Futures End #26

Halfway through this series! Probably!

Sometimes, reading Futures End feels like waiting for my number to be called at the DMV. Let's move it along, people!

My favorite book when I was a single digit old monster was Sam and the Firefly. I think the book was supposed to teach me to be kind or something but I'm pretty sure all it taught me was that chaos was fun. I definitely didn't learn to use my words for good as Gus the Firefly did by the end of the book. The evidence of that failure is this entire blog. While, once again, digging through my bookshelf of old children's books looking for Sam and the Firefly (which I can never find but I keep looking anyway), I found this Golden Book:

"Hey look! A small boy choking on a cork! I should give him the Heimlich and save his life!"

That caption isn't what Brer Rabbit thinks at all! What Brer Rabbit actually does is he says hello, waits for a response, and when the stranger doesn't respond, he punches him in the face. No wonder Brer Fox and Brer Bear wanted to kill him. Brer Rabbit was an asshole!

I didn't scan this cover to talk about Brer Rabbit's horrible social skills though. When I saw the tar baby on the cover, I decided to look up the term "tar baby" to see if it's still in use. I figured if it were still common, it was probably only used by old white men, probably from the south, and it probably indicates they're racist even if they're not using it as a slur at the time! Turns out Republicans still pull it out of their lexicon from time to time. And then they get a bunch of heat for using it and refuse to apologize and it all blows up in their face! So the term "tar baby" has become a tar baby in and of itself!

The term still seems like a useful and viable term to say something very particular, but regarding its popular culture history and the history of this country and the way the term is also used as a racial slur, it's probably a term that politicians should be giving a wide berth. Why do people insist on using words or phrases that are uncomfortable or that have a negative history tied to their usage? You know, words like "retard" or "cunt." Oh. Um. Uh...forget this whole discussion! Let's move on! Nothing to remember or learn from this!

What was I not talking about that I should have been talking about?

This needed to be a full page instead of one tiny little panel because why?

Have comic book readers been so abused by the people seemingly in charge of the entire medium so thoroughly that they simply accept with tired resignation pages like the previous scan of Doctor Yamazake? Who turns the page, sees this, and thinks, "Wow! A scientist standing with his hands in his pockets! Fucking cool!"? Do the majority of fans simply turn to this page, read it, and flip past without feeling completely ripped off? It just feels like the script was one page short so the artist was told to simply take one panel from the end or beginning of one of the pages and blow it up to a full page splash, no matter how boring it is. Can I even call this a splash? Doesn't that term carry the connotation of excitement? Or, at the very least, movement? Where's the kineticism? Where's the vibrancy?

The first panel on the following page extends the width of two pages even though it's just Jason Rusch standing there responding to Doctor Yamazake. So my "One Page Short" theory holds water! These panels could have been planned with less wasted space! If, you know, anybody actually cared about the quality of the product. It's also possible that this page was supposed to create some kind of tension as the reader wonders whose lab access is being revoke by Doctor Yamazake. Except, you know, Jason Rusch was the only other person with access to the lab. So that theory does not hold water!

Jason is kicked from the lab because he's Firestorm which means he's the enemy of Doctor Yamazake! He's one of those arrogant heroes that refuse to share their technology and their power with the rest of the world. They lord it over all mankind from their high-tech mansion in space, emptying their septic tank onto the heads of the masses while laughing and smoking fat cigars from alien civilizations. Now I'm mad at the Justice League too! Fuckers!

Madison wanders into Doctor Yamazake's lab looking for Jason and not to be a guinea pig. But sometimes we don't always get what we want! Or what we need!

I'm going to write an essay called "Women in Teleporters" now!

While Madison Payne becomes Madison Brundlefly (I bet she winds up with super powers! Teleportation powers! AMBUSH BUG POWERS!), Terry McBatman and Plastique plan their next plan of the plan: recruiting Red Robin. That sounds like a stupid plan. And Plastique agrees with me!

You can't stop the future from happening! Dumb dumb!

The reason Terry McBatman can ask Red Robin for help is because there is no trace of Red Robin in the future. So nobody has to worry about a paradox destroying the universe! Whew! That's one less universe destroying thing everybody has to worry about. I bet Red Robin doesn't exist in the future because he's named Harvest in the future and he's a vampire. Y'all thought I forgot about that, didn't you?! It will be revealed soon that I was right! I'M ALWAYS RIGHT!

You know what's really annoying? Brother Eye always says "eye" instead of "I" even though how can anybody fucking tell the difference when he's speaking? From now on, whenever I type "I", realize I'm actually thinking "SexMuffin71". That's two better than "69" so just imagine that, right? RIGHT? Two better!

Brother Eye gives Fifty-Sue a packet of information about her creation. She is test subject 52 and she was created using 52 DNA strands. That means she's, um, let's see, carry the something...three times better than Superboy! I mean, seventeen times better than Superboy! Jesus fuck!

That's become my new swear for when I'm really angry. I mean really angry and not fake angry. It's unconscious. It just steams out of my mouth in a spray of foam and spittle. "JESUS FUCK!" If I could consciously change it, I'd make it "Jesus fucked" so that it becomes a parody of "Jesus wept." But I'm not really in control when my stupid fucking computer takes more than a few seconds to load a webpage! You are supposed to be the future, computer! You are suppose to go at future speeds! Stop acting like an Atari 2600, you piece of shit!

Brother Eye also shows Fifty-Sue that the one person she admires and thinks of as her friend, Slade Wilson, is taking steps to betray her. Well, Christ always needs a Judas. And Slade has been known to enjoy stories with the name "Judas" in them! And my poor, beloved, dear, fifteen year friend whom I lost recently was named Judas! I think that fits somehow.

No! No more mentions of the frog and the scorpion! And now that you guys have told the old woman/snake variant, no more telling that one either! And while we're discussing stuff I don't want to read in my comic books because they've been all over social media for way too fucking long, stop telling that story about the wolf that survives is the one that you feed!

Finally, Batman plays marriage counselor to Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch, telling them to stop bickering, forget their petty problems, and just fucking merge again. The world needs Firestorm! Brother Eye needs Firestorm! I mean, he will need him but nobody probably knows that yet. The world probably would have been better off if Batman had just stayed out of business that doesn't concern him.

Futures End #26 Rating: +1 Ranking. Nobody died but I guess I'm feeling charitable today. I'd better hit "Publish" on this post before I change my mind!