An EYE for an EYE

In time for Convergence, Eye finally caught up with DC Comics' weekly series New 52: Futures End that ended with #48.  Sadly, Eye was underwhelmed.  The series ended with a whimper, not a bang. 

It felt like the series had some direction at the beginning but then the creators and/or execs decided to just say "fuck it" and move on to the Next Big Thing (i.e., Convergence.)   It didn't even offer much of a lead-in to Convergence.  Brainiac started to come collect cities...but then they defeated him?   And pretty quickly, too.  Eye was quite confused.

Eye think what the series was also missing was interesting characters.  Or maybe they just weren't used properly.  Included were Batman Beyond, Shazam as Superman, Amethyst, Frankenstein, Grifter, Mister Terrific, Tim Drake (retired), and a new female Firestorm.  Meh.  Eye think DC did a much better job of using secondary characters in their 2006 weekly series 52.  Eye was invested in the 52 characters, not so much in the New 52 Futures End ones.

Eye wasted about $150 and who knows how many hours of my time waiting for something exciting and big to happen, but it never did.  And the series didn't even matter in the course of things. 

Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here...

Firestorm Burns and Fizzles

I was going to write about the comics that I read last night and then I realized that, for the life of me, I couldn't remember what they were.  Obviously, that was a telltale sign of how interminably unmemorable they were.  I knew it was two consecutive issues from one of DC Comics' New 52 series, but I could not remember which one.  After going down the list of titles two or three times to see if something would jar my memory, I finally remembered that it was The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #s 4 and 5. 

In the 1980s, I really loved the character Firestorm (aka Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein).  In fact, I even liked the Jason Rusch Firestorm series from 2004.  I cannot, though, get into this new series with the idea of multiple Firestorms.  It's too reminiscent of the Green Lanterns.  What's next?  The Firestorm Corps?  When someone in need yells out, "Help me, Firestorm!", twenty heads shouldn't turn.  

Not only is the concept unappealing to me, but the first five issues of The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men have been complete snoozers.  Unfortunately, I can't even recall what has happened so far in the series; that's how boring it's been to me.  I guess with the revival of Ronnie Raymond as Firestorm, I expected MUCH better.  I also expected better from the high-quality writers of this series.  Silly me.   

The Bobby Ewing Syndrome

Since the announcement of DC canceling all of their titles and basically starting all over with 52 new titles, I've continued to pick up my comics at my local comic book shop, but as I read them, I find I have little to no enthusiasm in the characters or storylines anymore.  Why?  Because I know the series are going to end, the characters will no longer be themselves, they'll no longer have their history/connections, and the entire DC Universe is going to start anew in September with characters I don't even know or recognize anymore.  So, really, what's the point?  Come September, it'll be like waking up in Dallas, finding Bobby Ewing alive and well in your shower, and realizing that everything that happened previously was all just a dream.  

I don't even have the same excitement for Flashpoint and its many, many related mini-series, an event I was really looking forward to.   Again, I figure, what's the (flash)point? 

The best thing to really come out of this announcement is that I can sell entire set/series of comics on eBay since they won't really matter anymore in the continuum and, having ended, they're actual complete sets, not just partial sets of an ongoing series.  Thanks, DC, for helping me clear out my clutter and giving me some extra spending money.