Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-5448995-20160103010513/@comment-61022-20160118171231

I think Marvel really needs to explain what is going on with the 2099 related material going back further than Secret Wars, the entire franchise has been a bit of a mess since they revived Spider-Man 2099 during the whole Superior Spider-Man arc.

I haven't read the entire current run of Spider-Man 2099, but from what I can gather, everything after Peter David's run in Spider-Man 2099 Vol 1 has been ignored since the current revival began in Superior Spider-Man. Which causes some problems. Peter stopped writing Spider-Man 2099 after in 1996, the 2099 franchise continued until 1998 when they condensed all the 2099 books into 2099: World of Tomorrow Vol 1 and ending with the  which took that entire timeline straight into the year 3099.

Some history for most of you kids out there: In 1996, the 2099 lines were doing very poorly in sales and the imprint editor Joey Cavalieri was fired from his job. Peter David and the majority of the 2099 creative teams quit out of protest. leading to all the series being folded into one title and ultimately the Manifest Destiny one-shot to tie everything up.

Since the 2099 revival in Superior Spider-Man, the fact that Spider-Man 2099 was pulled into the past during Superior at an undisclosed period of time creates some issues here. Especially since the current Spider-Man 2099 stuff seems to be rolling off in its own direction and is further distancing itself from all the material that was written post-Peter David.

Marvel still needs to explain THAT before we even begin to try and make sense of what was going on during Secret Wars. I would say that, and that alone, should be reason enough to keep the BW designations for the time being.

Bigger picture: The 2099 history is presently mucked up and until we can get some explanation then we can start sorting through this.

If I were to offer up a plausible explanation: It seems that Marvel's policy regarding the 2099 universe is that it has a beginning-middle-end starting with and ending with. Each instance where that era has been revisited time travel or dimension hopping has been involved. Usually you can break down these types of interactions into two categories:

(1) appearances that don't affect the status quo of established history of Earth-928 vs...

(2) Ones that do, and as a result create a divergent reality.

Example: - features Captain Marvel going to the year 2099. Because the events of that story did not upset the status quo of established Earth-928 history, the events of that story are considered part of Earth-928 cannon.

Alternatively - have the Exiles and Proteus venturing there. When they originally travelled to that reality it was Earth-928. However the arrival of Porteus interrupted the events of -, where Alchemax pulled John Tensen of the New Universe into 2099. This created a divergence creating Earth-6375, where the Net-Prophet never came to 2099, Miguel's identity was exposed to the public and Hulk 2099 was killed when he was possessed by Proteus.... All before Dr. Doom became President of the United States.

As such, I would suspect that the Miguel who appears in Superior Spider-Man onward was pulled out of history at some previous time period in 2099's linear history, creating a divergence again.

Does this mean that the current Spider-Man 2099 can no longer be determined being from as Earth-928? I don't necessarily think so. Universe designations are editorial decisions and honestly, if Marvel wanted to they could decide all this new stuff belongs to Earth-928 and all the World of Tomorrow/Manifest Destiny stuff is an alternate reality. They just need to make up their minds and come up with some kind of direction.