Justice League - Future's End #1. DC Special Nothing Special in this Infinitus Prelude

 





Released September 17, 2014
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Homeworld Part 2 of 2

Jeff Lemire - Writer
Jed Dougherty- Artist
Gabe Eltaeb - Colorist
Taylor Esposito - Letterer
Rickey Purdin - Editor
Eddie Berganza - Group Editor

Synopsis

Picking up immediately after the events of JLU Future's end, the Five-Years-From-Now Justice League (Cyborg, Dawnstar, Equinox, Flash, Martian Manhunter, Vostok and Stormguard) are on Mars facing a prison breakout of villains including Mongul, Killer Frost and Gorilla Grodd (among others) led by Captain Atom. Manhunter, Stormguard, Dawnstar and Equinox face off against Grodd and Captain Atom below ground, while the rest of the League fights on the surface of Mars.

Captain Atom does his best Dr. Manhattan impersonation by monologuing about him wiping out millions to save billions, I'm too powerful to understand, yada yada, then grows immensely tall and collapses the Leaguers underground with Grodd while he goes to the surface. He delivers an ultimatum - free him or everyone on this world dies. 

On the surface, Mongul tries to double-cross Captain Atom, but is disposed of easily by blast from the Captain, leaving Flash, Cyborg and Vostok to handle the villains on the loose outside, including Captain Atom. The team fights a losing battle with Captain Atom easily taking the upper hand, until Wildfire appears out of nowhere and joins the battle chiding Captain Atom for being crazy, even in the eyes of an insubstantial being from the future who can't experience human life again. 

Below ground, the three Leaguers face off against Grodd, who tries to take over Stormguard's mind first before Equinox encases Grodd's head in a block of ice.  They use the diversion to free Martian Manhunter from the rubble.

Above ground more villains join the fight just as Captain Atom disassembles Wildfire's energy, making his suit collapse and fall to the ground. Wildfire is able to reintegrate and the four Leaguers make one final push against Captain Atom, who is planning to go critical. Equinox flies out of the rubble and faces off against Captain Atom - except it's not Equinox.  It's actually Martian Manhunter, who uses the subterfuge to mentally place Captain Atom back in his mental prison - thinking he is a human again back on Earth. 

The League reunites and they try to convince J'Onn to come back to the League on Earth, but he refuses, saying that the prison world of Mars needs him as its warden.

Commentary

This was a decent crossover event comic, at least for Future's End standards.  Which, let's be honest, isn't that high of a bar.  It was quite readable and had some good moments, but there were so many parallels, probably intentional, with Watchmen and Dr. Manhattan with the setting being Mars and Captain Atom being super quantum arrogant, I was just a bit too distracted.  It did make me want to understand why Captain Atom was this way, and I also did enjoy the subterfuge of Martian Manhunter being Equinox.  That was a very good story beat as the readers are just as out of the loop as the other characters. The denouement is good with Captain Atom being back home and "normal" again in his mind.  

In the end, though, this Future State two parter finishes flat, due to the vague "five years in the future" scenario with a Justice League  and JLU in a strange future where we don't know or understand the details of why there's a prison on Mars for metas, or why J'Onn feels like its his responsibility to manage it.  There are a lot of extra pages and panels here that I think could be used for more exposition on what happened over the intervening five years to really understand why the things on the page are happening.  Maybe that's a me thing, but I did find it distracting as a new JLU reader.

On the positive side, the art by Dougherty, especially in the final panels of Captain Atom returning home, was very good, and the coloring really popped for me, at least digitally, so kudos to Eltaeb there.  A few panels did look rushed though, but overall the action flows pretty well visually.  Also, it's always good to have a Dawnstar/Wildfire reunion. 

Grade - C+.  Nothing Special for this DC Special Event.

Just as a heads up, next review will be JLU #5, which is technically NOT part of the Infinitus Saga, but does lead directly in to the story, so I'll be posting that one next.


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