Spider-Man 2099

This man stands at about six feet in height, though details besides an obvious musculature are hidden by the costume that covers him from head to toe. The relatively thin material is so black that under most lights it has blue highlights to it. Over his face is a design somewhere between a stylized skull and spider. Two dark-crimson crescents are on the mask, one on each side of his face, with the wide curves starting at where the brow would meet the nose, arcing up and around the eye socket. They run down and over each jaw, to meet near the bridge of the nose, then angle sharply downward toward his chin, widening in the middles before ending between where his bottom lip would be and the tip of his chin. Four projections are on the middle of each of the crescents, the top two connected, and otherwise all angling downward to sharp points.

On his torso is a stylized skull, the same shade of dark crimson as the design on the mask. The design spans from the breast bone down to just past his waist, and has two obtuse triangles for eyes, and a smaller isosceles triangle for the nose. From each side of the bottom, two thick lines jut out then turn sharply downward, tapering to points that end just past his waist, and two slender tendrils stretch down in the middle to about where his navel should be.

On the upper-right and upper-left of the skull, three protrusions jut out for a few inches, the ends of which are connected and extend up over his chest and down the outsides of his arms. They end in arrowheads on the back of each hand. On each forearm, a good few inches away from the elbow, the crimson juts out into spines. Two spines on each arm, they extend a good eight inches or so, and are slightly curved, tapered and ending in sharp-looking points.

The other thing of note would be that from each finger and toe, a small claw only around a half-inch in length unfold. When at rest, they lay flat against the skin, beneath the material of the gloves so as to be unnoticeable. When "popped" out, they come right through the gloves as if the material "splits" for them. They look quite sharp, ending in wicked points sharper than most normal human sight can perceive. As for the rest of him, his body is that of a man devoted to physical fitness, with corded muscles stretching and twisting each time he moves. He looks to weigh somewhere around two hundred and twenty pounds, with obviously very little of that fat.

He tends to hold himself in a state of perpetual caution, as if ready to spring at a moment's notice. His voice is deep and bassy, with an accent that is almost, but not quite, like a New Yorker's accent; the subtleties are just noticeably different, inflections marking him as different.

This man stands at about six feet tall, looking to weigh in somewhere around the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound range. Short, dark brown hair has been attempted to be combed, though it hasn't quite worked, leaving clumps sticking out here and there. Bushy brown eyebrows are usually knotted above nearly opaque sunglasses, resting on slender nose. Thin lips unaccustomed to smiling on a prominent chin complete the over-all effect of a mixed Latino/Caucasian heritage, the former brought out a bit more with the few days' worth of beard stubble.

A light-blue, long-sleeved dress-shirt is tucked into his dark khakis, the top two buttons left unfastened tastefully, showing the collar of a grey T-shirt underneath. The khakis are clean, new-ish, well-creased. White socks and clean white sneakers complete the outfit. He looks to weigh somewhere around two hundred and twenty pounds, with obviously very little of that being fat.

He usually keeps his hands in his pockets or in loose fists, contributing to the over-all "distant" air that usually hovers about him. His voice is deep yet soft, with an accept that is almost, but not quite, like a native New Yorker's; the subtleties are just noticeably different, though what makes them harder to discern is his tendency to mumble. He doesn't open his mouth very wide at all, yet he's still usually perfectly understandable.

Young Miguel O'Hara was raised in the time after the end of the "Heroic Age", the age of masked vigilantes and super-powers that ended in cataclysm in the early Twenty-First Century. He grew up with his eccentric mother, Conchata, younger brother Gabriel, and his abusive father, George. Brilliant and precocious, Miguel was awarded enrollment in the Alchemax School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester under the fair direction of headmistress Angela Daskalakis. Here he befriended Xina Kwan, who helped Miguel defend himself against the bullying of Kron Stone, son of Alchemax's Vice President of Research and Development, Tyler Stone. With Xina's encouragement, Miguel mustered the bravery to have Kron expelled from the school.

