Futures End #18

Hopefully the plot can finally start moving forward now that the September Futures End Pay Extra For Every Comic Book Extravaganza has begun.

For those of you keeping track of stupid statistics at home, last issue marked eighteen issues of Futures End (counting the Zero issue. I had to explain that for everybody who instantly thought, "He's a fucking idiot that can't do math.") with only three big reveals. And two of them--the non-Brainiac is the enemy two--happened last issue. The first was that Booster Gold now has the power to transform himself into a teenaged boy named Billy. And the other was that Superman was living in Africa as a mole. I expect this issue to be chock full of revelations that have to do with all of the characters featured in the Futures End issues that came out this month. If not, I'm going to curse under my breath by saying, "Aw, shucks."

The inside front cover has an advert for Earth 2 Action Figures. Why is Replacement Batman holding a Batarang instead of a bottle of Miraclo pills? And why release figures for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman before Doctor Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, Val-el, and Tornado Lane? At least those characters are still alive. I don't want to buy three action figures which I'll have to pretend are dead the whole time I'm playing with them!

There was nothing more annoying than playing with action figures with friends that felt they needed to stick to movie or cartoon canon. My Star Wars figures drove around in Barbie's Corvette. A few of the figures, my personal favorites, had stupid personalities and talked like morons the entire time. Those figures were Stormtrooper, Death Star Droid, Death Squad Commander (who we called "Buck"), Chewbacca, and X-wing Luke. These guys also had the power to form a kite (three at a time for the body, tail, and string) and fly anywhere they wanted in the neighborhood.

Last issue, Constantine had finally found the real Superman, not some Billy Batson wannabe ripoff. But Kal-el has no interest in saving the world. Probably because he grew tired of the world not giving a shit, or being afraid of him when Lobdell was writing the story, or just constantly taking him for granted.

Turning your back on the world sounds so relaxing!

Forget being lectured to by a drunk, Superman! You're being lectured to by a guy that doesn't give a fuck about the world. The only reason Constantine cares is that if the world is gone, he's gone. So he's really just fighting for his own life. And he's not even fighting. He's just gone on a quest to find somebody to fight for him.

Constantine has told Superman that, like it or not, he's involved since Brainiac has sent The Mighty Morhpin' Anger Ranger after him. So Kal-el can continue to help farm the fields but it'll be tough to ignore the Anger Ranger beating him about the face in a few hours.

Meanwhile back in Metropolis, Lois Lane guesses Billy Batson's age at about twenty. So now she feels like an old cougar since she's been chasing this young buck around Metropolis. But they don't have much time to talk since Rampage has to--for something like the tenth issue straight--rampage.

Maybe if you tried calling her "Fuzzy Kitten Socks," she'll calm the fuck down.

Lois, being the great investigative reporter she is, screams Rampage's name so that anybody watching will know what's going on. You can't understand what you're seeing unless a reporter or newscaster is there to describe everything as you watch it! Newscasters do know that television is a visual medium, right? When they show a video of a car overturning on the highway, they don't have to say, "It's going to overturn here in a seco--right there! Did you see it?"

Rampage throws Billy across the street and luckily he's caught by some black guy wearing an American cape or somethi--?

Oh, thanks Lois. Good thing we had a reporter on the scene!

You know, I really rake newscasters over the coals pretty savagely. I suppose nobody reading my comic book commentaries works in local news because they're all too arrogant to ever pay attention to anything that didn't make them seem like the most helpful person in the community. Maybe if I took a video of a goat kicking the ass of a raccoon, I might get noticed since they always need lots and lots of viral internet bullshit to pad their excessively long broadcasts that never impart any knowledge that anybody actually needs to know.

That's a nice sentiment, Stormguard. You'd just let Lois die if Superman hadn't weakened Rampage, would you?

Stormguard puts down Rampage and then takes Lois and Billy up to the Justice League Defense Station Omega, or JLDSO for stupid. Lois suddenly begins ranting about how this is a huge story and she has to tell it because the first amendment gives her the right to tell it and it's news and nobody has any right to sit on news! Shut the fuck up, Lois. Stop rationalizing your need for attention. You just have to be the one to break this story to prove that you're the greatest investigative journalist in the fucking world! I get transparency is an optimal situation. But sometimes people don't want to know that Superman is actually a twenty year old asshat with a juvenile criminal record. I mean, I think your masturbation schedule is news but I doubt you're going to go ahead and publish that, right Lois? You have no right to sit on how many times a day you sit on your vibrator!

Meanwhile, Big Barda, John Diggle, and Emiko land on an island where the reader learns the most depressing news of the entire Futures End series so far: Green Arrow isn't actually dead. He's creating a Secret Army (TM) for a Secret War (TM) to fight for the rights of the Twofers! I wonder if Green Arrow Island is the same island as Cadmus Island but nobody has noticed yet!

Over on Cadmus Island, all of the Twofers have escaped because they're suddenly being controlled by Brainiac. He gained access to their bodies from the DNA sniffers that were implanted in all of the prisoners. Now Deathstroke, Lana Lang, Grifter, and Fifty Sue are being hunted by a bunch of Earth 2 superheroes. Although Fifty Sue went off to see the A.I. behind the curtain. Also, Fifty Sue was an experiment by Cadmus to create a superhero. Also, as you can see, I've reached the part of my commentary where I simply explain the salient points of the plot so the me in the future that can't remember things very well will remember what was happening in Futures End when I read Issue #19.

Fifty Sue consulting the artificial intelligence behind the curtain.

And finally--FINALLY--Batwing and The Key and Coil and Plastique break-in to Terrifitech.

Futures End #18 Rating: No change. The ball is finally rolling! By next issue, it should gain enough momentum for things to actually be exciting and full of excitement! Hopefully all the special Futures End comic books add something to the overall story.

