Futures End #8

This commentary is an Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea Primer. Highly recommended for newbies and novices.

Another week of Futures End, another week where barely anything happens! I'm predicting that! I haven't actually read it yet. You think I actually read the comic book first and fashion a coherent essay extolling the virtues and exposing the flaws of the comic book? That's fucking silly! And difficult! It's easier to just read a page and then say, "Why don't Deathstroke and Faraday get a room already where Faraday can do that thing he's always wanted to do involving an empty eye socket, his penis, and a bowel movement?"

After such an erudite observation, I type out this next sentence where I hope that I used "erudite" correctly. Then it's on to the next page where Grifter and Fifty Sue are flirting. Then I say, "Why don't Grifter and Fifty Sue get a room already where Chris Hanson can introduce himself and ask Grifter to take a seat." Also, I get to point out how whoever scripted this issue stole my fucking line.

That's verifiable Grunion Guy copyrighted material, that line about Batman and Robin!

I'll continue to read a few more pages while avoiding the "get a room" joke so that I can use it once more at the end to tie the entire thing together. I'm sure the characters I'll be telling to get a room will be Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch or Frankenstein and Amethyst.

Back in Lois Lane's office building, I might point out the gigantic fucking watch she wears on her wrist which will probably turn out to be something to summon Superman. Or I might just whine for a bit about how she created a blogging empire while my blog is just a little shitty site on Tumblr with less follows than every high school student in America. Of course, they're all posting nudies and Supernatural gifs while I'm actually taking the time to carefully construct a seemingly rambling and incoherent, often offensive and mildly racist, essay that always has a subtle intellectual subtext and/or secret message to our lizard overlords. Currently Lois is trying to figure out what a bunch of random numbers are on a sheet of paper.

Usually I'll take a moment like this to brag about my past comic book achievements. So the numbers on the paper remind me of DC Challenge when eleven different DC writers and artists wrote a bunch of cliffhanger issues to try to stump the next creative team. Mostly each subsequent creative team ignored what came before and just introduced more and more of their own plot points until the entire story was a sagging, bulging sack of D-list characters running around with no motivations. In the first issue, Batman received a clue as a string of numbers, 51773173. Being a Master Comic Book Reader (even at that young age), I realized instantly that it was the name Eli Ellis when seen backwards in a calculator readout. Of course none of the other writers picked up on this because they were all narcissistic idiots that couldn't give a shit about the story that came before their part. The whole thing was a huge fiasco and I can't wait to dig it out of my long boxes and reread it!

Sure, it's hand to mouth for you Earth 2 chumps whom Lois threatens daily with deportation while she rakes in the big money on porn adverts!

Later Superman appears to Jason Rusch and tells him to kiss and make up with Ronnie Raymond. Normally whenever Firestorm is mentioned, I'll try to point out how the original series, "The Fury of Firestorm, The Nuclear Men," was homosexual erotica masquerading as a patriotic story about defending the world from terrorists. But since Superman has now appeared wearing some kind of facemask, that would trump the Slash Fiction Matrix discussion. His chest is awfully huge as if he were drawn by Rob Liefeld or Superman were actually a woman with some kind of armor to disguise her breasts. And since the chest is so big, it must be Power Girl. Plus his ass isn't adorable enough to be Supergirl's.

Look! Thought balloons! Remember those?!

I've had a long standing continuous rant about Thought Balloons versus Narration Boxes. I'm not going to go into the specifics yet again but I will point out that I read comic books regularly from about 1983 to 2003. It was then that I stopped picking up monthly comic books and only continued reading The Walking Dead and Fables via trades. It wasn't until The New 52 started up that I decided I was going to fulfill a longtime dream of the young kid reading Crisis on Infinite of Earths which was to be able to read every single issue put out by DC Comics. It's also when I noticed some serious things had changed since I last read comic books. The thought balloon was virtually non-existent and had been replaced by first person monologues that were often ambiguous about where in time they fell. Were they the current thoughts of the character or the thoughts of the character later explaining to some unknown audience what had happened? Were they commentary tracks placed on the story which was somehow filmed for later perusal? Is the Narration Box like the dad in How I Met the Woman I Loved Who, By the Way, Was Not Your Mother doing a voice over for his or her kids? I don't know! Some writers definitely don't think it through and just write as if the main characters thoughts are from an omnipotent future viewpoint. It's fucking awful.

Also, I tend to swear a lot and disparage Scott Lobdell and Ann Nocenti.

Still the only dead characters so far in Futures End (not counting #0). Thank God that Hawkman was one of them! Oh, another important tidbit about me: I don't actually believe in God. But I do often thank him and scream at his son when I stub my toe.

Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, some "archaeologists" have discovered a hidden temple that portends evil things for the future. It also houses the creature on the cover which loves to kill stuff. I think its an insane Metron. Or maybe Beowulf!

Here's the temple and all its clues. Obviously it has a heavy Earth 3 theme with some minor Pandora Skull flourishes and what looks like a likeness of the Anti-Monitor destroying everything.

Futures End #8 Rating: +1 Ranking. Okay, nobody died but I still enjoyed it. This final paragraph is where I generally obfuscate how I really felt about the comic book by making some really lame jokes because I'm obviously ready to go play Call of Duty or Culdcept Saga. The +1 Ranking refers to the list on the right hand side of my blog. It's a current list of how I'd rate all the titles in The New 52. It's not very accurate and often doesn't represent how I truly feel because it's not scientific at all. The titles in the list are also links to pages that list links to all the reviews I've done for every issue in every series. Or you can just hit the "Random Page, Anybody" link at the top of the right hand column and peruse some of my past material to see if this is the kind of bullshit you might enjoy from day to day.

P.S. Everybody should reblog this primer so we can convince more people to participate in our super intellectual Disqus discussions that are probably way over most people's heads anyway. Also pretend I remembered to make another "get a room" joke to tie everything together!