Apparently A Bunch Of DC Heroes End Up Dead Or Bad In Futures End

The “five years later” future depicted in DC’s upcoming Futures End series/event has to be an unpleasant one, or no one would be trying to prevent it. That being said, it’s taken the partial release of the DC September solicitations to drive home how bad things really get.

Dick Grayson is an exiled traitor. Martin Manhunter is putting the finishing touches on a plan to take over the world. The Teen Titans are dead, as is Green Arrow. Mera is ruling Atlantis and possibly sentenced Aquaman to death. And the “Trinity?” Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are all still around, but they’re not exactly the good guys they were before.

Yikes. Alternate future stories are often fun, which is why we see so many of them in comics. Plus, with a Crisis of some sort possibly in the works for next spring when Futures End wraps up, creators are free to make the flash-forwards as grim as they’d like.

This all does seem a bit familiar though. I seem to recall a world where Bruce Wayne was dead, Batman was a jerk, Aquaman and Wonder Woman were war-crazed caricatures of themselves and everything was topsy turvy. Oh yeah, it was Flashpoint, the event that reset (almost) everything and got us to the New 52 era in the first place.

Let’s hope this isn’t just a case of history repeating itself, as ironic as that would be for a story with time as a key element.