead his people.  Doom asks about Tranque and the Zefiro express shock that he is unaware of him, since he was the one who "rousted the thieves from the Court of the Emperor Rodo" 99 years earlier.  Learning the name of the general (Verbragge), Doom calls his adviser while everyone else sleeps, telling him to check on the mausoleum   The adviser confirms that Tranque's crypt is empty and Doom heads into town, angered by the sight of two Zefiro hanging at the town's entrance as a warning to other Zefirans.  Two guards refuse to answer Doom's questions about Verbragge's location (since he's just a common Zefiran) and Doom dispatches them quickly.  They then point the way and Doom bursts into a banquet hall.  Revealing himself and announcing himself a Zefiro, Doom has Verbragge shot, a sign to all enemies of the Zefiro clan.  However, one of the men there notes that Verbragge was acting on intelligence brought tho him by spies that claimed that Doom was the person that Tranque was going to overthrow.  Doom brushes off the idea that he needs protection (justifying the murder of Verbragge), but departs to seek confirmation of these rumors.  He spots a burning village and, upon arrival, learns that the village is burning because Tranque has returned and is leading troops to defeat Verbragge's faction.  Doom asks if anyone has seen Tranque and a man holding an unconscious child says that she had, with two friends.  (She was unconscious due to smoke inhalation.)  He tells Doom that the villagers had set off bonfires to celebrate the news of Tranque's arrival and they spread, burning down the village.  Doom continues to investigate, disturbed by the man's question about whether Latveria can afford someone provoking war on its borders.  Doom finds Tranque and convinces "him" to surrender, revealing the two aforementioned friends of the unconscious girl standing on each other's shoulders to animate the armor.  The kids say that they just put on the armor and that it was the adults who thought that Tranque had returned.  Noting the kids' "keen" interest in Latverian history, Doom punishes them by making them polish the old suits of armor in his castle.

The Review
Although the Public Enemy and Spider-Man stories have some good parts, they were really overall pretty meh.  The writing in both stories was somewhat awkward and overly expository, particularly in the Public Enemy story.  But, they both did tell stories that reflect the sad realities of the 2099 world, from parents having to get license permits to a guy living with a family of illusions.  It shows how socially isolated everyone in the 2099 world is and I don't think we had really had that sad reality so well underlined before this issue.

The Good
1) I like the concept of the Public Enemy, particularly in the sense that he gives voice to the idea that the 2099 world is the way that it is because people let it become that way.  One of the obvious questions running through the 2099 line so far is how humanity got to this point, where corporations run everything.  Was it a gradual process or did the corporations grab power by taking advantage of the chaos that followed the huge event that ended the Heroic Age?  In other words, is it like America today or was it like 1990s Russia?  Either way, the people of the 2099 world have accepted their lot in life and it's this acceptance that fuels the Public Enemy's anger.  I mean, he's a bit of a one-note character and I'm not really sure how you'd actualize his campaign against the public themselves, unless he's just going to start randomly murdering people who gather and watch his battles with other metahumans.  But, he does provide a view that we haven't necessary had so well developed previously.

2) I definitely didn't see the twist at the end of the Spidey story coming.  Beyond just the sadness inherent in the story, Kavanaugh makes it all the sadder by implying that this family was so real to the Data Pirate that he really thought that he needed to steal money to put food on the table.  Not a happy story.

The Bad
1) I had to do a Google search to learn that the Public Enemy was originally an enemy of Punisher 2099 (a missing text-box probably would've told me that had it been included).  It was clear that he had appeared somewhere since we were pretty clearly supposed to know all about the Red Dogs.  However, since I don't read "Punisher 2099," I was pretty much clueless about anything related to them for the entire story.  How did his parents give birth to a Red Dog if it seems that all the other ones were manufactured?  Why didn't the White Dog know about him if his job was eliminate all of them?  Despite all the exposition in this story (and, wow, it had a lot), we never really got the answers that we needed to understand why the Public Enemy is so angry and survived the Red-Dog purge.

2) This one isn't really a bad, per se, but it would've been cool if Miguel had ended the story with the gumball machine that he actually gives Xina as a gift in "Spider-Man 2099" #26.  (Of course, I also wonder if Miguel winds up stealing the twen-cen items that he retrieves from Michael's apartment.  Did he return them to the auctioneers and buy the gumball machine separately?)

3) The Doom story made little sense the more I thought about it (never a good sign).  I'm still not sure where the author, Colon, was going with it.  Why did Verbragge believe that Tranque the Terrible would lead an insurrection against Doom if the Zefiro believed that Tranque would help Doom in repelling Latveria's enemies?  In other words, why did each camp hear such different rumors, despite the rumors starting in the same place?  Plus, why were the rumors started in the first place?  If they were started by the kids wearing the armor and people seeing Tranque had "returned," you have to ask why the kids put on the armor in the first place.  How did they know about it?  How did they get into Castle Doom?  Colon seems to be using the confusion to prove the point that rumors are untrustworthy by their nature, but in the end all he winds up doing is telling a confusing story.

