"The End" Week: 2099: World of Tomorrow #8!

Some of you may remember Marvel's 2099 books. Some of you may even remember when they were good, in which case this one will be new to you: 2099: World of Tomorrow #8, "The Quiet Earth" Written by Joe Kelly and Ben Raab, pencils by David Brewer and Jason Armstrong, inks by Allen Martinez and Hack Shack Studios.

Per Wikipedia, after one of Marvel's periodic cost-cutting sprees, group editor Joey Cavalieri was let go...and most of the writers of the 2099 books chose to go with him. Peter David left Spider-Man 2099 after co-creating him and writing most of the series to that point; and Warren Ellis left Doom 2099. (Maybe. I had thought Ellis just left because he was done, but he may have done it to show support.) Creatively and sales-wise the 2099 books got wobbly after that, and were then consolidated into a single book, 2099: World of Tomorrow. Which lasted eight issues...

I can't imagine this being a good idea from the get-go. Sure, Marvel might have wanted to throw the 2099 fans a bone, and maybe even figured if everyone reading those books transferred over to this new one it might sell some respectable numbers. Yeah, kinda figure it's more likely the same batch of fans were reading all or most of the 2099 books if they were at all. (Personally, I read Spidey, Ghost Rider, and Fantastic Four 2099; with an occasional look at the Doom or Punisher books. Wish I was reading that Punisher 2099 last issue now...) And cramming all those characters, and their assorted surviving supporting casts, into one book would've made a Legion of Super-Heroes writer say uncle. There's like two or more X-Men 2099 casts involved, and I think the first issue (or plotline or special...) even blows up a rocket full of characters (including Ben Grimm!) and it's still overstuffed.

Oh, and this book is crap. And it's obviously cancelled-midstream crap, since there's barely even a vague effort to wrap it up.

Joe Kelly, of course, would go on to bigger and better things with his great run on Deadpool, and as one of the creators of Ben 10. Marvel's revisited the 2099 world a couple times, and had another 2099 event that seemingly had nothing to do with anything else; and Spidey 2099 is often included as a suit option in Spider-Man video games.