REVIEW: Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha #1 – Not Quite Grounded

Cover of Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha #1. Ghost Rider sands behind Spider-Man 2099, crouched with web in his hand

I’ll admit that Miguel O’Hara is a character I enjoy more in theory than in practice. Spider-Man has never been my primary guy and that 2099 stuff was also never my hyperfixation. But, like Anya Corazon (who IS my girl), and Miles Morales, he’s another Latino in the gaggle of arañas, so you know, I dug him. I mean, c’mon, he’s got little fangs! All this is to say that I’m coming into this a little cold so please let me know if I’ve missed any crucial backreading in the comments.

Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha #1

Paul Fry (artist), Steve Orlando (writer), Neeraj Menon (colorist), VC’s Joe Caramagna (letterer)
May 4, 2022
Marvel

Cover of Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha #1. Ghost Rider sands behind Spider-Man 2099, crouched with web in his hand

Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha kicks off in Nueva York with a dad getting his arm lopped off by some kind of future gun — which is a brutal way to kick off an event. We learn that Nueva York, and the rest of the world, are under siege from the Cabal, who is so powerful that even the NYPD is willing to overlook violent amputation if the perpetrator has a membership card. (No indication if this is the Cabal from Dark Reign or a different, potentially eviler Cabal).

Steve Orlando does a tidy job feeding any potential new readers the backstory of Miguel and his corporate-run world, weaving in the setting for this event just as matter-of-factly. Spider-Man having a sassy computer companion helps speed things along, though it feels a little forced to have Miguel drop details like the Cabal killing the Avengers in the middle of a quip.

Paul Fry does a good job at emphasizing what makes Miguel O’Hara unique, making sure his claws are always out, and he creates some dynamic poses that take advantage of his more elaborate costume. But the action is hard to read, not helped by soft inks and colors that obscure the backgrounds.

Neeraj Menon takes an interesting tact in this book, and it is one that I’d like to see refined but that I don’t think quite worked in this issue. Rather than going with shadows with neon pops (the usual Blade Runner vibes) for this techno dystopia, Menon creates prismatic glows around the many screens of Nueva York. I think this technique implies various cloaking fields like the one Miguel appears to use, but doubling it up makes the halo of light lose its effectiveness. Instead, it muddies the action Fry is depicting and sometimes creates the effect of characters floating in space. The gauzy blur makes it difficult to get a sense of space.

That said, the action in this book wasn’t super clear even without the colors — in one sequence, Miguel slingshots himself into a cloaked, floating station of the Cabal’s, but I had to re-read it several times to figure out what was meant to be happening. It’s a funny gag, Spider-Man smacking face-first into the invisible station he was hoping to find, but it was more an example of how unmoored Miguel felt from the world around him. I had no sense of how high Miguel leaped, how fast he was moving. The page before had a neat set of panels from Miguel’s POV (perfect time to bring in the cloaking device blur) as he thwipped his webbing, but failed to create any sense of height. We never see the sky, and the buildings around Miguel are often bleached out by the lighting. The coolness factor of sling-shotting into a possible space station is lost to the reader, who is busy trying to interpret the action.

The action is stronger, and much clearer, later in the book when Miguel meets up with Ghost Rider and has a fight in cyberspace. He’s still floating in space, but at least it feels intentional here, and the colors are adding to the action rather than fighting against it. The perspective is less tight, and Fry and Menon have created a pretty striking Ghost Rider look.

Overall, the story has enough hooks that I’m intrigued — I do want to know how the Avengers died, and how Miguel will shepherd Ghost Rider’s people across the city. I especially want to know if I’m going to see an incredibly evil Emma Frost. Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha #1 a brisk set-up issue, and it does the job well enough. But I hope the next book can stand on firmer, visible ground.

Advertisements
Kat Overland

Kat Overland

Small press editor Kat Overland is a displaced Texan now living in Washington, DC, where she is perpetually behind on reading her pull list. She's a millennial, Latina, exhausted, and can often be spotted casually cosplaying America Chavez and complaining.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Close
Menu
WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com