The New 52: Futures End #28 Review
By Steve Lam
Writers: Brian Azzarello, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, Jeff Lemire
Artists: Andy MacDonald, Hi-Fi, Ryan Sook
Futures End #27 Recap
On Green Arrow Island, Green Arrow and his team prepare for their assault on Cadmus Island. In Metropolis, Tim Drake tells Lois Lane to take a leap of faith and recheck the coordinates in the middle of the ocean. On Cadmus Island, Deathstroke plans to secure a vault containing DNA samples of every living and dead superhuman. In Manhattan, Batman Beyond breaks into Tim Drake’s apartment to look for clues. Batman quickly ambushes Batman Beyond, but they’re both caught off-guard from an unseen assailant’s explosive devices.
Spoiler-Free Reaction
Futures End #28 has characters discovering things the reader already knew. With a great action sequence to pick things up, this issue is a pretty good bridge for the next story.
Plot Details and Spoilers and Deaths: Oh My!
Cadmus Island: Lois Lane parachutes onto the island. Elated that her leap of faith paid off, Lois is quickly greeted by a Brother Eye-controlled OMAC ready to detain her. Lois is upgraded to threat-level when she fires a taser at it. Escaping the OMAC, Lois runs into a badly damaged Earth 2 Red Tornado.
Las Vegas: As King Faraday and Franklin Rock discuss about Cadmus Island’s takeover by Brother Eye, Fifty Sue comes barging in crying. Angry at Deathstroke’s betrayal, she requests a team of her own to take back the island and give Deathstroke a torturing demise. Voodoo then enters complaining about one of the OMACs. Upon hearing this, Fifty Sue, still angry, goes off to destroy Voodoo’s OMAC pest. Also, unintended by both Rock and Faraday, Fifty Sue thinks Voodoo and her team will be working for her, instead of the original plans by Rock and Faraday — that is, to destroy her using the team.
New York City: The source of the explosives that hit Batman and Batman Beyond were from Platique, who was actually trying to help Batman Beyond. As Batman Beyond tells Plastique to run, he’s tackled from behind by Batman. The two fight in the air, with each matching the other’s moves. Finally, Batman Beyond, in a chance opportunity, is able to throw Batman into a window. Batman Beyond grabs Plastique and flies off.
Ronnie Raymond finds Cal Corcoran (Tim Drake) waiting for him at the steps of his home. Inquiring about Madison Payne, Cal learns that she last had contact with Jason Rusch.
Jason arrives at Dr. Yamazake’s apartment. Hearing what sounds like struggling, Jason breaks in. The source of the sounds were coming from a video being played back — one that showed a newscast witnessing Yamazake’s wife dying during the war. Looking around, Jason finds a board keeping tally of the elimination of superheroes around the world.
Yamazake has Madison tied and blindfolded in his lab. Preparing to use her as a test subject for his teleporter, Yamazake explains his reasoning for holding her hostage: because Maxwell Payne, Madison’s father, conspired with the enemy, which led to Yamazake’s wife being killed, Yamazake wants Maxwell to feel the same loss.
Wrapping It Up
Acting more as a bridge to the next issue, Futures End #28 does its job in keeping the reader engaged and entertained. The knowledge learned by the characters in this issue are not new to the readers. This is perhaps the writers’ way of getting all the characters on the same page, to prepare them for a confrontation in #29.
The unintended plan change when Fifty Sue interrupted Rock’s and Faraday’s meeting was quit humorous. Leave it up to Fifty Sue to inadvertently sideline their plans in creating a team to kill her. It’ll be interesting to see how she gets along with Voodoo and the rest of them.
The highlight of #28 is definitely the almost equally matched fight between Batman and Batman Beyond. I’m not sure if this motivated people to search the Internet like crazy: when Batman made a statement of how breaking Batman Beyond’s L1 vertebra would make him smell something, I was curious to know as to how those nerves would cause such a sensation. So, at least we had a slight Discovery Channel moment here.
Overall Futures End #28 is still an entertaining read. Being a bit less intensive in dialogue, the story moves along quickly and doesn’t require a lot of time commitment from the reader.