Art By: Scott Hepburn, Cliff Richards, Fabrizio Fiorentino
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 3, 2014
The Dynamic Duo
Now it's time to jump into Detective Comics: Futures End and see what The Dark Knight is up to in the strange land of Five Years From Now. It really is a big deal too, because as of yet we really haven't seen a Batman in action in Futures End and I've been sitting here wondering to myself, what's up Bats? We've got a Batman Beyond running around for a number of weeks now and not even a peep from The Dark Knight checking it out. It doesn't make sense to me. So hopefully after this issue we'll see what the Caped Crusader has been up to and what's been keeping him from using his detective skills to uncover what the Joker would call this "Bat Fake" is all about. So let's dive into Detective Comics Five Years From Now and see how the hell Batman is working with The Riddler. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our story begins with Batman now sporting a Bat Glider like the Green Goblin and while it throws you off at first, it really makes sense that Batman would end up with this someday, I'm just glad he's not laughing maniacally when he's riding it, or I would never know how to process this comic.
The thing you really need to know going into this issue is that it's a direct continuation of Detective Comics Annual #3, where Batman beat a pre-Calendar Man, Julian Day's face in and a kind of sequel to Batman Zero Year's Savage City story. Now in the land of Five Years From Now, Calendar Man has taken over Arkham Island and plans on shutting down Gotham's power grid if his demands aren't met. His demands being that the GCPD give him the man that's responsible for destroying his family. If you remember from that Annual issue that Batman had Calendar Man's son put into a foster home to give him a proper chance in life and to you know not get punched about the face as much.
With all this coming at The Dark Knight it's apparent to him that there's only one man for the job to help him out and unfortunately that's The Riddler. How's that you ask? Well apparently between now and Five Years From Now, the Riddler has has been exonerated and has even struck a deal that Batman can't touch him and you know that doesn't sit well with our hero. On top of the new law abiding citizen he's become, it seem that the Riddler even built the new Arkham facility, Arkham Island. So Arkham's a bitch with the security is the take away from this. So after Batman literally breaks into the Riddler's building, which is way to big and gaudy to be an actual building and makes no sense to me. He convinces his old foe to help him out with getting inside Arkham Island by explaining that his magnum opus of a crime (Batman Zero Year: Savage City) is about to be remade by a two bit thug like Calendar Man and nobody likes remakes.
So Riddler agrees and as this Dynamic Duo makes their way to the facility you kind of get what you expect only a little more annoying. You remember how Burt Ward in Batman '66 would be funny with how many times he'd say "Holy"? Well the Riddler does the same with "Riddle me this" only the funny is replaced with annoying. Batman also makes the mistake of telling The Riddler that he is in fact the one who destroyed Calendar Man's family, but is it really a mistake? When the two finally come to a bit of security that Batman cannot get past, due to the metal components to his suit, he simply says "Fuck it" and just heads up into the recreation yard of Arkham. Okay Batman doesn't say "Fuck it", but I bet he was thinking it. So the two reach the recreation yard and it's full of Gotham's worst and after a proper ass kicking to the masses, Calendar Man halts the assault.
Who would of thought that "Calendar Man" would ever have this kind of power? As you'd imagine Riddler sells Batman out right away as the one who destroyed Julian's family, but that's the twist to this Shyamalan story. It turns out that the whole point was getting revenge against the person that caused Julian's wife to die, the woman that was the anchor and true north to the Day family and as it turns out she was killed during the black out in Savage City.
In the end Calendar Man has The Riddler taken away screaming and with Julian's demands met, Batman simply smiles and tells the Riddler, "Riddle me this, How do you trap the untrappable? You get them to trap themselves". What the actual fuck? I don't know what's going on in Calendar Man's mind, but I'm guessing there's a murder about to go down and Batman simply leaves The Riddler to his fate. That's not my Batman and I don't care if it's from Five Years From Now or not, that shit shouldn't be going down.
That's our Detective Comics people and while it doesn't fit in as a proper Futures End tie-in, don't worry because it completely fucks up the ideals of your favorite character. It started out as such a cool sounding issue, but by the end you want someone to pay for the crimes that were committed against Batman and yes, while it might be a parallel future Batman that's seen some shit, if he's willing to let someone get murdered just to satiate his need for justice, then he should of stopped being Batman long ago or at least been stopped by someone. Also I really enjoyed the new origin of Calendar Man in Detective Comics Annual #3, but I really don't see any difference than the thug he was then, to the holiday oriented super criminal that he's supposed to be Five Years From Now. He's the same thug that he was in the annual with the exception of what I guess is the tile pattern in the bathroom that Batman kicked his face in. I don't even know if the day that this story goes down in is the anniversary of the day that his wife died, or the anniversary of the day Batman beat him. There was nothing telling me that this is Calendar Man with the exception that the comic said so.
Bits and Pieces:
This issue had so much promise in being a really cool Batman story, until the out of nowhere punch to the gut, changing the character that we love so much. The other noticeable flaw is that from the beginning we had one Batman look that paralleled the new Earth 2 Batman and by the end he looked like the 80's and early 90's Batman. I don't know why this would be intentional and can only think it's a mistake due to the many artists in this issue. Batman didn't seem like Batman, Calendar Man wasn't Calendar Man like, the only real true character was Riddler and he was annoying as hell. This is all very disappointing in an issue that didn't even try to be a Futures End tie-in, which would have been nice since we haven't seen Batman doing the whole Caped Crusader thing in the strange land of Five Years From Now. I can't recommend this issue.
3.5/10
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