The New 52: Futures End #1 (DC)

writer: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen
artist: Patrick Zircher

via DC Wikia

Futures End is the latest weekly series from DC, launched on Free Comic Book Day earlier this year.  There's been a lot of speculation on just how important it really is, whether it's leading to a significant event next year (how much the concurrent Batman Eternal is involved remains to be seen, but the upcoming Earth 2: World's End, which begins in October, will definitely be part of the loop).  The New 52 trend of September being an event month continues with a full-blown Futures End tie-in across every ongoing series.

So what about Futures End itself?  Well, Batman Beyond, Terry McGinnis, has now joined official canon, sent from the future to slightly earlier in our future to prevent the end of the world.  Conveniently, everyone involved seems to be characters DC tried to feature in their own New 52 series (although no sign of Static, so far as I know, so far).  This is bad news for Stormwatch (as always; although in this new context I think maybe someone could finally help them find their DC groove) but good news for Grifter (mixed bag for WildStorm overall).

Also involved in this issue is Firestorm.  For whatever reason, I seemed to skip the whole New 52 experience, but I loved what was being done with the character previous to the relaunch, after the third host, Jason Rusch, was introduced post-Infinite Crisis.  With the brain (Martin Stein) and the brawn (Ronnie Raymond) thrown into the mix, there evolved full-blown potential for a Firestorm franchise, if the character ever became, y'know, popular.

Mostly, though, the biggest winner I foresee at this point is Grifter.  The best thing about 52, the brilliant weekly that began this modern trend at DC, was how it took characters who had been overlooked and made them relevant, and Grifter's the one who most closely matches what I loved so much in those pages.  If there was a true problem with Countdown, it was a lack of that kind of character.  Trinity didn't have one either, but I think there were a lot of things calculated incorrectly with that one.

No, I haven't been reading Futures End regularly.  In fact, this remains the most recent issue I've read.  But I suspect it will be a pretty good weekly.  I trust Brian Azzarello and Jeff Lemire, two of the key writers in the current DC fold, and they have a few guiding voices in Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen to keep things not only interesting but grounded in the kind of work that has always been exemplary of this company, which is about as much as you can expect from a DC weekly.