2099 Unlimited #3: "Water God"/"Spare Changes"

*** (three of five stars)

Summary

A nuclear explosion in America's "interior states" (where "fuel companies pretty much own the government") sends a wave of a hundred thousand refugees fleeing west to "that fabled land where the environment is supposed to be protected, where the poor are supposed to be taken care of -- California."  Instead, they discover that California is now an island, separated from the rest of America by a canal that also serves as a moat.  The refugees attempt to swim the canal but are attacked by robotic buoys that open fire on them.  As one buoy takes aim at a mother and her two children, the Hulk attacks at it, saving them.  He then helps get the survivors and wounded to the shore.  When the mother asks why California wants to be an island, the Hulk responds that the canal was created by eco-terrorists trying to save precious resources, like water.  However, California's "bosses" now use it as a border fence to control immigration, getting enough cheap labor without having "hordes of unhappy poor people."  When the mother asks why the Hulk helped them, he responds, "Maybe I just figured a crooked state could use a little new blood."  Then, suddenly, a wave washes over them and a gigantic humanoid figure made from water threatens them for trying to "drain the homeland dry."  Calling himself the Water God, he attacks, forcing some of the refugees back into the water to escape.  The Hulk tells them to stand their ground and takes on the Water God, but struggles to land a punch, given that the Water God is, you know, made of water.  The mother's youngest son tries to help, but the Water God smacks him away, making the Hulk realize that he becomes solid (and hittable) right before he strikes.  The Hulk asks who made him as they battle, and the Water God exposits that he was created by the eco-terrorists behind the Great Monkey-Wrench of 2076.  The group detonated eastern California's earthquake faults, letting the Pacific join the Colorado.  The government killed the "monkey-wrenchers," but, before they died, they dropped electromagnetic transformers into the water that gave the Water God form and power, with the mission to protect the water.  The Hulk suddenly realizes how to defeat the Water God, looking to the desert mountains and heading towards them, telling the Water God that he knows another way to get the refugees into California.  The Water God follows in pursuit (while the refugees fear that the Hulk has left them) and the Hulk brings him higher and higher until he freezes, since his creators never thought to teach him about the cold.  The Hulk then shatters him and returns to help the refugees into California, carrying the little boy who the Water God injured to help him get medical attention.

Spidey and the Public Eye are in pursuit of a hijacked weapons van that "has enough fire-power to hold a small city hostage."  The Public Eye's blasters are bouncing off the van's armor and the lieutenant in charges tells the officers to also try to nail Spidey, who's hanging off the back of the van via a Web-Line.  Spidey rips open a side panel and enters the van, taking down the hijackers and setting the van to auto-hover.  He sens a message via the van's communicator to the lieutenant, telling her that he has no intention of fighting the, and she lets him go.  Meanwhile, at an Alchemax subsidiary named Helix, Miguel's colleague Anna is waiting for him, since he's over 30 minutes later to a briefing with Ms. Benoit, an annoyed Helix official.  Benoit decides to start without Miguel, telling Anna that she would like to give her a tour of Helix before discussing why Alchemax is there in the first place, the high-speed DNA scanners that Helix has developed.  Spidey arrives at Helix, changes into Miguel, and finds Anna and Ms. Benoit to join the tour.  Downtown, Mutagen has hacked into Helix's net to learn more about the DNA scanners, realizing that they would allow him to make decisions about who to eliminate on the spot and he would not have to resort to hospital computer files.  He changes into his costume and heads to Helix.  Meanwhile, 100 feet below ground level, Benoit brings Anna and Miguel to Helix's experimental labs, showing them the cryonics lab and a globe that traps ambient solar radiation.  Impatient, Miguel asks to see the scanner and Benoit leads them to that lab, explaining that Helix projects billions in revenue, since the scanners with cut diagnosis time in half.  She is interrupted by a call, informing her that they're having problems "topside" with a costumed individual before the call is cut and Benoit tells the caller to handle it.  Topside, Mutagen has killed the security staff and hacks into a computer to learn the location of the scanners.  In the sub-basement, the group hears the screech of metal and goes to investigate.  Benoit attempts to open the elevator doors, but is killed when Mutagen blows through them.  Mutagen tells Anna and Miguel that he won't hurt them; he's just there for the scanners.  Miguel tells Anna to let him pass and Mutagen, hearing her name, suddenly realizes that she's the sister of the woman he tried to kill in the hospital (in "2099 Unlimited" #1).  Since her sister has a blood disease, Mutagen decides that she might have that genetic disorder as well.  Before he can attack, Miguel threatens Mutagen, wondering how to extricate them from the situation without revealing his identity to Anna.  Mutagen punches Miguel across the room and Miguel loses his shoes and grasps onto the wall with his talons, exposing his identity.  He attacks Mutagen and changes into his Spidey costume, telling Anna to run and webbing Mutagen's eyes.  Mutagen pulls off the webbing, punches Miguel, and then knocks out Anna.  Infuriated, Miguel swears that Mutagen will pay "in blood" if Anna is hurt and knocks them into the cryonics lab.  Mutagen immediately starts to adapt and he suddenly realizes that he's surrounded by the "genetically flawed" who wish to stay alive to perpetuate their diseases.  Before Mutagen can attack the frozen people, Miguel amps up the cold to see if he can overload Mutagen's adaptation powers.  However, it has no effect, except to make Miguel even slower.  Mutagen tries to convert Spidey to his cause and, when Spidey asks what the benefits package is (heh), Mutagen redoubles his attack in anger for being mocked.  Seeing an opening, Miguel belts Mutagen into the solar-radiation globe, where he burns.  Miguel grabs Anna and leaves before the flames consume the lab and, in the lab, Mutagen's hand appears to grab the DNA scanner.  That night, at the hospital, Anna is fine, but reveals that she can't remember the last hour before the fight.  Anna asks if they ever found Mutagen and Miguel informs her that they didn't, nor do they know if he got the DNA scanner.

