Future State: Dark Detective #4: There Are No Ends

Future State has been a wonderful thought experiment that gave a great many creators a chance to give life to characters that had grown stale as well as giving a shape to the future of the DCU (even if that shape is very maleable moving forward). The Batbook in particular seemed in synch, all portraying a future in which The Magistrate, a private security company, has taken over Gotham City and has been hunting “masks”. The totalitarian state created by The Magistrate, with eyes and ears everywhere and zero accountability, is the central focus of the book and to that end, this series has done an excellent job of digging deeper into what The Magistrate is and is doing. The writing is sharp and decisive right up until the end, which sadly fell flat for me. The lead Batman story ends so decisive and clean that it feels constricting and cut short. Of course it was only 4 issues and it is only a possible future but given the trajectory of the narrative, there still feels like a bit of painting into a corner happening here that hopefully is avaoidable as we travel back to the current timeline.

In stark contrast, the Red Hood story ends so open-ended that it could just continue now if not for the fact that The Magistrate hasn’t arrived in our Gotham… yet. In general, the Red Hood story is somewhat lazy construction and seems to lack purpose other than as an opportunity to hightlight a romanatic buzz between Rose and Jason and to be a vehicle for Milonogiannis’ cool but quirky style that oddly fits the characters quite well. The story just seemed to meander aimlessly beyond that, however, as Jason is wanted and then he isn’t and it was a glitch but was it? Oh and Batman (or maybe Nightwing? Or Dracula?) is pulling strings because somebody has to be pulling strings. It was just messy but not in a necessarily fatal way.

Overall, I believe when I look back at Future State, Dark Detective will undoubtably be among my favorites thanks to the beautiful pairing of Tamaki and Mora alongside Rosenberg breathing new life into a personal favorite character of mine in Grifer. Though the series ended somewhat in disappointment, it can’t take away from the positives throughout the four issues enough to sway that opinion for me.