Warning - Spoilers for Spider-Man 2099: Exodus - Alpha #1 ahead!
Marvel triumphantly returns to the far-flung future of 2099 with the first issue of Spider-Man 2099: Exodus. From the very first page of this new miniseries, Miguel O'Hara's world sweeps the reader away with promises of danger, intrigue, and a Marvel Universe that's quite unlike anything that's come before it. With scarcely a dull moment to be found, Spider-Man 2099: Exodus continues the darker tone established by the world of 2099 while simultaneously setting up countless avenues for future stories.
Spider-Man 2099: Exodus - Alpha #1 by Steve Orlando, Paul Fry, and Neeraj Menon quickly brings the reader up to speed. In the year 2099, Neuva York is run by the Cabal, an organization that has taken over the world after utterly destroying the Avengers. Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of the future, tries his best to temper the damage they do to his city and hopes to eventually bring the shadowy group down. When he steals a drive of encrypted files from a Cabal satellite, Spider-Man teams up with a now-digitized Ghost Rider to decipher the Cabal's plans, and together they discover that the Cabal has pulled a dead Celestial down to Earth for nefarious purposes. And just like that, the stakes are set: Spider-Man must get to the impact site and figure out what the Cabal is planning before their agents fulfill their sinister mission.
Orlando, Fry, and Menon wastes no time in establishing the dark tone of the series. Unlike groups such as AIM, or Hydra's Secret Empire, the Cabal's takeover of society is so complete and so pervasive that they do not need to hide in the shadows. In only the second panel, a Cabal recruit dismembers a civilian in broad daylight, with the police standing down and apologizing when he smugly flashes his Cabal badge. With the villains given such a stunning level of carte blanche to operate with, the reader has no way to prepare for or anticipate what the Cabal might try to do next, keeping the suspense high.
Every moment of the book breathes with imagination. "Hacking" isn't just someone sitting at a computer; Spider-Man and Ghost Rider use VR to actually go inside the drive's software and quite literally battle the firewall which takes the form of a giant green goblin (an image that is not without import for the true Green Goblin's return). In a world where the villains don't have to play by the rules, Spider-Man is seen interrogating criminals much like Batman would, webbing up a Cabal initiate, and threatening to drop them. In a wonderful subversion of expectation, Spider-Man cuts the line - only for the next panel to show that his captive was only a few feet above the ground. This creative flair remains evident in each action sequence: the Cabal satellite doesn't just explode, it folds into nonexistence. When Cabal forces storm Spider-Man's hideout, Ghost Rider manifests through the technology in the building to form a skyscraper-sized body. Social media has been embraced to the point where events instantly appear on the news as they happen, broadcast on city-spanning screens. For once it feels justified that anything can happen in this world, without the need for retcons or editorial handwaving.
Spider-Man 2099: Exodus delivers a world where everything feels fresh and creative. It's a mark of quality that the only thing that doesn't feel brand new is the antagonist - Norman Osborn is certainly a dark villain, but his presence feels somewhat stale compared to the rest of the imaginative elements on display. The rest is a triumphant return to the world of 2099 and Nueva York, and a breath of fresh air for the Spider-Man of the future.
Spider-Man 2099: Exodus #1 is now available from Marvel Comics.