2099 Is In Trouble… (ASM #32-36)

I’ve managed to let Amazing Spider-Man pile up a bit in my read pile the past few months, so I’m currently playing catch-up. I just finished the 2099 Is In Trouble… arc, and it was pretty good, but the artwork is what really stole the show for me.

#spoilers

The plot revolves around a lot of foreign espionage as the threat of war looms between Symkaria and Latveria. The Chameleon is a major player in it, aiding in the manipulation of Doctor Doom and Silver Sable. Spider-Man 2099 shows up in the modern day trying to find Peter Parker, and in this way things kind of turn fuzzy for me, because this was all part of a mini-event that spanned into other Spider-Man titles, but I don’t have any of those. Still, the standalone arc here in Amazing works just as good. So the short of it is that Spider-Man (Peter) is trying to prevent the outbreak of war, notably when an assassination attempt on Doom occurs. He ends up utilizing a new “Clairvoyant” tech that he and a classmate from ESU are working on together to essentially look into the future at the best way to avoid catastrophe (kind of like Doctor Strange’s use of the time stone the movies). Suffice it to say, Spidey eventually discovers the best chance and succeeds, though not without a whole lot of foreboding of bigger things to come, as usual.

What I’d really like to take time to gush over here is the artwork. Two artists take on the load of this story, Patrick Gleason for the first three issues and then Oscar Bazaldua for the last two. Patrick Gleason is an excellent artist, and Nick Spencer even writes a note in the first issue of the arc on how excited he is to have him on the Spidey team, but I gotta say Oscar’s work is truly phenomenal. The textures and the perfect blend of realism and fantasy is some of the best to catch my eye in a while. I know I’ve seen his work elsewhere (hard to forget a name like Bazaldua), but for some reason his art here really blew me away. Honestly if we could get him on this title as a regular I’d be thrilled. I know they like to rotate artists to spit out more issues of Spidey every month, but if they had a bit more patience this could be a consistently gorgeous book with somebody like Oscar at the helm.

Oh well, here’s to hoping…

TL;DR Score: On the side of fan service, I’m always excited for a good Spidey vs Doom confrontation!