Years later, as young adults, Miguel and Xina dated until Miguel cheated on her with Gabriel's girlfriend, Dana D'Angelo. In time, Miguel and Dana were engaged. Confident and smugly self-assured, Miguel became project head of the genetics program of Alchemax, performing research loosely inspired by what little was known about the heroes of the Heroic Age. His research primarily involved alterations of the human genetic code, typically by "rewiring" it with animal D.N.A. components. Told he was poisoned by C.E.O. Tyler Stone with an addictive drug called Rapture for quitting after Alchemax fatally used a criminal as a test subject to expedite research, Miguel tried to purge his body clean on a genetic level. Once the drug was bound to his system, he would need it for the rest of his life. Since only Alchemax legally sold the drug, Miguel would have been forced to continue employment at Alchemax or buy the drug through the black market. His experiment to genetically reset his body was sabotaged by his jealous supervisor, Aaron DelGato, accidentally fusing bits of spider D.N.A. with his own.

After an explosion in the lab, DelGato apparently fell to his death while Miguel fled, realizing his new powers as he avoided the Alchemax-sponsored Public Eye security patrol (the police force, a privatized venture owned wholly by Alchemax). A Thorite (worshipper of Thor) aided Miguel's escape, deeming "Spider-Man's" return as an omen of his god's return. Tyler Stone hired the cyborg bounty-hunter named Venture to investigate the incident. With Venture in pursuit, Miguel returned to his Babylon Towers apartment, and concealed his identity in a full body costume acquired at a Mexican Day of the Dead festival. After a fierce assault, Spider-Man shredded Venture's circuitry. Upon recounting the events to his quirky Holo-Agent (holographic assistant, a representation of the operating system running the apartment) Lyla, Miguel realized his uncertain future.

With Stone apparently ignorant of Miguel's transformation, Miguel returned to work, hopeful to find a cure for his condition; however, Miguel gradually discovered the importance of Spider-Man in his world, where his own employer was a major source of corruption and oppression. He helped rescue Karyn "Kasey" Nash, Gabriel's girlfriend, after she was kidnapped by a Zaibatsu Samurai, the Specialist, for Alchemax to perform human experimentation. Spider-Man's narrow victory over the Specialist earned him the enmity of another major corporation, Stark-Fujikawa, and left him plummeting below the elevated city into Downtown. The realm of the forgotten and undesirables of Nueva York (the colloquial name for New York), Downtown was independent of the major corporations' control but ruled by gangs.

Here, Spider-Man encountered the cruel Watchdogs (a subsidiary of the Public Eye, who allegedly "protected" Downtown) and Fenris gangs, the hopeful Thorites, the justice seeking Throwbacks, and the largest gang, the Freakers, with their cannibalistic leader, the Vulture. Spider-Man rejected the Vulture's offer to join his crusade against Alchemax, and after a vicious battle aided by Kasey, Gabriel, and the Throwbacks, he retreated home. While he was away battling the savage Bloodsword and the Fenris gang in Downtown, back home Lyla began malfunctioning, while at Alchemax Stone made romantic advances towards Dana. She was approached by Tyler to partner with her firm, Synthia, and Alchemax, in a successful attempt to get closer to her. Miguel had discovered that Spider-Man had become a hero to his institutionalized mother (alone after George died at a few years previous) and inspiration for the Spiderite cult of costumed followers.

Upon his return, Miguel with Dana visited Alchemax's floating city, Valhalla, where it appeared that Thor and Heimdall had returned, though lacking the nobility of their Heroic Age counterparts. The mysterious man known only as Avatarr had transformed ordinary people into the Aesir, loyal to him, in order to eliminate the rising super heroic interference. With help from Doom, Ravage, Punisher, and Loki, the Aesir were defeated.

In the weeks that followed, Miguel became more comfortable in his role as a costumed defender. He halted the attacks of the hyper-adaptable Mutagen, protected the city from disaster from a reawakened Cold War Russian super soldier, Chernobyl, wrestled himself free from electronically transmitted mind control by Macroware software developer Dr. Damian Fawcett, and clashed with a specially trained agent heavily armed with SItuation Emergency GEar (SIEGE). The mysterious amnesiac soon dubbed the Net Prophet was liberated from Interspace after the Virtual Unreality experiments of Euromax transfer, the pretentious scientist Jordan Boone, lured the nigh-unstoppable Thanatos to Alchemax, where he kidnapped Tyler Stone and Spider-Man, and after the two defended Dana's sister, Father Jennifer D'Angleo, in Downtown against the Fenris gang, Tensen opted to explore the world.

