Futures End #42

And lo, on the third day, Mega-Brainiac vomited forth upon Ray Palmer's face all of the universes to ever exist. And He wiped his mouth, and let out a tiny burp, and He saw that it was good.

Things are getting so exciting now that I'm not even going to write any poetry! Especially since I ended that line with the word poetry and no words in the English language rhyme with poetry! It's a fact!

Now everybody is thinking up words to rhyme with poetry. Let it go, nerds! Let it go! It was a fucking joke, okay?! You don't have to prove how smart you are by making up a rhyme. Just remember the people of Hallmark make up rhymes every single day and they only hire sentimental nitwits.

Mega-Brainiac should know better than to eat shrimp from a discount buffet. I wonder if pink light is shooting out of his asshole too?

Cyborg, how many times have you seen The Atom obliterated only to learn later that he did what he always does and shrunk down to microscopic size to escape danger? You probably have folder after folder of MPEGs littering your mental desktop all labeled Atom's Escapes. And yet, once again, you believe he's been killed. And Hawkman! How many times has Hawkman died now? I'm the one who keeps falling for that fake death. Every time he dies, I get super excited that I won't have to read another Hawkman story and then the Nth metal brings him back to life. I'm so sick of it!

Man, I sure hope he's really dead this time!

Cyborg tells Equinox to freeze Mega-Brainiac, as if she has any other super powered choices. And then he tells Dawnstar and Wildfire to retreat because they're boring up the page. And then Cyborg decides he's the baddest ass on the body and he declares, "I've got this." Fucking tough guy now, eh?!

Meanwhile in New York, Shazam puts an end to his reenactment of DC Comics Presents #33.

This is nearly exactly what it was like in Futures End when Superman found Billy masquerading as himself. Except for the Mile High Comics watermark!

After Shazam puts his old costume back on, he's ready to team up with Superman to save New York from Mega-Brainiac. But since this is a Futures End comic book, we have to flip through five or six more plots before we can get back to Superman and Shazam and see how they save New York.

The first plot digression involves Batman confronting Mister Terrific. Michael Holt has obviously gone insane because he's bragging about having spoken with God. What happened to the big bad atheist?! Did he finally realize being an atheist in a comic book is about as dumb as believing in God in real life? There's just too much proof in comic books to deny the existence of some kind of heavenly being. Okay, maybe the angels and devils and gods that appear in comic books are really just super advanced robots made from alien technology. And maybe all of the sorceresses and magicians are really just scientists on the cutting edge of scientific breakthroughs and wild, unquantifiable theories. And maybe when Batman went to Heaven, he was really just in an extra-dimensional theme park. I mean, imagine if a raccoon were set loose in Dollywood! It wouldn't be able to comprehend what it was seeing but it sure would think it was in heaven with all the churro bits lying around.

Surprise! Only a recently hacked, virus laden Engineer would fall for this old trick!

Now that The Atom is entering Brainiac's face, are we finally going to get that scene with Tara Markov in it?! Hurry up and get to some Preboot Universe shit, Futures End!

The Atom zips by a bunch of images of everybody's Preboot origins and a few other scenes, like the cover of The Flash #123 and Terra peeing in the bushes on a camping trip or something. But The Atom is absorbing too much information too quickly and it's making his face fall off! Don't die yet, Ray! At least rescue Preboot Lobo!

Oh hey! You can stop right there, Ray! Pull Hitman out of there before he's killed!

The Atom finds The Engineer at the center of Mega-Brainiac's skull. Her body is simply processing information and The Atom decides that it's probably a good idea to cut her free. And it probably is because then she'll leak Preboot information all over The New 52 and DC Comics will be like Reese's Peanut Butter cups! "You got your New 52 in my Preboot!" "You got your Preboot in my New 52!" And then both people grab up a piece of chocolate coated in peanut butter and slurp up each other's germs. Gross.

Atom removes The Engineer from Mega-Brainiac's skull and it shuts down the ship and the Pink Manhattan Transfer. Baby Mega-Brainiaczilla, realizing his scheme has been terminated, begins pitching a fucking fit. In the chaos and destruction, Lois Lane stumbles upon an unconscious Superman, knocked silly by Baby Mega-Brainiaczilla. Unless, I guess, this is just Mega-Brainiac. I suppose that was just his ship he left in orbit with The Engineer in charge. That was a bad idea. She's constantly switching sides.

I've been ignoring Terry McBatman as he battles Joker McBatman because they're just jumping around chasing each other. But with the help of A.L.F.R.E.D., Terry McBatman lures Joker McBatman into the path of one of Brainiac's pink uSpheres, smashing the everloving hell out of Joker McBatman's face. And that's when Brother Eye decides to come out of retirement and declare himself the savior of everybody. I bet that is going to piss off Fifty Sue.

Futures End #42 Rating: -1 Ranking. Whether or not I liked this issue doesn't matter. I have to drop it one rank because I increased its rank by two last week because two people died. I figured it wouldn't stick but I had to hope! I'm truly an optimist! At least I am when I say I am and decide to lie to everybody. But now only Hawkman is dead and I bet even he'll be back soon. There can't be many issues of this thing left, right? It's got to end when the weekly Convergence title begins, right?