The DC3 decided to take on the Herculean task of covering DC’s weekly books! Our coverage will rotate between creator interviews, issue reviews and annotations, and long-form pieces on featured characters. This, friends, is the DC3kly!
Futures End #0
Written by Brian Azzarello, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, and Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Ethan Van Sciver, Patrick Zircher, Aaron Lopresti, Dan Jurgens and Jesus Merino
On the Cover: This was the first image released from the series, and it features many of DC’s most iconic characters, post-infiltration by Brother Eye (who appears in the sky): Superman, Batman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, Hawkman and Green Lantern. The only un-corrupted character is Batman Beyond, Terry McGinnis, who looms over the image grimacing.
How is the story progressing?: This issue is really the prologue of the whole series which, in classic time travel style, takes place at the end. This issue is set 35 years from the present New 52, and 30 years after the rest of the series.
While most of the world has been overrun by “bugs” controlled by Brother Eye, a few humans and heroes remain intact, and are attempting to shut down Brother Eye, to stop the threat of assimilation. Here we meet an aged Barry Allen, replete with white beard, who is palling around with Captain Cold as part of the resistance movement. We later see other survivors, Amethyst, Grifter, John Stewart, Jaime Reyes, and the Batmen – Bruce and Terry – all attempting to shut down the device.
But more than survivors, we see those that have fallen – Hawk, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Constantine, Aquaman, and most of Batman, Inc, just to name a few. We also see Frankenstein becoming even more a collection of piecemeal parts, with Hawkman’s left arm and Black Canary’s head grafted to his chest.
More than anything else, this issue is just an extrapolation of the cover – it is designed to show the reader how the world got this bad, and how going back in time can fix it. This is where everything gets interesting: because of a critical injury, Terry, not Bruce, has to travel back in time to stop Brother Eye. Here is the most interesting two panels in the whole issue:
He eventually adds not to get Superman involved as he’ll, “just muddy things up.” This is some damn fine writing, and the salvation of the issue. Without those few lines of dialogue, I’d be hard pressed to find any real important story information in this issue that wasn’t already revealed throughout solicits and interviews. The issue ends on this image, with all sorts of Easter Eggs we’ll talk about in a little bit:
New 52 Debuts: The only debut here is Terry McGinnis, making his first ever appearance in an in-continuity DC book. We will have an extended look at Terry next week.
Death Toll: That all depends on how you view “death” – if integration into Brother Eye is death, we see 3 heroes – Captain Cold, John Stewart, and Jaime Reyes – “die.” We see Bruce about to die, off camera, and we see the Flash, Grifter and Amethyst all die. Ignoring the assimilations, but counting Bruce, brings us to 4 deaths thus far.
Visuals: This issue should be sort of an artistic mess, as it was penciled on by 5 artists, plus three additional inkers (after Van Sciver and Zircher inked their own pages). However, the look of the book, more or less, is consistent. There are some creative designs of the cyborg heroes, but aside from the lazy aging techniques (graying temples, white beards, stubble [?] for Captain Cold), nothing really stands out as poor. Everything looks a little predictable, but that’s hardly a crime.
Three Big Questions:
1. Is Captain Cold going full hero?
Continued belowThe Rogues are never quite the bastards other villains are; they and the Flash have a sort of mutual understanding and respect, but they’re still firmly the bad guys. However, Captain Cold is part of the resistance in “Forever Evil,” is joining the Justice League this month, and here we see him 35 years from now, doing what is right. Could this be the first major villain to hero shift in a very long time from DC?
2. What can we glean from the final page?
The final page is a shot of Times Square five years in the future. The advertisements have a ton of clues hidden in there, so let’s dig in!
Terrifitec is in full swing, which means Michael Holt gets back from Earth 2, or that someone is impersonating him. I’ll bet it is the former, which would mean his return might be part of the Earth War we’ve heard so much about. Perhaps it’ll be known as E2?
This is an advert for a concert to benefit “the veterans of E2.” Ipso Facto was a real band, but I doubt the writers were recognizing a minor, defunct British goth band. Instead, I would suppose that the original Latin phrase, meaning a direct consequence of a certain action. That sounds sufficiently time travel-y for this story.
“The Fast Lane” appears to be Lois Lane’s TV show, presumably on GBS, which advertises elsewhere in Times Square. We know Lois is a big part of the story going forward, so it is nice to see that teased here.
Also advertised are known scientific companies within the DCU: Lexcorp, Cadmus and S.T.A.R. Labs. It appears science, even in the New 52, is the new rock and roll.