While Miguel tried to get back to a normal life, Lyla attacked Dana out of apparent jealously. She and the rest of the city were victims of the mad cyberspace entity named Discord, trying to "ease humanity into Armageddon". After saving Stark-Fujikawa's head, Hikaru-Sama, Miguel joined Gabriel (as "Firelight") in Cyberspace and defeated Discord. Afterwards, Gabriel admitted to his brother that he knew his secret identity from the start, recognizing the costume from the Mexican festival.

Meanwhile, Kasey was kidnapped by SIEGE for Stark-Fujikawa and, as a repayment of Hikaru-Sama's debt, transformed into Payback, a cyborg warrior designed to be a worthy associate of Spider-Man. Fighting against Risqué, Venture's cyborg sister, Payback failed, leaving Spider-Man alone to defeat Risqué. Gabriel was beaten by Alchemax's Flyboys as they arrested Kasey, and himself was arrested for interfering. While Miguel eavesdropped, Conchata confronted Tyler to release Kasey, blackmailing him with evidence that he killed his ex-wife, Nancy. There, Miguel learned the truth that the Rapture he was given was only a short-lasting simulation-and that Tyler Stone was really his father. Miguel left profoundly disturbed.

Xina, Lyla's creator, repaired the Holo-Agent, spitefully programming her to insult Dana. Offended, Dana accused the emotionally raw Miguel of dating Xina again; after an explosive fight, Miguel and Dana broke up. Later, Spider-Man battled the mercenary android Vlad the Impaler targeting a boy named Gedde O'Hara (mistakenly believed by Miguel to be targeting his brother Gabriel O'Hara), and after Woodstock 2099 fought against Major Jones, a dealer peddling a metamorphosis-enabling drug called Chameleon. For a vacation, Miguel and Xina visited Nightshade, an independent corporation in Arizona run by their old headmistress, Angela, when Alchemax performed a literal hostile takeover via Mr. Pembert, the Corporate Headhunter, and the six Corporate Raiders.

Though the monstrous genetically manipulated ex-Flyboy Sergeant Rico Estevez (Subject Three-Nine-Four, A.K.A. Travesty) attacked one and all, Spider-Man defended Nightshade, though the Raiders succeeded, killing Angela in the process. Packrat and his scavenger gang of Foragers descended upon the ruins of Nightshade, kidnapping Spider-Man. The gang offered Spider-Man a means of freedom if he fixed an old robot nicknamed Junior. The android, apparently the inert body of a Super-Adaptoid, recognized something in Spider-Man, and awakened as an amalgam of O' Hara's Spider-Man with Spider-Man and Venom from the Heroic Age. Calling itself Flipside, it behaved like an emotionally unstable psychopath. Heroically, Spider-Man saved his captors' lives, leaving Flipside shredded and decapitated; however, after Spider-Man departed, Flipside reassembled itself and resumed its assault on Packrat's gang. On Miguel's walk home through the desert, he was assaulted and exhausted, having a horrific nightmare before Xina rescued him.

Miguel and Xina attempted another vacation in Mexico City, where they ran into Gabriel and Kasey (who believed Gabe was secretly Spider-Man). There a man named Fernando Morgez performed an arcane ritual to revive his dead sister Anita, inadvertently summoning zombies from a local graveyard instead. Spider-Man, temporarily blinded by Morgez' spell due to his sensitive eyes, teamed with the Sorceress Supreme, Strange, to end the undead invasion. Distraught over his failure to make amends for his sister's accidental death, Morgez committed suicide.

The four returned back home seeking some normalcy; instead, they found the country had been overtaken by Doom, who sent federal officers to abduct Miguel from Xina's car. Taken to the White House, Miguel impressed President Doom with his confidence. With all mega-corporations nationalized under Doom's control and Avartarr dead, Tyler Stone became Doom's corporate Minister, while Stone offered Miguel his seat as C.E.O. of Alchemax. Later, as Spider-Man assisted protesting Spiderites brutalized by federal Watchdogs, Doom offered him a cabinet position as Minister of Supernormal Affairs. Disgusted with Tyler and his dubious relationship with Dana, Conchata surprised Tyler at his apartment and shot him twice. In Nueva York, the battle cries of Bloodmace (formerly Bloodsword and Bloodaxe) against "leaderless" Alchemax were abbreviated by the return of the Venom symbiote, which engulfed him in an acid-excreting ebony shroud, leaving behind only a skeleton. Venom traveled to confront the hospitalized Tyler, burning Miguel and slashing Dana. Spider-Man and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents engaged in fierce combat to protect Stone from Venom, but the monster escaped. Miguel, accepting his promotion, decided to use his position to forge a new direction for Alchemax, and to protect his alter-ego by ordering S.H.I.E.L.D. reps to leave Spider-Man alone.

