The New 52: Futures End #2 Review

There’s a scene in Future’s End #2 in which Mister Terrific uses the expression, “Watch me trend.” Later, Firestorm and Arsenal fight in public and nobody does too much to stop it. These two events in the third issue of DC’s latest big event sum up everything about the state of DC comics today. Unfortunately, this is not a good thing.

This comic is, for better or worse, the epitome of DC today. Characters like Firestorm, Arsenal, and Mister Terrific are brash, rude, and unlikable. Death and violence ooze from every page. And there are a dozen efforts to make characters sound hip, modern, and cool. These traits can absolutely be applied to a superhero story successfully. The problem is that this isn’t one of those cases. Efforts to make characters seem modern result in characters reading off Twitter hashtags about Green Arrow’s death. The scene is supposed to be somber. Instead, it’s laughable. There’s nothing wrong with superheroes having issues with each other and occasionally fighting, except this only works in juxtaposition to them working together, which nobody seems to do in this comic. Every character is in it for themselves and the only kind words said from one superhero to another are Animal Man to Green Arrow – words delivered through eulogy because the latter was killed brutally in the previous issue.

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