The Review

Unlike last issue, it's the Spidey story that gets this issue a three, with the Hulk story weighing it down.  (I'm not even going to mention the oddball last stories anymore, because, yeah.)  The Hulk story was surprisingly a mess, given how strong Jones has been over the last two issues.

The Good

1) A lot of the 2099 world shows what would happen if certain political and economic arguments from the 1990s were taken to the extreme, and Jones manages to combine the militant environmentalist movement with harsh immigration policies, in a great example of being on such extreme sides of the political spectrum that you loop to the other one.  Although I have some issues with the Water God plot in the Hulk story (as you'll see below), I thought Jones raised some interesting points about how California's separation from the rest of the U.S. as a result of the eco-terrorists (and, later, California "bosses") had left it a harsh, cold place.  In previous issues, Jones has shown how John's "friends" are all trying to get him fired so they can take his job and here he tells the mother that people in California only have need of family if they can make money from them.  Jones makes the argument that bringing in new people with different approaches will help shake up the status quo, something the Hulk, who is in the process of realizing how morally bankrupt California society is, clearly supports.  It, of course, overlooks some of the downsides, like how you manage all those "unhappy poor people" and their need for scarce resources like water.  But, it's not like I expect Jones to solve a problem that currently bedevils politicians.  I thought he did a great job in just raising the issue and showing how 2099 California became the dystopia it is.

2) As I mentioned in my review of "Spider-Man 2099" #14, I need to give Skolnick more credit than I have for essentially being the only one focusing on Miguel fighting crime.  In the main title, we've really only seen Spidey act as a vigilante in the S.I.E.G.E. issue (#11).  But, even that fight is part of his larger fight against Alchemax (as were his fights against Venture and the Specialist).  It's been Spidey's fight against Mutagen that shows him helping the common man and building the reputation among the people that David seems to be hinting that he's developed in "Spider-Man 2099."  In addition, we see Spidey taking down the hijackers, helping the Public Eye and implying that, in so doing, he might even be creating admirers within it, with the lieutenant ordering her men to let him go.  I've been hard on Skolnick for some of the plot holes in his previous work (and this issue), but I have to give him credit for giving me more of the stories I want to see. 

3) Speaking of Mutagen, I though the applicability of the DNA scanners to his "work" was a clever development.  It's rare that you so clearly understand a villain's motives beyond just doing something "evil."

The Bad

1) Why was Hulk 2099 at the border in the first place?  Last we saw him, he was obsessed with finding Gawain.  Was Gawain out there?  Did he find him?  I find it weird that Jones would have us believe that the Hulk just patrols the borders looking for fleeing refugees.  How often does that happen?  If it's a lot, maybe I understand why the "bosses" used the canal the way that they did...

2) I'm not quite sure that I follow the geography?  How exactly did the explosion connect the Colorado and the Pacific in a way that created a border around California?  Wouldn't that actually just cut off California from Baja California in Mexico, or, if it broke higher, Southern California from Northern California?

3) I'm also not sure what the Water God's deal was exactly.  He was created by the eco-terrorists, but he seems to be fulfilling the mission of the "bosses" who used the canal to create a moat around California.  It seems weird that he would've been programed by the eco-terrorists to keep refugees from entering the water.  Was he just operating under general "keep the water" pure orders?

4) Does Mutagen now know that Miguel is Spider-Man?  Spidey doesn't seem to be concerned about Mutagen seeing him.  I mean, he webs up his eyes, but I'm pretty sure Mutagen saw him use his talons to grab the wall.  Even if he didn't, I think that Mutagen is smart enough to put two and two together when Spider-Man suddenly appears (and Miguel suddenly disappears) 100 feet below ground level.  I mean, sure, he may not know Miguel's name, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to discover who the guy on the tour was.  Given the "does he or doesn't he" game that David has been playing in "Spider-Man 2099" regarding whether Tyler Stone or Miguel's brother knows his identity, it's weird that we don't really comment here on the fact that one of his nemeses pretty clearly does.

5) Is Skolnick aware that Miguel has a girlfriend?  We seem to be treating Anna as a girlfriend, but, um, she isn't Miguel's girlfriend.

2099 Unlimited #2: "Thirty Mile Mall"/"Remote Control"

** (two of five stars)

Favorite Quote:  "Poor girl's nearly killed by walking sewage and right away she wants to get involved with a guy wearing head-to-toe tights?  Maybe I should start wearing thicker underwear with this suit."  -- Miguel, implying why he's so popular with the ladies...

