Alright I’ve got too much thoughts from a lot of stress. A test with a textbook I’m halfway through, long hour work-shifts that I take breaks from, now I need a break from the dopamine rushes. I don’t even have the energy to make a full post on Gutternaut. Now I need to collect my thoughts on something else. The Spider-Man of 2099, Miguel O’Hara, the antagonist of Across The Spider-Verse.
Years ago, I read the Peter David run of this character. But what kept my attention was the question up top. Partly because my first exposure to this character was a Spider-Man video game. No, not the one Peter David wrote, there was one before that. It was called… Spider-Man… Shattered Dimensions!
In that game, O’Hara spoke more like Peter Parker but with a bolder voice and future lingo. So imagine my surprise when O’Hara sounds completely different in that Peter David game Edge of Time. I think some people got a similar experience in the teaser for Across the Spider-Verse in that movie’s prequel when O’Hara reenacted that one meme. Compared to his appearance in the movie where he’s this more serious figure.
But the question is why? What makes O’Hara the sole success of some Marvel books IN THE FUTURE that they make a few returns to it? I just thought he was a Spider-Man with a bad attitude… like a lot of characters made in the 90s.
Why Make Another Spider-Man?
Nobody seemed to give me a straight answer on what makes Miguel O’Hara so appealing. I wasn’t that impressed with him during my first read through either. For context Spider-Man 2099 revolves around this: Blah-blah, Marvel wanted to do a gimmicky look at the future called 2099, started with some guy nobody remembers. Blah-blah, some other characters like the Punisher and Doctor Doom were there. Blah-blah, political/corporate satire on Spider-Man’s part.
Might be my best guess on why some people think they make O’Hara more like Peter. I mean Spider-Man fighting a big business sounds cool, maybe more interesting if O’Hara wasn’t such a brooder. I mean Shattered Dimensions had Noir why… never mind that’s got no weight.
Because This Guy’s Not A Clone
But this argument does: Rather than have basically the same characters IN THE FUTURE, O’Hara is a Spider-Man who can co-exist with Peter Parker. Even moreso than Peter’s clone, Ben Reilly.
That’s a long story that nobody needs to hear.
So anyway, O’Hara and Peter are foils to one another. Ergo, one can make the other look good. Peter is usually struggling financially, but he grew into a friendly neighbor thanks to the people around him like Aunt May and Mary Jane while still occasionally fumbling around the absurdity of his life. Meanwhile O’Hara is what Peter would be if he never learned about great responsibility as a teenager.
Miguel O’Hara is a successful scientist working for the world’s premiere mega-corporation and has a fiance who makes a greater half for him. But O’Hara’s miserable, driven from his lack of a stable home life. For one, he stole his fiance from his brother while cheating on his then-girlfriend. This wasn’t out of spite for Gabriel or Xian, Miguel is filled with a lot of self-loathing after being propped up by his father. Miguel’s prodigal mind was the highlight of George O’Hara, using it as a way to make Gabriel and his wife Conchata miserable. Miguel in turn hated his father, but he didn’t bother to try and be a better person because he couldn’t let go of the drive for success that George drew into him. But like his mother, Miguel didn’t like his company Alchemax’s power over people. These were constantly at odds with one another, leading Miguel to develop a lot of neuroses.
As for their origins; Peter became Spider-Man after voyaging into his scientific curiosity, O’Hara believed he had to be Spider-Man to survive. His boss tricked him into believing he was on a drug only his company could reproduce to become dependent on Alchemax. (Side note: O’Hara’s boss Tyler Stone is his biological father, real soap opera stuff there. All that you need to know about Tyler is that he makes George look nice.) This was after Miguel headed an experiment that cost a test subject his life. So Miguel used Spider genetics to fight off any addictions, only for a jealous co-worker to sabotage the process, making O’Hara more spider than he needed to be.
Unlike Peter’s radioactive spider bite that imprinted a spider’s essence on a memetic level, O’Hara’s spider DNA gives him the same agility and strength with talons to walk, climb, and fight, organic webbing from spinnerets in his arms, a healing factor for more stamina, and fangs to deliver a paralyzing venom.
Then there’s how they operate. Peter always wants to be a better version of himself, diving into the Spidersona because he needed to change his life for the better. As for O’Hara, he was a reluctant hero who tried to find a cure for his condition, while seeing the effect Spider-Man has on people, for better and for worse.
What’s The Difference?
In layman’s terms, O’Hara’s journey mirrors Peter’s in a unique way. Because despite his upbringing, Miguel O’Hara wants to be loved and be worthy of it after giving up on himself. Thanks to Spider-Man, O’Hara begins to see the better man he could have been and still can be.
The Spider Buffer
All of that is in contrast to the Clone Saga, a contrived storyline about replacing THE Spider-Man with a clone. That clone Ben Reilly started out similarly brooding to O’Hara but eventually lightened up to be his own Spider-Man with unique equipment… at the cost of implying Peter was the clone. Didn’t help that Ben was acting like the lighthearted Spider that Peter was too busy to be. Miguel O’Hara and his eventual successor Mayday Parker weren’t replacements but complements who didn’t get in Peter’s way. They showed that Peter still mattered as a force of inspiration as they made their own way.
Unlike today where it looks like Peter is in Miles Morales’ way most of the time. Among so many other Spider-People who are basically a bunch of acrobatic quipsters with similar personalities, powers, and tragedy stricken storylines. O’Hara is a reminder that if you’re going to have echo fighters, at least make them feel unique and in parallel with the source character… Wolverines!