Futures End #17

Just stand on solid ground, you super showoff.

What could possibly be DC's end game for this Futures End arc? None of the stuff that takes place five years in the future will have any bearing on the regular comics that take place in the NOW continuity. So what's the big payoff? How's this going to change the face of DC's present by presenting a huge conflict that takes place five years from now in a DC Universe that will never come to pass? I suspect some hero (or villain) from the future will wind up in DC's present. Perhaps this will end with a Booster Gold/Rip Hunter Brave and the Bold series! They'll be Time Cops! Or just go around fixing things that have suddenly gone wrong in the past which makes sense if you don't think about it for very long or you were a fan of Voyagers. Hopefully the new series won't end when Rip Hunter picks up a gun filled with blanks, says, "Watch this!", and then pretends to shoot himself in the head, thereby actually shooting himself in the head with the blank's discharge and killing himself. I'll go on record saying that was the one suicide that truly upset me because I fucking loved that show! And it wasn't an actual suicide! So kind of like Heathers how everybody was upset with all the suicides that weren't real but never even noticed the one suicide that was.

This issue picks up with Constantine and his pals, Tommy and Annika Midge, in Africa hunting an ancient alien. But they need to hurry because the ancient alien is being stalked by The Mighty Morphin' Anger Ranger. And the Anger Ranger kills everything it encounters, so Constantine and his crew need to step it up. Also, Tommy is shown without his sunglasses on and his eyes aren't horrible black monster eyes, so he's not who I was hoping for.

The scene shifts to Cadmus Island which sucks because I want to follow Constantine's story. You see, Constantine has just revealed that ancient, hyper-technological civilizations existed long before our current culture's recorded history begins. But these civilizations were killed by something from outer space, perhaps a singing plant? And that thing, that possible singing plant, is back! Also the singing plant might be Brainiac except that's the answer that one would expect with everybody becoming part robot so I really hope somebody else is controlling Brainiac. Although if it is somebody else, it's probably the Anti-Monitor since DC loves and hates the whole infinite worlds model and can't ever quite figure out what to do about it.

Anyway, back on Cadmus, a break out of the Twofers has just occurred.

And they're, along with Grifter, being controlled by someone.

Later Emiko and Big Barda meet up with Diggle because they're going to assault Cadmus Island and kill whoever is running the whole damn thing. Might be Faraday. Might be the father of Tim Drake's girlfriend, Madison. Might be Superman! The real Superman, not the phoney baloney chump on the cover.

The pacing of Futures End is awful. It's been seventeen issues and the readers have been given virtually nothing. Often it's the same scenes being played out over and over again with little to no reveal at all. Sure, we now know that Constantine is hunting an alien that knows something about ancient civilizations and, probably, what destroyed them and, maybe, why it's back as opposed to just thinking he was investigating crop circles. But is that really a significant amount of answers across seventeen issues? Rampage just keeps rampaging each issue. Fifty Sue keeps fucking with Grifter. Lois Lane ponders the mysterious objects that were mailed to her. Tim Drake keeps denying he was a Teen Titan. And The Key and his gang keep not breaking into Terrifitech. If this was the planned pacing of this thing so that the big reveals could coincide with Futures End Month, somebody should have gone back to the planning board. Is that a thing? A planning board? Perhaps this series should have been started at the beginning of August because I think four issues would have been sufficient to pass along all the plot points that have been revealed over the sixteen issues that have already come out.

Speaking of Rampage rampaging, here we go again!

Lois Lane is saved by Superman because Lois Lane always relies on Superman saving her. Sure, she can handle herself in pretty fucked up situations. But her confidence to fight back and survive comes with the knowledge that as soon as her own wits betray her, Superman will swoop in and save the day. I wish I knew that I had some supreme back-up plan that would always get me out of trouble! Just imagine the shit I'd get up to! I'd probably even go outside of the house once in awhile!

This made me giggle immaturely.

Once Superman is about to get his ticket punched by Rampage, and Lois gets knocked unconscious (or killed seeing as how Rampage punched her in the head), he does the last thing he can think of to save himself. He says, "Shazam!" Why would Booster Gold say that?

Do you think kids today even know what I mean when I said "get his ticket punched"? Do tickets still get punched anywhere? Did kids today even know what trains are?!

When Superman says the magic word, lightning flies down and knocks out Rampage. It also transforms Booster Gold into a kid named Billy. That's odd. I think that might be a continuity error.

And finally, Constantine and Tommy and Midge encounter the alien they've been hunting. And since they find him now that the identity of Superman has been revealed (although I think there was a printing error because Booster had dark hair), it's not too hard to figure out who the alien is. Especially when the comic book tells you.

They just used a comic book filter on an actual photograph of Henry Cavill here, didn't they?

Futures End #17 Rating: No change. I suppose it's no surprise that Superman is actually Shazam since they're equals on the strength and invulnerability scale. Plus I mentioned last issue how he kept talking like an adolescent boy, so that should have been a clue! But these days, I don't like following the evidence presented in front of me. I figure if coming up with an assumption and ignoring all the evidence that doesn't point in the direction your gut has wandered off in is good enough for American police officers, then it's good enough for me! So once I decided it was Booster Gold, it was fucking Booster Gold. I still believe that Harvest is Future Vampire Tim Drake! I thought it up so it must be true! Why would my brain think something that isn't real? That's scary nonsense when you think about it! People can be convinced of all sorts of things that aren't true! How do we know what's real when our brain is interpreting everything incorrectly?! Good thing every single thing I think actually has a basis in reality. Anyway, now that Booster Gold has made an appearance, things should really get moving! Although I really thought his name was Jon and not Billy. Weird.