Summary
The Hulk fights a group of "mall-trolls" in a 30-mile mall that was constructed across the San Fernando valley, "in the dying days of the Twentieth Century," by linking a series of existing malls to one another.  Quirk is also there.  In a flashback, John reveals that he used the access to Sweet Dreams' network that he gained last issue to locate Gawain.  Running from his office, he encounters Keisha, who tells him that he can't leave, because they've got a meeting with Audra about the "big green monster" that she wants to be the subject of their next program.  John tells Keisha that he has personal business and leaves.  Keisha, eager to find information that could get John fired so that she could take his place, hacks into his computer.  As depicted last issue, John takes a detour in his search for Gawain and rescues Quirk.  In this issue, he deposits her in his apartment, not revealing that he and the Hulk are the same person.  John tells her that he has to go to rescue another Sweet Dreams victim and Quirk insists on coming with him.  They head to Sweat-Tech, the place that the Sweet Dreams' network listed as Gawain's location.  It's a "virtual reality sports center" and Quirk pretends to be interested in becoming its spokesmodel as the guys fawn all over her.  Posing as her agent, John learns all about their research projects into enhancing human strength, speed, and stamina, in addition to their investments in radioactive fuel and explosives and their leases to stores in the abandoned part of the mall.  He asked for their suppliers' names, hoping it would help him crack their database to find Gawain, but he's surprised when Gawain himself appears, having recognized John's voice.  Gawain loudly denounces him as a murderer and John offers to help him.  The Sweat-Tech guys attack John, calling him as a spy.  John turns into the Hulk and battles the guys, while another set of them bundle Gawain into a car heading to the other end of the mall.  Mall security arrives, delaying the Hulk even further.  After the Hulk defeats them, Quirk grabs onto his mane and they make their way through the mall.  They progress from the upscale part (with great security) to the middle zone (with limited security) to the unsupervised zone (with no security).  Here, the Hulk encounters the "unmeltables," immigrants who refuse to mix with the "L.A. stew."  These refugees scraping out a living in a market are suspicious of newcomers and open fire with stashed weapons on the duo. They flee to another part of the mall, an area that Quirk notes had radiation leakages.  On cue, they're attacked by the aforementioned mall-trolls, who grab Quirk.  The Hulk ponders his situation, realizing that the old him would've let Quirk go and kept his eye on the prize (Gawain), but that the new him has to shoulder his burdens because he's "a man."  He frees Quirk, who stumbles onto a stash of leather shoes, a gold mine for her vintage-scavenging self.  The two flee another round of trolls and find themselves in a department store, where the mannequins attack them.  The Hulk disables the mannequins and Quirk scrambles to find more shoes, finding a trapdoor in the process.  The two descend ("hidden passages lead to the hearts of things") and discover a lab full of test subjects who are "being changed" (possibly into the mall-trolls, possibly into something else).  The Hulk busts through a door to discover the Sweat-Tech guys from earlier threatening Gawain to tell them the secret of the Knights of the Banner experiments.  The Hulk informs them that he can tell them all that they want to know about the experiments and attacks.  The guy holding Gawain informs him that the "Programmers" won't let him take them and, emphasizing his point, the "Programmers" remotely detonate a bomb.  Given the choice between saving Gawain or Quirk, the Hulk chooses Quirk, figuring that the guys would save Gawain.  He tells Quirk that he's going to find them, because he's pretty sure they're trying to create an army of Hulks.

Spider-Man takes down a group of thugs in the process of attacking a prostitute, who offers to become better acquainted with Miguel in return (an offer Miguel doesn't accept).  In a lab elsewhere, someone named "Damian" notes that some simulations look good.  His colleague, "Carmen," tell him that he's understating the success of their three years of hard work, commenting that they're going to be famous for inventing the "first working software that can be fully input right into the brain through the sense of sight."  Damian cautions that it's still untested and that they can't "forget scientific principles in [their] haste to win fame and fortune."  He also warns her that they can't risk drawing the attention of Alchemax, which funds their think tank, Macroware, and which would inevitably claim the project for its own.  Carmen tells him that he's being paranoid, because they swept for bugs just that morning.  Damian broaches the idea that they need a test subject.  Carmen notes that "close-minded people" would work the best and, at that moment, Damian notices that "Mitchell," a former colleague who got him fired from his last job, is working across the street.  Damian realizes that their device is still connected to Carmen's vidphone and sends a virus program to Mitchell, telling him to kill himself.  Mitchell answers the phone...and then runs straight into the plate-glass window.  His secretary hears the noise and discovers his body and Damian exults over the success of their project, telling Carmen, "From now on, I...I mean, we can write our own ticket!"  At an Alchemax control center, a guy at a computer calls over a supervisor, telling her that the Macroware folks have made a breakthrough and tested their device on Mitchell.  He exposits that Alchemax knows that Macroware tests for bugs every day, which is why Alchemax bugs them by "bouncing satellite lasers off their windows."  The supervisor dispatches a team to Macroware.  At the lab, Carmen is disturbed when the cops arrive across the street to investigate what happened to Mitchell, but Damian tells her to ignore it, pondering the applicability of their device to the military and the broadcast industry.  He tells Carmen to collect all their data and equipment so they can vacate the premises and then they can discuss their "split."  Not trusting Damian, Carmen sees a photo of Miguel on her vidphone and notes that she meant to call him that week.  Instead, she sends a virus program to Miguel to get him to kill Damian.  Just after it successfully goes, Damian bludgeons Carmen to death.  Meanwhile, Miguel arrives home and Lyla informs him that he has a message from "Dr. Carmen Lynch."  Miguel tells Lyla that Carmen used to work at Alchemax but transferred to Macroware two or three years earlier.  Lyla tells him that the message is garbled and she plays it for Miguel, who immediately puts on his mask again and heads into the night.  At Alchemax, a team of corporate raiders prepares to take on Macroware, with one of them stressing the importance of the job so that they don't stay second-stringers.  At Macroware, Miguel breaks through the window and attacks Damian, who mistakes him as a corporate raider.  Damian heads to the lab, with the intent to use the device to protect himself.  Meanwhile, Miguel suddenly realizes what he's doing, but can't exert control over himself. At that moment, the corporate raiders arrive and decide to take on Spider-Man, given the bounty that Alchemax has put on him.  Miguel defeats the raiders and heads after Damian, trying to fight the mind-control for fear that it's going to turn him into a killer.  The corporate raiders recover and decide to refocus on getting Damian and the data.  Meanwhile, Damian is setting up the device when Spidey arrives.  Miguel manages to throw himself on an exposed electrical cable, shocking himself to his senses.  He offers to help Damian, warning him the raiders are coming, but then sees Carmen's body and realizes that Damian killed her.  He belts him across the room and the raiders arrive and open fire.  The blasts hit Damian and cause an explosion that Miguel only narrowly escapes.  He realizes that he feels just like the girl whom he saved earlier that night must feel, "violated...helpless," and bids farewell to Carmen, noting that she might be in a better place, since she's "free of a world where...everything's under control."

