Futures End #20

Poor Joker grew back his face only to lose it again thirty years into the future.

This week, Futures End begins boring the pants off of me. And by pants, I mean the British meaning of pants because I'm sitting here in my boxers. I doubt I've ever written anything while wearing pants (the American meaning of the word!). I never wear pants while at home. Sometimes I miss package deliveries because the doorbell rings and I have to run around searching for some pants to put on before heading downstairs to open the door. I suppose I can start answering the door in boxers since that's nearly like wearing shorts except with a greater chance of my penis flopping out. But then I'm sure delivery people have seen worse than my penis! Not that seeing my penis is a bad thing! Those delivery people should be so lucky!

So, the part that bored the pants off me was the part where Red Robin breaks into the offices of The Fast Lane where he's found out by Lois herself who must not be able to afford her own apartment because whey else would she be hiding out in a darkened office? Even if I were to believe that she's been staking out the offices for weeks, absolutely sure that Red Robin was going to break in at some point, I'm not sure I can believe that Red Robin would have fucked up the break in and allowed himself to be caught.

Aha! That's the key word! "Allowed!" It probably took him weeks to break into the offices of The Fast Lane because that's how long it took before he knew Lois was the only person still in the building! If Red Robin was caught, he obviously wanted a meeting with Lois. If there's one thing I've learned reading The New 52, it's that everything always works out exactly as Harvest planned it. Also, for those that may not have heard me the first five thousand times I said it: Harvest is actually vampire Tim Drake from the future. Not this measly five years into the future future! More like the Legion of Super-heroes one thousand years into the future future! But even if Tim isn't Harvest currently, that doesn't mean he doesn't have his "super plans always work out" powers yet.

You idiot! Lois Lane doesn't know the meaning of "off the record!"

Red Robin's story could only have been better if he had been spattered with Bunker's, Beast Boy's, Solstice's, Raven's, Skitters's, Kid Flash's, and Superboy's brains as well as Wonder Girl's. Jeepers Creepers (which I say so as not to offend any Christian readers even though I really meant to say Jesus Christ. I hope I fooled them...and God as well!), Scott Lobdell really managed to make me hate every single character that ever made their way through his stories. I always feel a little bit of glee when another writer, during one of these alternate future stories, kills the characters Lobdell's been writing. It's like they're saying, "These characters deserved better! Might as well kill them because they've been tainted with Lobdell's man musk." I once met Scott Lobdell. His man musk smelled of cheerios that were given penises by a mad scientist and then jerked off by sentient cabbages.

Okay, that last bit was a lie. I didn't sniff Scott when I met him even though he said, "Hello there. Would you like to sniff me?"

Okay, that last part was a lie as well! When I did meet him, he actually just ignored me and kept talking to his buddy that was nearby fucking roosters or something. Then he said, "Now get out of here, kid! I'm busy!" But he wasn't busy at all. I was only one of two people that were getting things signed by him. To be fair, I can't really blame that on him. Gail Simone didn't have a line either and I hear she always has throngs of people hanging around her table. I think maybe the residents of Portland, Oregon just had better things to do that day. Like take pictures with the whore from Serenity or the car from Supernatural!

Lois Lane shows Red Robin the secrets inside of her box. She also tells him that she can't live with a man because if a man were lying to her and didn't tell her, it would be over. So how does that work, exactly? Does the man have to make up something so that Lois feels he's being honest with her? If he doesn't have anything to reveal, does she figure he's lying and break up? How does she know when to break up with somebody?! Also, she's probably talking about Clark.

Thirty five years in the future (that's where Batman Beyond is from), Brother Eye has learned how to time travel by eating Bruce Wayne's brain. Now Brother Eye will send his Terminator back in time to stop Batman's rebel leader from destroying Brother Eye. And I suppose The Joker is Brother Eye's Terminator, right? Unless it will be a half-Joker, half-Batman robot monster.

I know I've mentioned it countless times so this is just a rhetorical device playing on the fact that I've said it so many times but have I ever said how much I hate comic book time travel stories? They're very rarely done well and almost always done exclusively as a shortcut to building a plot. Here's how it works. Create a dystopian version of the future. Send character back in time to warn people about the dystopian future. Heroes believe insane person that probably isn't actually from the future at all and work to prevent the horrible future from coming true. The heroes do the proper things and the horrible future disappears from reality! Unless it never existed in the first place. Anyway, it's just a simple way to get heroes working toward saving the world without really putting much thought into it.

Cadmus Island gets a few pages but I don't think they're worth talking about. Basically Faraday joins Fifty Sue's Anti-Brother Eye team.

Mister Terrific learns from The Key and Coil that they were hired by Bruce Wayne to break into Terrifitech. He was the guy putting up all that Final Job Money! How did I not guess that in Issue #1? Who else in the DC Universe has Final Job Money? Or is it called One Last Job Security Blanket? Anyway, I was probably too distracted by Coil and hoping against hope that it wasn't the asshat that Ann Nocenti wrote about in Katana.

So now the scene is set. Sometime in the last five years, Earth was invaded by Apokoliptian forces from Earth 2. The residents of Earth 2, the Twofers, sought asylum. But since the refugees were all doubles of people still living on Earth, they were feared and not trusted. And some were probably spies and some probably helped Apokolips and all that other stuff. So the war takes place, a lot of heroes did a lot of stuff they weren't proud of, and a lot of them died as well. Afterward, the world was split between people that wanted to help the Twofers to assimilate and those that didn't trust them. Mister Terrific seems to have made quite a name for himself, possibly helped along by the fact that he came over from Earth 2 but was originally from this Earth. Plus he's a genius and all that garbage. Sloan did just as well but was busy making technology for the people that didn't trust the Twofers. He probably has something to do with Cadmus. Anyway, Mister Terrific has also gotten help from Brother Eye and Brainiac. His help leads to the world thirty five years in the future where everybody has been assimilated, something DC loves to use as a plot point. In that future, Mister Terrific regrets what he did. Batman hasn't been seen much but he's just now entered the picture as the man behind The Key's gang trying to steal technology from Mister Terrific. In the future, he was the leader of the rebel army fighting back against Brainiac's robots and assimilated heroes. His last hope was sending Batman Beyond to the past to destroy Brother Eye before it is activated. But he landed too far in the future and now must try to stop Brother Eye from being reactivated since it was disabled during the war. And I guess that's pretty much it! I suppose I could mention that Green Arrow has a rebel group on an island ready to go against Cadmus but then I'd be in danger of boring myself by talking about Green Arrow.

In the last scene, Tim Drake tells Mad Payne that he's really Red Robin and she tells him to go suck dicks.

Futures End #20 Rating: No change. I'm still waiting for something to surprise me! Or for something to not be derivative of Star Trek or The Terminator! Maybe I can be turned around on this comic by somebody fucking somebody else. How about it, Gifazzmiregens? Make some people fuck some other people!