The New 52: Futures End #38 Review and *SPOILERS*

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

Art By: Andy MacDonald, Hi-Fi

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: January 21, 2015

Courting The Enemy

Welcome back to the future, our quick recap this week has to do with Brother Eye sending a Batman.Joker monster back in time to take out Batman Beyond, before he has a chance to alter the future.  We also have the new Firestorm: Madison Payne and Jason Rusch trying to recreate the experiment that fused them together but the results are less than stellar.  While that's going on, Stormguard and Superman (Shazam) are picking up her slack as Dr. Polaris is in Metropolis causing a ruckus and calling out our new hero.  Last week we saw Mercy try and kill Fifty Sue but I guess it takes more than a death touch to stop that little terror because she ended up teleporting away with Grifter, Lana Lang and the vault of DNA that King Faraday desperately wants to get his hands on.  All that Constantine telling Amethyst that if she wants to heal Frankenstein, she needs to take him back to the legendary Castle Frankenstein, where our hero was born.  A pretty painless recap, let's get into this issue and see what the future holds for us this week.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with the Batman/Joker monster coming back after Batman Beyond, but now we have Tim Drake joining the fight and Batman swooping down to join them as well.  As much as I've been looking forward to this confrontation, it really comes off as a disappointment.  It takes Plastique throwing a charged brick at the monster's head to get it to stop kicking Tim Drake and the Batmen's asses and when they have a second to breath, we only have a quick "I'm from the future" explanation and then it's all over.  Batman Beyond being the actual target flies away to keep the monster busy while Plastique takes Batman and Tim Drake to Terrifitech so they can stop the future from becoming Terry's dark one.  I had such high hopes for this part of the story and now I just feel depressed that I was duped into thinking it was going to be the showdown I was looking for.

Over in Metropolis, Stormguard and Superman have their hands full with Dr. Polaris who is spouting his anti League propaganda and man do the writers really want everyone to know Stormguard's origin because even though we just saw it two issues ago, we have Dr. Polaris tell us the whole story again.  Eventually Superman gets the upper hand on the villain and it's at that time that Firestorm comes in and pretty much throws JLA protocol to the wind.  She tells Polaris that she needs his help to recreate the experiment so that she can separate from Jason Rucsh and in return she offers him the JLA teleportation technology................. and Stormguard and Superman just let her.  Firestorm just flies away then with Dr. Polaris agreeing that the JLA suck for keeping the tech away from the people it could help............. and the JLA just let her........... I don't get it.

Next we jump to the Sahara desert, where Fifty Sue has taken her adopted family Cole and Lana after she faked us out last month when Mercy tried to kill her.  Not much goes down here except them trying to figure out what they should do with the DNA vault they stole and us seeing that Fifty Sue still doesn't trust Grifter.  I guess this is supposed to be the humorous part of the book where the three argue about their new family unit, but really it just comes off forced and they're things that we've already seen before.

In the end, Amethyst drags Frankenstein up a Romanian mountain to try and find his cure that Constantine told them last issue could be found within the walls of Castle Frankenstein.  It's there that we see the castle is still pretty active when it becomes a type of Island of Dr. Moreau.  That's right a bunch of animal monsters come out and attack our heroes, but it's all put on hold when Dr. Frankenstein himself makes an appearance and man does he look good for his age.

That's it for this issue of Futures End and man am I disappointed.  The issue was hyped up to be the big conflict that we wanted to see between all the Batmen and instead it was just another setup to that fight or possibly the actual end to the fight but I don't want to believe that.  I was really hoping for one of those rare issues where the whole book is one story but instead I got another issue where nothing really happened.  If that wasn't bad enough, I also wasn't a fan of the art this week by Andy MacDonald either.  Everything came off rushed and lacking detail.  I hate saying anything negative about an artist because I find what they do so impressive but this art was not for me, so I'll leave it at that.  We're about three quarters through this series and at this point I'm really worried that nothing will really go down until the last couple issues.......... and that's no way to be.  See you next week where hopefully my faith in this book is renewed, but as of now I'm just a Negative Nancy.

Bits and Pieces:

Futures End at this point is becoming harder and harder to read because every week you go into this thing and all you do is hope that something happens and every week the issue just comes off as set up.  This week though feels like a bit of a slap to the face because the solicit hyped this up to be the big confrontation between the Batmen and again all we got was the start of something that never wants to finish.  I really hope that Futures End finishes strong because as of right now it seems that the best parts of this story ended months ago.

5/10