The Review
OK, I gave this issue two stars, because I feel like the mediocre Spider-Man 2099 and terrible "R-Gang" stories really pulled down the solid Hulk 2099 story.  I'm actually enjoying the Hulk story so much that I'm considering buying up the remaining "2099 Unlimited" issues that I initially didn't buy because they don't feature Spider-Man.  The Spider-Man stories, unfortunately, have mostly been forgettable, if only because they suffer from comparison to the amazing stuff that David is doing in the main title.

The Good
1) I loved the 30-mile mall in the Hulk story.  I used to spend summers in the late 1980s visiting my aunt and uncle in the Valley and I have all sorts of memories of numbly staring out the car window as we passed mile after mile of strip malls and parking lots.  The idea that the Valley would one day evolve into a giant mall feels like a totally logical conclusion to where it was going in the late 1980s.  I loved that Jones added this detail, because it realistically portrays the dystopia that Southern California has become in 2099 by firmly placing the roots of this decline in 1989.

2) Every time I questioned the believability or logic of one of the plots in the Hulk story, Jones had an answer.  For example, I wondered how Keisha could've so easily gained access to John's computer (given what I assumed to be pretty decent computer security in 2099), but John informs us that he was moving "too fast" in his attempt to get to Gawain, implying that it caused him to leave his computer unlocked (or whatever the 2099 version of leaving your computer unlocked is).  When I wondered why the Sweat-Tech guys would give all that information to John, Jones implies that they did it to impress him, hoping that he would allow Quirk to be their spokesmodel.  The fact that I had the questions and then Jones answered them shows how tightly scripted of a story it was.

3) I love that Disney tried to buy Southern California.

The Unknown
I thought the Sweat-Tech stuff was really interesting in the Hulk story, for all the questions it raises.  Sweet Dreams appears to either be working with Sweat-Tech to develop the army of Hulks (providing Gawain to Sweat-Tech to get answers from him) or have sold Gawain to Sweat-Tech (having somehow known about Sweat-Tech's interest in the Knights of the Banner experiments).  I'm led to believe it's the first, because I'm wondering if it's why Audra sent John to investigate the Knights of the Banner in the first place.  Either way, it's not good.  Plus, it's unclear how the "Programmers" are involved.  Jones definitely knows how to keep a guy interested!

The Bad
1) OK, my biggest problem with the Spider-Man story is that Damian goes from cautioning Carmen not to lose her scientific principles in her rush to be rich and famous to killing a former colleague and Carmen herself in his rush to be rich and famous.  It's a sudden, and seriously lethal, change of heart.  I mean, I totally understood why he'd decide to kill Carmen, wanting to keep the money for himself when he realizes that their project was a success.  But, why kill the former colleague?  After all, it just calls the Public Eye to their location.  I think Skolnick was implying that the sudden realization of how much money he could make drove Damian to his erratic behavior, but I think that he could've done more to underline that aspect of the story.

2) I feel like Skolnick didn't make an obvious connection in the Spider-Man story, the fact that Miguel was facing corporate raiders for the first time.  Given that he works on the project, something that upset Gabe deeply in the first arc, you would've thought that Skolnick might've had Miguel realize that he was reaping what he had sown in facing them, since I'm pretty sure he hasn't faced one previously.  (Maybe Venture?)

3) Unless I missed it, Skolnick never tells us why Carmen was going to call Miguel in the first place.  I mean, it seems a minor issue, but, in fact, the whole plot revolves around the fact that Miguel's photo is on her vidphone.  Miguel didn't seem to be all that buddy-buddy with her based on his comments to Lyla, so I feel like Skolnick probably should've clarified this point a little more than he did to make the overall story a little more believable.

