Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The New 52: Futures End #17 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen
Art By: Patrick Zircher

Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 27, 2014


The Man Behind The Mask


Lately we've been dealing with the Helmeted Superman fighting Rampage to learn the location of Ethan Boyer and you know to stop her from rampaging and all.  Last issue we were given a huge revelation on the speculation front about the identity of this Superman, when Rampage broke the bottom of his helmet showing a white mouth and chin.  So sorry all you Val-Zod speculators.  Constantine has been searching for the robot monster Brainiac thing, or more accurately the thing that the robot monster is in search of.  On Cadmus Island the team of Fifty Sue, Grifter and Deathstroke are in search of stealth OMACs and someone who is causing glitches in Cadmus's systems.  So that's all you need to know on your current expedition into the strange land of Five Years From Now.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

We'll begin this story on Cadmus Island, where our trio of anti-heroes are trying to figure out who could be sabotaging the Cadmus systems.  Things are pretty slow in the beginning, until another glitch appears and lets all the Earth 2 prisoners out of their cells and they all make a mad dash for freedom.  Well all but Hawkgirl, who's been escorted to a lab to have her implant checked out.  Yeah they try to feed her a line about how it's only a reprogramming, but after her conference with Mister Miracle last issue she knows that this little consultation is somehow about the implants in the prisoners growing.  Before we can uncover the mystery of the growing implants though, we have another glitch and a OMAC grabs a hold of a scientist's head and......... Well nothing good can come from that.

Weeks after Deathstroke and Fifty Sue tried to apprehend Emiko and Big Barda we see that the two have laid low long enough so that Diggle could get them safe passage on a freighter he bought in the Queen Industries name.  Now the two will try to make their way to Cadmus Island to free the heroes of Earth 2 and Emiko will try to get her revenge against the agents of Cadmus she claims killed her brother, Green Arrow.

Back in Metropolis Helmeted Superman is still fighting Rampage and Lois frustratingly won't stay out of harms way.  But after Lois is backhanded away, Superman does something very unexpected that will change this story forever.  He yells Shazam!  As you'd imagine a bolt of lightning comes down taking out Rampage and turning Superman into a young Billy Batson and Lois is flabbergasted in seeing that the Man of Steel is really an impostor. 

OH DAMN!!!!!

In the end we see Constantine sitting in a desert after seeing the destruction that the robot Brainiac monster caused in a nearby village.  His friends tell him that there isn't anything here, but our brash Brit tells us and them that he feels he's supposed to be here and eventually we're given two more answers.  The question about where the hell is Clark Kent and who the hell is the robot Brainiac monster looking for, are all answered with an explosion of water up from the ground where we see Kal-El. and Constantine says his hellos to the last son of Krypton.  Shit's really happening people!!!  But now I really need to know what the hell Superman was doing in an underground spring in the desert.

LOOK AT HIM, LOOKING ALL MAN OF STEEL ABOUT IT!

That's it for this week's Futures End and wow!  Just wow!  I thought I was getting a treat last week with all the answers we got, but this one just blew last week's issue out of the water.  On top of all that we have Patty Z back in the penciler's chair and I don't know what more I could ask for.  Come back next week as we hopefully continue the trend and this whole Futures End thing really begins to take off.  See you then.

Bits and Pieces:

This was an excellent issue to a series some are questioning whether or not to keep reading.  Yeah we had some slow patches there for awhile but between last week's and this week's issues, I'm completely rejuvenated and can't wait to take my weekly foray into the world of Five Years From Now.  This issue was so good and I'll be personally telling everyone I can about it all week to get more people on the Futures End trolley.  So if you've been hesitant to continue this series, put your misgivings aside and check this issue out.

9.5/10

2 comments:

  1. I think whatever happened during the war made Superman give up being a hero and become a farmer ala the Kingdom Come graphic novel.

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  2. I could get that, but in this issue it looked like he sprung out of a underground spring in some remote desert. Now I could be wrong, but if I'm not, what the hell is Superman doing in an underground spring?

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