Venom resurfaced and kidnapped both Dana and Xina after rampaging through Alchemax; he told Miguel to "make a choice", and without thinking Miguel said Dana's name. Venom killed Dana, releasing Xina when Miguel severed Venom's arm in a rage. After Venom escaped, grabbing Xina again, Miguel authorized S.H.I.E.L.D. to use lethal force. Miguel returned to find Venom had taken Xina again and fled, forcing Xina to drive her car. The battle culminated at the visually askew place called the Escher Club, where Miguel had first met Dana.

While Venom eluded the authorities, Dana died in Spider-Man's arms. Miguel returned to Alchemax, demanding answers from his researchers on how to stop Venom. Studying a piece of the symbiote, Miguel realized the symbiote was averse to sound. Broadcasting high intensity sound through the public speaker system, Spider-Man tackled a weakened Venom, discovering that beneath the symbiote was his half-brother, Kron Stone. Miguel separated Kron from the symbiote and forced a confession out of him. After being left for dead by the Punisher, Kron had encountered and bonded with the mutated symbiote, which had been sitting dormant in the sewers for some time. Kron faked his own death, and upon hearing his father had survived an assassination attempt, he had sought to complete the murder.

Meanwhile, Downtown, the Vulture and the mysterious Goblin attacked Kasey Nash, out to prove Spider-Man was allied with Alchemax and the corporate establishment. Summoned Downtown by Gabriel, Spider-Man battled the Goblin. Struggling against the Goblin's hallucinogenic attack, Spider-Man barely escaped with his life. The Goblin rallied Downtown's citizen's against Spider-Man by projecting images of Spider-Man (taken out of context) implicating him as a corporate flunky. Spider-Man left, disgusted by the ingratitude, to find President Doom's sovereignty at an end as evident by fragments of his Environmental Maintenance Platforms (E.M.P.s) fallen from the sky.

After Dana's funeral, wheelchair bound Tyler Stone attempted to return as CEO of Alchemax. Miguel refused to yield, stating his intention to run a compassionate corporation to serve people, and ejected Stone from the building. Tyler's attempt to shock Miguel with the knowledge of his paternity had no effect. Miguel discovered that his time as Spider-Man had brought out the best in him, and it was time to become a hero out of costume as well.

At Alchemax, Miguel was joined by his brazen mother as the best candidate for his personal assistant, handling even the violent Grunt Union representative, Boru. Union problems became a minor issue for Miguel when communications with the New Atlantis project, Alchemax's undersea research and habitation endeavor, were severed. Miguel learned that Alchemax had been exploiting the undersea mutates, using them for slave labour. The mutates, under leadership of one called Roman, broke free; and Roman, who modeled himself after the legendary Sub-Mariner Namor, rebelled. Torn between corporate loyalties and ethical treatment of the mutates, Miguel opted to attempt peaceful negotiations; however, Roman took the initiative to launch an offensive, flooding Nueva York and dispatching a leviathan, Giganto. Spider-Man incapacitated and captured Roman, and sent the sea-monster home. Via holo-vid, Tyler confronted Conchata about her assassination attempt, telling Miguel he's his father, and admitting he knew all along Miguel was Spider-Man. These revelations, however, actually brought Miguel and his mother closer.

Trying to reach Jennifer from the flooded Downtown, Spider-Man fought the Goblin. The Goblin revealed himself to be Father Jennifer D'Angelo, motivated by grief over her sister's death, and blaming Spider-Man for it. Father Jennifer tried to kill him, and the fight took them through Alchemax to the Virtual Unreality testing center. The scientists had managed to open a portal to an unknown dimension when Goblin threw Spider-Man through it and threw a pumpkin bomb at the aperture, destroying it and ensuring Spider-Man was lost forever.