The New 52: Futures End #48 (DC)

writers: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen

artists: many, many artists

And how does The New 52: Futures End, well, end?  Apparently with Batman Beyond realizing, as the panel suggests, that he failed.

Yeah.  Never quite see that coming, do you?  But there were surely surprises along the way, and really, I think the whole point of Futures End was making Batman Beyond officially part of DC canon, giving him a whole event and everything.  And as it turns out, replacing the original one with Tim Drake.

This wouldn't be the first time a weekly series has swapped one secret identity for another, even.  Countdown to Final Crisis did that for Red Robin, a persona that debuted in Kingdom Come and originally featured Dick Grayson under the cowl.  But as with the Boy Wonder version of Robin, Jason Todd succeeded him.  And later, even Tim Drake.  Drake has, in fact, been Red Robin throughout the New 52, though with a redesigned look and relegated mostly to Teen Titans comics except for appearances in various Batman crossovers.

Drake is the Robin who most selflessly supports the Batman legacy, so it's fitting that he finally gets a chance to be Batman, in one form or another.  Unless there's another swerve, he's going to be the star of the upcoming Batman Beyond ongoing, which will also mean his first solo series in the New 52 era.  He was famously the star of the first-ever Robin ongoing, not to mention the popular series of limited adventures that preceded it.

Second lead, at least as represented in this issue, for Futures End turned out to be Mr. Terrific, a character among several who was given a second chance in the weekly after having proven a bust at the start of the New 52 in his own series.  He also appeared in Earth 2: World's End, although he was probably more crucial here, as one of two people (the other being Bruce Wayne) responsible for the unintentional unleashing of Brother Eye, who has been a standby villain since Infinite Crisis, and at one point even the intended foe in a Justice League movie, him and all his associated OMAC drones.

I'm still more than okay with not having read Futures End all the way through.  It was launched under great fanfare as the most important of the three weeklies DC debuted last year, and had at least two writers with considerable critical pedigree behind them (Brian Azzarello and Jeff Lemire), supported by more traditional ones (Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen).  In the end, I would assume that the veterans seemed to run more of the show.  I don't know.

The only thing I would really want to go back and read is Superman's arc from when he returned to how he eventually exited.  Given how much attention was given to whether or not the real Man of Steel was even going to be present, one might have expected him to be featured in this final issue.  At least, one might have expected that if they hadn't been reading faithfully.

As it turns out, the future that ended was Batman Beyond's.  But now there's a new one.