2099 Unlimited #1: "Nothing Ever Changes!!"/"Hulk 2099"

** (two of five stars)

Summary

Approaching the entrance to a hospital, a man and woman discuss their son, who's been hospitalized because he suffers from diabetes, a condition he inherited from his mother.  The man tells his wife not to worry, since, after "a simple liver regrowth," she turned out fine.  They comment on the significant number of police officers in the lobby as they make their way to the elevator bay and, elsewhere in the lobby, a nurse calls for the Private Eye to send additional officers before "that maniac kills everyone in the ward!"  Arriving on their floor, they witness a masked man killing their son.  The man declares that he killed the couple's son because "medical charts don't lie" and killing the son is better for "the survival of humanity."  He then flees through a window.  Weeks later, Spidey stops a mugging; when the Private Eye arrives on the scene, the officers open fire at him.  Lamenting the fact that he never gets praised for his heroism, Miguel makes his way to his office at Alchemax and changes into his civilian clothes just before "Anna" arrives for a lunch date.  At the Alchemax Commissary, Miguel asks after Anna's sister Carrie, who suffers from a rare genetic deformity.  She tells Miguel that she's worried about her, because of the guy who's killed four patients in the last two weeks.  Miguel offers to go with her when she visits her sister at ESU Hospital that evening.  "Elsewhere, that evening," the masked man from earlier is observing a series of images of animals with special adaptions (flying squirrel, Masai giraffe, gibbon) and exposits his life story, beginning with the fact that his only child died because she inherited a "bizarre flaw in [his] DNA."  A geneticist, he dedicated himself to analyzing the flaw, driven to correct it.  This drive brought him to the brink of insanity and he lost his wife in a divorce in the process.  He finally developed a cure that has "unpredictable results," giving him the ability to sub-consciously adapt to circumstances (the reason why he was studying the animals).  Calling himself Mutagen, he heads into the night because the "tainted" gene pool needs another cleansing.  At ESU Hospital, Anna and Miguel arrive to visit Carrie, and Miguel gives her a "holo-book" of "A Tale of Two Cities."  Down the hall, a security guard discovers Mutagen killing a woman and shouts for back-up when Mutagen attacks him.  Miguel makes his way into the hallway, wondering why the Private "Eyeballs" have started a "shooting war" in the hospital.  He ducks into a medical-supply closet to change into Spider-Man as Mutagen selects another victim, a woman with degenerative nerve disease.  Spidey arrives just in time, punching Mutagen across the chin and buying the woman time to escape.  He's stunned, however, when Mutagen faces him anew, this time with spikes on his chin, his adaptation to Spidey having punched him there.  Mutagen laments fighting Spidey, since he's from "superior genetic stock," but says he'll kill him if he tries to impede Mutagen's mission.  Mutagen then exposits said mission, noting that humanity has stopped evolving and, if it continues to nurture those with inherited defects, the gene pool will never improve.  Realizing that Mutagen adapts as they fight, Miguel tries to knock him unconscious before he can change.  But, Mutagen adapts, creating a bone plating that protects him from attacks and then, after Spidey webs him in a cocoon, sharp claws that allows him to free himself.  The two fall into Carrie's room, knocking loose a water pipe.  Mutagen realizes that Carrie has a genetic aberration, but, before he can kill her, Spidey pulls the electronic medical device off its stand with his webs and into the pool of water where Mutagen is standing.  Spidey laments having to kill Mutagen, only to discover that he survived, his body having insulated him in time.  Mutagen departs into the night, noting that he had been thinking too small and thanking Spidey for helping him realize that he wasn't "doing it right."

