Throwback Thursday: The Punisher 2099

Punisher 2099 #1
Published February 1993
Writers: Pat Mill/Tony Skinner
Artist/Cover: Tom Morgan

Futuristic versions of your favorite characters are nothing new, but when marvel put this spin on several of their (then) flagship titles, it was worth begging my folks to make the 30-minute to the comic shop.  

The 2099 universe gave us a surreal but strangely believable vision of late 21st century life with depictions of an over-populated planet preyed upon by irrevocably feral capitalism, where mega-corporations have pretty much replaced democracy (the latter being frighteningly indicative of what's been going on in politics and where it could lead.)

The first time I read this it took a while for Tom Morgan's pencils to grow on me, but as the series progressed I realized there couldn't have been anyone better for the job. Same for the artists on all of the other 2099 titles; they really brought the ugly and the grit to a world that had apparently been without heroes for too long.


--Ryan Scales

April 2015