Futures End #4

Frankenstein was a founding member of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Five years from now, Frankenstein is five years more pissed off with SHADE than he was five years ago. By "five years ago", I mean "now." Time is confusing when you actually think about it. The only thing you really need to know is that it will eventually betray you. It will wear you down physically, mentally, and emotionally until the day it finally gives you the finger and turns out the lights. But time relentlessly moving forward wouldn't seem so bad without our fucking memories reminding us how things used to be. Time is trying to drag us away from the past but our minds force us to live in a psychotropic mixture of past, present, and future thought. Without our brains ability to remember and foresee, we'd simply live in the moment. We'd never know we'd gotten older or more feeble because whatever our current physical and mental state would, to our perception, have simply always been our current physical and mental state. Old age and death would catch us by surprise which, frankly, is the way I'd prefer it! Next Christmas, I'm going scream venomously at my parents for raising me to experience time and nostalgia and desires and dreams! Couldn't they have just stuck me in a dark room where I slept when tired and ate when food was put before me?! I hate them for giving me a human life!

Anywhat, Frankenstein has tracked down SHADE's Ant Farm because he wants to shove a sword up Father Time's vagina (I don't mean for that to come across as a misogynistic statement of violence toward women! I just liked the juxtaposition of the words "Father" and "vagina"). Frank's pissed that SHADE has been putting surveillance equipment up the asses of Polar Bears and keeping track of Frank while he lives a life of solitude up in the arctic. But Father Time has a new Agent of Shade to protect his vagina and his other parts that are equally as important.

Having to sew your parts back on is a poor substitute to a regenerative ability.

Father Time starts blah blah blahing about how Frank really came back because he truly desires to become an agent once more. While he's doing that, he misses an ample opportunity to make a really good acronym! He mentions that SHADE is the greatest weapon against "supernatural chaos and paranormal evil." That's SCAPE! Now he just needs to come up with some words to form GOAT and Father Time has a fantastic new acronym for a villainous HYDRAesque enemy! SCAPEGOAT: Supernatural Chaos And Paranormal Evil Generating Opportunistic Apocalyptic Threats. Or something. I'm sure Azz and Giff and Jurg and Lemmy thought up a pretty good one and will reveal it later. That SCAPE thing seems too spot on acronymmy to not be a premeditated acronym.

"Almost as old"? I suppose depending on how you define when Stormwatch began, that could mean Father Time began SHADE before Merlin began watching the storms, or it could mean Father Time was born before the universe was born. He is Father Time! I guess that makes sense!

Father Time points out how Stormwatch was destroyed by an unknown entity (probably THE CANCELLATOR!) out in deep space. Stormwatch. Killed. With lots of super duper uber super heroes. In no time flat. So what does Father Time want to do? Send Frankenstein and Amethyst into space to investigate! This is beginning to sound like a B Movie! "FRANKENSTEIN ON MARS! You won't believe your eyes! Mostly because the effects will be laughable and nobody really tried nailing the script down to a coherent plot."

Father Time convinces Frank to head into space because Nina From the Black Lagoon had just joined Stormwatch and was killed in the massacre. So he's playing on Frank's desire to always get revengeance on his enemies. And to get into deep space, Ray Palmer has developed a method of quick travel that shrinks people down and sends them through the Phantom Zone. Well, maybe it doesn't shrink them down as well. But it wouldn't surprise me.

Meanwhile in New York, Cal Corcoran, formerly known as Red Robin, formerly known as Tim Drake, formerly known as something else (unless it was his parents that changed their name when they went into hiding and Tim kept the family name), is jogging with his girlfriend whose name is Madison Payne. Get it? She's a "mad pain"!

See? Stop prying! What a pain in the bat-ass!

While jogging, Tim gets his first glimpse of Batman Beyond on some ubiquitous television screen. And he instantly gets all judgmental on Bruce.

That's a bit unfair. Bruce never asked you to be a fucking Robin. That was your choice and your screw up and you didn't really leave him with much of a choice after you nearly got your parents killed! At least, you know, in The New 52 version of you!

Bruce did the best he could with the editorial demanded sidekick to appeal to younger readers! It wasn't his fault that time moved and comic books took a darker, more adult turn. Bruce isn't the asshole that decided to leave it up to the readers (or reader seeing as how the vote was practically rigged!) as to whether or not Jason Todd would live! Bruce wasn't the magic bald shaman writer that created Damian just so Damian could die! Leave Bruce alone! He's just trying to make his way the only way he knows how! He can't help it if that's just a little bit more than the law will allow!

I haven't seen the credits yet for this issue but I'm sensing a Keith Giffen Breakdown Layout deal! All of these pages have his signature six panels of equal size foundation!

Meanwhile across a few six panel pages, The Key and Plastique are trying to hire Coil for a new job. Coil is on parole and has decided to go legit. But I suppose they're going to have a job that intrigues him enough to change his mind. Or Plastique is going to just blow his head off.

I don't recognize Coil. They mention that Flash took him down otherwise I might have thought he was Ann Nocenti's Coil even if he does look quite different. But since that Coil was awful, I'm just going to forget he even existed now.

That last job concerns a break in at Terrifitech. So one way or the other, it really will be a last job, won't it?

Meanwhile Grifter has now begun murdering innocent people in self-help groups. And his Narration Boxes are getting bigger and bigger as he continues to try to justify his horrendous behavior.

King Faraday needs Cole Cash's They Live Vision and until he gets it, everybody gets to think of Grifter in the same terms that I do! I hope he gets the death penalty! Normally I don't believe in capital punishment but I'll make an exception for Grifter.

Futures End #4 Rating: No change. When are things going to get exciting? When are more super heroes going to die?! Where are the aliens and the Bugbots and the Cancellator and pictures of the dead Teen Titans?! I suppose the creative team thinks they can allow the plot to move along slowly since it continues every fucking week. Batman Eternal took a few weeks to get interesting as well. And I can't say this isn't interesting. But it's definitely moving slowly.