The Hulk is making his way across the Mojave desert, having walked 300 miles on his "hunt."  He arrives on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where he apparently picks up his prey's scent.  He makes his way into the city, but gets spotted by a woman looking out the window of her bathroom.  She activates her "Sweet Dreams Security Systems" alarm and several officers scramble to her house.  The Hulk makes quick work of them, but, realizing that more and more offices will come after him, he decides to change into "that puny, pink human," his alter ego, John Eisenhart.  Later, Eisenhart is walking into work with some colleagues, who give him a hard time for having been gone for six days.  One named Ty jokes that John finished the script treatment for the "How I Did the Knights of the Banner Deal," calling him a "true warrior."  John notes that they believe that Hollywood is a warrior society and Ty comments that you can only make it in the entertainment industry if you have the "courage and ferocity" of an ancient warrior.  The discussion is interrupted by Audra, a holographic projection, who tells John to see "Kiyoshi" about getting a project to replace the Knights development.  Eisenhart is shocked, because the Knights were his deal, and learns that Ty took over the account while John was gone.  (Ty remarks, "Warrior society, John.")  Later, John is approached by the studio's "mental adjustment" specialist, "Dr. Phil," who tells John he has to come see him about possible "post-traumatic stress" after his trouble in the desert.  John doesn't want to go, but apparently, if Dr. Phil says that John is in "denial," it will go on his resumé, an entry that the entertainment industry doesn't like to see.  In a flashback, we learn that John is a "concept hunter" for virtual-reality software that the public is addicted into using.  He had gone to the "Fringie" (though I think the extra "i" is a typo), the un-policed California wastelands, to hunt down the "Knights of the Banner," which he believes sounds like a new Cult of Thor.  He observes that Nirvana Multimedia was originally involved in marketing the Cult of Thor as a new religion to its followers and hopes he can do the same with the Knights.  John arrives at Lone Mountain, an abandoned studio lot consisting of a castle, where the Knights live.  There, John encounters a group of shirtless men throwing swords at the heads of other shirtless men.  The swords land next to the heads of the "other shirtless men," revealing it to be a trust exercise between the Knights.  John speaks with their leader, Aeneas, and learns that the Knights are descended from 20th century men's movements and have named themselves after legendary warriors.  Calling himself a "modern warrior," John intends to get them to sign an exclusive contract with no royalty rights.  However, Aeneas sees through him, telling him no money will distract them from their true mission, fighting the values of John's "civilization."  John commits to breaking the group, planning to take the rights from them.  He notices the young boy in the group, named Gawain, admiring his car and offers to take him on a ride, using the opportunity to learn more about the group.  He learns it was named after Bruce Banner, the legendary Hulk, since it sees him as a symbol of "the man alone, the man of power, the persecuted wild man."  John tells Gawain that the Hulk was just a "pathetic radiation freak," nothing that gamma rays were outlawed for the last century because they were deemed uncontrollable.  Gawain tells him that Aeneas has been working on gamma-ray experiments and John sees his opportunity to find something to use to blackmail Aeneas.  He drops off the kid and puts in a call to Audra to send our her security force, Sweet Dreams.  In the present, Audra informs John that a friend of hers at Sweet Dreams observed a "huge savage man" who came from the hills and she sends him to try to get the story.  She gives him access codes to Sweet Dreams' files, which he uses to try to track down Gawain.  In the process, he sees that Sweet Dreams intends to kill someone and, expositing that he already saw Sweet Dreams commit murder, decides to help the target, a singer named Quirk.  Quirk is complaining to her associate that the music industry is sterile because she's only allowed to sing about the business itself, not about "how America's going to the dogs" or "brutal cops," as she would've in the '90s.  We learn that she sings something called "stuff" music and that she was outraged when she learned that the corporations have included subliminal messages for the consumers to stay docile into the songs.  She spoke against it, clearly the reason why Sweet Dreams is after her.  On cue, Sweet Dreams enters the room, killing her associate.  Before they can kill her, the Hulk arrives and takes out the officers.  Facing down Sweet Dreams, John has a flashback to the night they tried to take down the Knights, who resisted.  Aeneas was killed and John tried to intervene by putting his car between the Knights and the officers.  Gawain accused him of being a traitor and ran to the gamma-ray experiment, pledging to "kill you all!"  He tried to cause the rays to explode and John intervened to get him to safety.  In the ensuing explosion, John became the Hulk, but, when he awakened, Gawain was gone.  John believes he's been taken by Sweet Dreams and he pledges to find Gawain, the "hunt" he mentioned at the start.  In the present, the Hulk takes down the Sweet Dreams officers and, when Quirk asks what he is, he responds, "a man."

The Review

First, I think introducing an "Unlimited" title was a great idea.  As Joey notes on the letter page, it allows for Marvel to test out some new characters before launching them into the market.  To get people (like me) to read it, they also give us an extra Spider-Man 2099 story almost every issue.  I'm excited to see what the crew has in store, pleased that I don't have to commit to buying an entire series just to read about new characters, like Hulk 2099.

Turning to the issue itself, the plots of both issues are interesting, but the writing itself and the accompanying art are disappointing.  I mean, the Spidey story is OK.  I can't say it was the most gripping story I've ever read, but it's interesting to be reading it now, almost 20 years after it was published, because it struck me as a very '90s kind of issue.  Skolnick spends a lot of time on excessive exposition, as a lot of authors did back then, and Wozniack was obviously inspired by Liefeld, given his frequent use of extraneous lines.  I wonder how I would've felt about it back then?  The Hulk story is better.  Jones does a good job of showing rather than telling and, although the narrative gets a little clunky at times, I thought he did a solid job of establishing the motivations of the new Hulk and giving us a piercing look into 2099 society.  Overall, I gave the issue two stars.  Although the Hulk issue raised some interesting questions, the overly exposited nature of both stories and the accompanying clumsy art still left me feeling a bit meh.

The Good

1) At first, I rolled my eyes a bit at Mutagen's origin in the Spidey story, given how many characters seem to be motivated by a similar drive for genetic purity.  But, to be honest, Skolnick does manage to keep Mutagen from becoming a caricature of this sort of character.  He does so by making Mutagen apologize to his victims, first to the parents of the guy with diabetes and then to the woman with the degenerative nerve disease.  It shows that he's aware, on some level, of how crazy he is, something we usually see missing in these evolution-oriented villains.  As is more typical of them, he deeply believes in his "mission" to eliminate genetically-derived weaknesses, but it's his expression of empathy that prevents him from becoming just another crazed villain with a compelling personal vendetta.

2) Skolnick keeps up the dark tone of the 2099 world, giving us a fairly wrenching opening sequence, with the married couple walking into Mutagen killing their son.  Also, I found it interesting that Spidey laments killing Mutagen when he thought he was dead, given that, when we last left him, in "Spider-Man 2099" #8, he had just let the Vulture fall to his death.  We haven't really seen Miguel's reaction to that event yet, so it's interesting that Skolnick seems to show that Miguel is willing to kill, but still feels remorse over it.  It also possibly goes to Miguel's Catholic faith, a subject we saw briefly addressed during his fight with the Vulture in St. Pat's, also in "Spider-Man 2099" #8.

