Review: The New 52 Future’s End #7
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO, JEFF LEMIRE, DAN JURGENS and KEITH GIFFEN
Art by AARON LOPRESTI and ART THIBERT
Cover by RYAN SOOK
On sale JUNE 18 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The two halves of Firestorm encounter big troubles: some personal, some potentially deadly! And Plastique comes face to face with the DC Universe’s horrifying future! Five years from now, the DC Universe is reeling from a war with another Earth, leaving the world unprepared for an approaching evil that threatens to destroy the future. Can a time-traveling Batman Beyond help a massive cast of the DCU’s finest avert the impending apocalypse? Find out in this new weekly series that will forever alter the direction of The New 52!
It’s Frankenstein vs. Black Adam in the Phantom Zone and finally the first face to face confrontation of Mr. Terrific and Batman Beyond! Those sound like big events, and one of them admittedly is, but the rest of the issue is filled with the same talking heads and sluggish pacing that has plagued this series from the start.
The Good
I am a Frankenstein fan. I have been since even before the start of the New 52, and relish anytime Jeff Lemire gets a chance to write this character. That said, the last few issues have been so bogged down with exposition on the Frankenstein story that it zapped nearly all the fun out of it, but not anymore. Finally the big lug can lash out with all of his righteous fury against Black Adam and it is by far the most entertaining thing to happen in this book in a while. The Mr. Terrific-Batman Beyond confrontation, while not as viscerally thrilling as the Frankenstein fight, actually offers up some future plot points that will hopefully be expanded on next week.
The Bad
More and more talking heads. Jason talks to a doctor that we met last issue, Lois Lane talks to not-Red Robin’s girlfriend, Deathstroke talks to that violent little girl, Fifty Sue, and finally Grifter talks to some random guy in a suit. This is what has always plagued this series. There are a million different little conversations and stories, but they are all about things that have either happened in the past or in the future. Stop talking about interesting things and do the interesting this.
The Verdict
While the Frankenstein-Black Adam fight was fun and the Batman Beyond-Mr. Terrific confrontation may actually set the plot in motion, these two events are still not enough justification to continue buying the book every single week. Not much was said about the art because there is not much to say. Lopresti’s art is serviceable. Its not bad, but its not going to blow your socks off either.
Story: 2 out of 5
Art: 3 out of 5
Overall: 2.5 Hrrns out of 5
Outright Geekery 