Futures End #40

Writers
• Brian Azzarello
• Jeff Lemire
• Dan Jurgens
• Keith Giffen
Artist
• Patrick Zircher
Colors
• Hi-Fi
Letters
• Corey Breen
Cover
• Ryan Sook
Assistant Editor
• David Piña
Editor
• Joey Cavalieri
Group Editor
• Matt Idelson
Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.

One of the few positives for this Futures End series has been the Ryan Sook covers. I think all of them have been pretty solid and detailed. This issue's cover shows a gigantic Brainiac robot wreaking havoc, and it looks really good. That's about all I can say about it. It looks good, so let's get on with the story and find out what's happening.

As with all these issues, there's a lot going on that doesn't involve the Flash, so I'll just skip ahead to the small parts that do include him. We're 22,300 miles above Earth, and Flash has been summoned to a Justice League meeting. Cyborg and Wonder Woman are the only other founding members present — the rest are a bunch of randoms we don't care about. Cyborg reports that their deep space monitor system is going nuts, but he can't find anything out of the ordinary. This makes Flash complain about going to all the trouble of teleporting up there for a false alarm.

Before too long, the Justice League encounter the remaining members of Stormwatch — the Atom, Hawkman, and a robot named Engineer. Flash asks Ray Palmer if he triggered their alert, but Atom says it was Brainiac. The Atom tries to explain more about Brainiac, but Engineer becomes possessed and attacks her teammates. She delivers an ominous message to the Justice League: "He is here, and you will be the first witnesses to his coming ..."

Strange objects start raining on New York City, causing widespread destruction and pandemonium. Engineer leaves the Stormwatch ship to join her new master, and the Justice League saves Atom and Hawkman. Wonder Woman alerts Cyborg to the destruction in Manhattan, and he sends her and Flash down to deal with it. The masked Superman (who's really Captain Marvel in disguise) also wants to go to New York, but Cyborg tells him and the new female Firestorm to stay behind and guard Dr. Polaris. Cyborg then takes Hawkman and Atom out to chase after Engineer and try to stop Brainiac up in space.

From the satellite, Firestorm can see that Brainiac is literally trying to cut Manhattan off from the rest of the world. A large force field envelopes the whole city, and Brainiac's spheres form the giant robot we saw on the cover. Meanwhile, the real Superman is flying in to save the day.

The Good:

Well, I guess it's nice to have something big happening. Of course, Brainiac trying to steal a city is nothing original. We've already seen him do it once before in the New 52 (during Grant Morrison's run on Action Comics). And since I have read so few of these issues, there's a lot of stuff here that means nothing to me.

The Bad:

Rather petty Flash. Oh, poor Flash! You had to teleport all the way up to the Watchtower! Geez. I really hate this watered-down version of the Flash. All he did in this issue was complain and ask one question. He was sent to New York to battle Brainiac, but we didn't get to see any of that. Also, how on Earth is Cyborg giving orders to Flash and Wonder Woman?

Final score: 4 out of 10

Next time, we'll skip ahead to Futures End #44.