This is the most fascinating part of the whole image – Earth Cards. I presume this is to identify you as from the New 52 Earth, and not Earth 2, the proposed enemy in the E2 Earth War. This is vaguely “Civil War”-ish, but I can dig it as a plot point for the series. Why not?
3. That is Hawkman’s arm, right?
My DC3 cohort Zach spotted Frankenstein’s left arm looking quite different; quite like Hawkman’s. Do you think that is whose it is? This is an important question for next issue.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – This issue has lots of potential, but is bogged down by the death-a-palooza, and doesn’t really offer an idea of what the series is supposed to be.
Futures End #1
Written by Brian Azzarello, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, and Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Patrick Zircher
On the Cover: On the cover, we see Grifter, Batman Beyond and the newly re-designed Firestorm, as well as a space explosion.
How is the story progressing?: We being #1 where #0 left off, which is Terry getting acclimated to his new surroundings. It is nice to see that Terry is, more or less, the Batman Beyond we’ve all grown to know and love, but then again, there hasn’t been too much to muck up, just yet.
From there, there are three distinct stories being told: Stormwatch in space, Firestorm responding to Green Arrow’s distress call, and Grifter hunting Daemonites.
Each story is relatively true to who the characters are – no one has seen a radical change in the last five years – and each part is handled, more or less, well. The Grifter sequence almost seems to pick up right when the series left off, as his job remains the same. His character is established early on as being single minded in his cause, as he is seen executing what appears to be a happy human family.
The Stormwatch story is the most puzzling of the bunch in this first issue; the “return” of the Stormwatch team that debuted in the New 52 #1 was heralded as a prelude of sorts to “Futures End,” and yet the issue simply had the team show up and be back at (more or less, minus Martian Manhunter) full strength. Here, we see Hawkman has joined the ranks of the team, and we see, apparently, the team killed off by Brother Eye. If they really are dead, it is strange that DC made such an effort to bring back the team for, essentially, a 6 page cameo. If they aren’t all dead, I will actually be happy; Stormwatch is a concept that never quite worked in the New 52, but had a ton of potential to do so. Hopefully, this can correct that error.
The Firestorm sequence is more of the same from the Jason/Ronnie Firestorm; Jason wants to be a hero, Ronnie wants to get laid. They get a distress signal from Green Arrow, and Ronnie’s ignoring of it means that when they get to the, now devastated, Seattle harbor, they find Green Arrow dead.
New 52 Debuts: There are a few questionable debuts here; the man watching Terry from his window didn’t look familiar to me, and might be a new character being introduced. Similarly, I did not recognize “Mermaid” from the Stormwatch team, but she could have popped up in an issue of that book after I had dropped it (although a Google search makes me doubt that).
Update: Commenter Someguy11 pointed out that Mermaid was from “Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E.,” which I had totally forgotten about. Nice pull, Someguy!
The only other notable debut is the new look for Firestorm, which is almost an amalgam of Waverider. the Firestorm Fire Elemental, the New 52 version of the Ray and the classic Firestorm.
Death Toll: Grifter kills three Daemonites; Terry kills the android that travels back in time with him; Green Arrow is dead, and all six members of Stormwatch appear to have been killed.
Visuals: Patrick Zircher is a beast in this issue. It isn’t easy to be consistent over four different stories, but that is exactly what he is managing to do. The perfectly sleek Batman Beyond design is handled well, and he still manages to convey emotion from under the cowl. The wide range of characters in this book all get a classy upgrade form Zircher’s smooth line. Putting aside his recent Twitter freakout, this is a masterfully drawn issue of superheroes doing superhero things.
Three Big Questions:
1. Has Terry already changed the future?
This is the reason I harped on Hawkman’s arm last issue. It appears that Hawkman, along with Stormwatch is killed early in the issue. So, if that is the case, how does Frankenstein get his arm? Has Terry’s time travel already altered the future in small ways by simply being in 2019?
2. Is there no more Justice League?
The way that Jason talks about being summoned by Green Arrow makes it seem like they were who he turned to when he really needed help. If that’s the case, what happened to the Justice League? Has E2 wiped them out? Is there no longer a “need” for full time heroes? Did they all betray Ollie?
3. What cyborg came back with Terry?
All of the cyborgs in issue #0 were easy to identify – except the one Terry dragged back with him. At first, I thought it was the Engineer from Stormwatch, because of the hair, but then the hair started to look like a Medusa-like sea of snakes, but she doesn’t look like the Medusa we met in the pages of “Batwoman.”
Any guesses?
Final Verdict: 8.2 – This was a much, much better issue than #0, and made me very excited for the next 10 months or so.
The Series So Far: 7.1 is the pure averaged score, but I’m leaning closer to 7.5, because #1 was such an improvement over #0.
