Future State was DC’s big cross-over event that ran earlier this year. The idea was to explore various alternate universe ideas and other divergent ideas as a response to the multiverse shattering Dark Knights, Death Metal storyline that had recently mucked up DC comics continuity good and proper.
Future State: Justice League isn’t quite ‘what will the Justice League look like in DC’s future’. Instead it brings together a bunch of Future State one-shots, most of whom you would expect to see in the Justice League, though we also get What If tales for both Justice League and Justice League Dark.
Because these are essentially no-consequence one-shots, the result is much better than it has any right to be. Our Flash story is appropriately desperate, exhausting and clever; you should always feel like you gone through something with a Flash story and this tale of loss and betrayal does nicely. The Aquaman short is similarly dark, quite rightly focusing on survival and leadership and show casing newer Aquaman powers and characters quite well.
The Justice League Dark story is really just a remix of the Books of Magic storyline from the 90s, but then DC finds it hard to tell a story about the future of magic without it being a tale of ‘magic fading from the world’, even though the DC Universe is filled with magical utopias, we never seemed to explore them. It’s fun enough and it’s nice to see Detective Chimp being weird and awesome in equal measure.
Green Lantern fans are well served by this book, they are several takes on the idea of ‘The last Green Lantern’, all of which are quite fun and very well done. The actual Justice League story is very much a re-do of a classic JLA tale, but it’s neatly done and fun. Art wise, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, with the majority of the art chosen to fit a certain expected style and doesn’t really stand out. It just looks like your average DC comic, which of course is the point.
Future State: Justice League is a fun set of stories and shows what the Future State premise can do. Worth a look, especially if you like Green Lantern.