3) OMG, how unintentionally funny is the fact that the studio's "mental adjustment specialist" is named Dr. Phil?

4) I liked the way Jones somewhat casually calls into question the origins of the Thorite cult in the Hulk story.  So far, in "Spider-Man 2099," the Thorites have been presented as more or less a legitimate religion with the typical range of believers, from the attention-seeking guy flying around the city with a light-weight glider in the first arc to the Downtown clinic doctor saving Miguel's life in the second arc.  The idea that the believers are in all likelihood unaware that their religion was started by a marketing corporation ("Nirvana Multimedia") could get really interesting, particularly given the fact the Thorites seem to have an implicit anti-corporation credo.  I'm intrigued to see how this revelation manifests itself in "Spider-Man 2099."  I assume the upcoming "Fall of the Hammer" cross-over event will take up the subject.

5) Continuing on a similar theme, I thought it was interesting in the Hulk story the way Jones portrayed the Knights of the Banner as inspired by the '90s men's movements.  (Again, so '90s!)  It was here where I felt like Jones really excelled in not only laying down the origin of the Hulk but also providing some interesting insight into the 2099 world.  Both the Thorite cult and the Knights group strive for a connection with a world that existed before corporations controlled every aspect of daily life.  They both seemingly yearn for an era where people had a more spiritual interaction with the world, be it religious (like the Thorites) or physical (like the Knights).  Both idealize an era where things were "real," if you will.  But, as usual, the devotees believe in unrealistic versions of these idealized times.  Thor wasn't actually all that touchy-feely when it came to responding to the everyday folk and, as we see here with John's transformation, the Knights seriously overestimated how "free" the Hulk really was.  Moreover, it's interesting how Jones connects the dots to how this "free" thinking was something that corporate society decided was too dangerous, causing it to take steps to stop promoting the "lone hero" archetype.  It's this sort of corporate control against which the Thorites and the Knights are rebelling.  Interestingly, as a reader of the '90s, you probably thought this absolute level of corporate control was a prescient indictment of a possible future; as a reader in the '10s, you feel like you're reading a historical study of how your current society got where it is.

The Unknown
The ending to the Spidey story is interesting.  I like how Skolnick has Mutagen learn (or evolve, if you will) from his fight with Spider-Man.  He's clearly contemplating some large-scale attack now that he realizes that he's been thinking too small.  Skolnick could've just had Spider-Man win the battle or Mutagen flee while swearing eternal vengeance on the Wall-Crawler, but instead he has the villain grow from the battle, something you don't see often.  I'm actually sort of excited to see his return, as promised, in the next issue.

The Bad

1) As I mentioned in "The Review" section, one of my problems with the Spidey story was that Skolnick spent a lot of time on exposition.  I might not have noticed it if I weren't inevitably comparing this story to the previous eight issues of "Spider-Man 2099," where David took his time to show us Miguel's world and not simply tell us about it.  To be fair, David actually used an expository device, Miguel speaking to his journal via Layla, in the first arc of "Spider-Man 2099."  But, he made sure to blended it with the action, so that we got to see the events he was narrating first and then learn his thoughts about them later.  Here, however, Skolnick uses the somewhat trite expository device of having Mutagen reflect on his origin at home.  It's not exactly inspired story-telling.

2) It's weird how Skolnick has Miguel so heavily flirting with Anna in the Spidey story.  To be honest, it totally fits with Miguel's over-confident personality, as we've seen in "Spider-Man 2099."  But, given that David hasn't really resolved Miguel's relationship with Dana, it was weird to see him essentially behave like he's single.

3) I was a little unclear of Audra's connection to Sweet Dreams in the Hulk story.  When we first see her, she seems to work with John and his associates at the studio, but we later learn that she (also?) runs Sweet Dreams.  Creating virtual-reality games and running a private-security firm seem a little disparate, even for the 2099 inter-connected corporate world.  It's not a moot point, since Audra's contacts at Sweet Dreams alert her to the appearance of the Hulk and she uses this knowledge to send John after the Hulk to sign a contract with him.  Jones intends a clear synergy (again, so '90s!) between the production studio and the security company, with the final act of this issue turning on this synergy, with John discovering, via the access Audra provided him to the Sweet Dreams network to track down the Hulk, that Quirk is going to be assassinated.  I understand Jones had a lot to do here and it's a fairly minor point.  But, given that the ending of the issue relies on the connection, I feel like Jones could've done a little more to make it clear why Audra was involved in both companies.  I assume we'll get more details in the next installment of this story, but it would've been nice to get them here.

4) Overall, the art in both issues is pretty terrible.  As I mentioned above, Wozniak in the Spidey story is pretty clearly inspired by Rob Liefeld, given the superfluous lines and extreme positions he uses on the characters.  (At one point, when Miguel is attacking Mutagen, it looks like his ass cheeks have somehow completely separated from one another.  It's not pretty.)  Meanwhile, Turner is inconsistent in the Hulk story.  Some scenes appear gritty with lined faces, other scenes appear Coipelesque with soft images, other scenes are just bizarre.  Given that the writing wasn't all that strong, it was disappointed that the art failed to compensate.