THE FALL OF THE HAMMER

Issues:

• Spiderman 2099 #16 - The Hammer Strikes

• Ravage 2099 #15 - Horns of a Dilemma

• X-Men 2099 #5 - Lightening Strike

• Doom 2099 #14 - The Hammer or the Anvil

• Punisher 2099 #13 - All for One

Writers - John Francis Moore, Pat Mills and Tony Skinner, and Peter David
Art - Tom Morgan, Ron Lim, Pat Broderick, Grant Miehm, and Rick Leonardi

Summary:

As Miguel 'O Hara and Dana are enjoying a quiet walk alone together, a rumble on the sky marks the arrival of the floating city, Valhalla. Aboard the floating city we find old and familiar names with new faces. The Aesir, the gods of Norse mythology have returned. The first to greet humanity are Thor and Heimdall. Thor sees Dana and takes a liking to her. Miguel raises his protests and is promptly thrown miles away by Thor's strength. An angered Thor begins to forces people, "the worthy" onto Valhalla. Miguel returns to the site of Valhalla but as Spiderman. He engages Thor in a fight that once again ends with him being thrown miles away but this time into a huge crumbling building which collapses above him. When he emerges, none other than the Punisher is awaiting him with a gun aimed at his head. 

Meanwhile, at Ravage's office, the X-Men ambush Ravage for some information that he refused to give them. Bloodhawk tries to beat Ravage for the information but to his surprise, he finds out why Ravage is so unimpressed by his appearance. Ravage transforms and agrees to help them. Together they fly off to Valhalla where they are met by Public Eye security forces. Eventually separated, the X-Men take on the Norse god Heimdall while Ravage seeks the engine room where he has already planned a rendezvous with Doom. Their plan is to correct the engine defects that are causing the floating city to pollute everything it flies over and prevent it form its eventual crash onto the surface below. Unfortunately for Ravage he encounters Hela, queen of the underworld. After some battling Ravage realizes that Hela is indeed Tiana. Ravage convinces Tiania that this Norse god routine is not for her, she then flees dazed and confused.

Elsewhere, the X-Man Skullfire escapes from security forces and proceeds to meet up with some of his fellow X-Men on Valhalla. Skullfire finds a huge mob that is being flown up to Valhalla one at a time by con artists that are charging thousands of credits per person. Skullfire commandeers one of the lifts and begins his own ascent. As he gets closer to Valhalla his mind recalls the events that led him there. X-men Menastreak, Krys, and Bloodhawk continue their fight against Heimdall. When all seems lost, Loki appears to Meanstreak and gives him a device to defeat the Norse god. After becoming powerless, Heimdall falls to Bloodhawk's blows. It is only then that we learn that Loki is in fact Meanstreak's lost friend, Jordan Boone. At the same time Doom arrives with Skullfire and challenges Loki's control over the situation. Last but not least, Thor arrives and strikes down Bloodhawk with lightening. 

Thor is maddened with rage when he sees his servant Heimdall lying defeated on the ground. Thor turns out his anger on Doom. As the battles rages Loki once again helps out by tipping to Doom that Thor's power is in his hammer. A huge explosion is caused when Doom blocks Thor's constant flow of power and both are sent hurtling away from Valhalla in a ball of fire. When Thor recovers is is not lying in a burnt out a crater but in the laboratory of the man called Avatarr. It is at this point that we see that Thor is none  other than the Reverend McAdam, preacher of the church of Thor. Avatarr restores the reverend to his full power and sends him off on his mission of destruction. Thanks to Doom's cloaking ability, he is able to witness it and threatens Avatarr. Avatarr reminds Doom that Valhalla will fall any minute and morally blackmails him into believing that the lives at stake are more important than killing him. On Valhalla, the heroes try to organize an evacuation of the city. As the last of the evac pods leave, Doom arrives on seen. Ravage informs Doom that everything he has tried has not worked and that there is no stopping the city from falling onto New York.
    
As the finale closes in, Doom devises a plan to make Valhalla stay afloat. Punisher and Spiderman stay above to hold off the Aesir who are sure to want to stop them. Doom meanwhile goes below with Ravage to enact his plan. As the gods Heimdall and Baldur attack an enormous battle begins. Finally Punisher literally pulls out the big guns and and disintegrates the two gods. Below in the engine room of the city, Thor bursts in and destroys Doom's work. Valhalla begins it's rapid lunge into the earth. Punisher jumps Thor and realizes who it is. Punisher manages to distract Thor long enough to grab his hammer and throw it into the city's power works. The energy form the hammer restores the city into working order. In the aftermath Avatarr appears once more to gloat that theirs was a minor victory.

Notes:

• First ever crossover in the 2099 universe.

• Although not directly linked to the cross-over, 2099 Unlimited #4 featured a tie-in of sorts as it included a story in which Hulk 2099 faces off against Sigurd, a product of evolutionary experiments funded by the Church of Thor.

Comments:

"History repeats. Your twentieth century counterparts were equally annoying." - Doom 
 

Great fun. That is the only way I can describe Fall of the Hammer. It was well written and pulled off very well. Crossovers have a way of going bad, or becoming tedious or perhaps even silly. FOH does a good job of keeping tight continuity and allowing a reader to understand what is going on without having to make every reader buy all of the issues of all of the titles involved. At the time, I only bought the Doom issue and more or less understood what had happened and followed the story. I have of course subsequently gotten all the parts and my enjoyment of the story is of course fuller because of it. After reading all the parts, I would in no way recommend reading just one. Although thrusting a big crossover event always has the effect of interrupting the flow of a particular title, looking back I am still glad they did it. One of the things that made the original Marvel universe such a cool place was the way characters from other comics would drop by. 2099 on the whole didn't see too much of that. So it was nice to have all the characters meet. 2099 was small enough so that you could find a way to include everyone.