Justice League #20: The Future Is (a little too) Bright

Time travel stories are really starting to wear me down.  It’s a trope that is done far too often (and my last experience with time travel in Justice League was really, REALLY, unpleasant).

But that being said, whereas usually we get a dystopian future, Snyder and company give us what appears to be more of a utopia.  Bright cities (even Gotham has lost its usually gloomy demeanor), bright costumes, no villains (we’ll get back to that in a minute), and a Hall of Justice that’s no longer truly needed (it’s a museum now).

And yet, it’s a twist because there is something ominous about this future, something bubbling just under the surface, barely out of sight, beyond the horizon.  The child of J’onn and Hawkgirl warn them to not trust what they are seeing.  Batman notices a surprising absence of criminals (which would usually suggest the loss of free will, some sort of fascist government…anybody remember Injustice).  And Superman.  Well, as we discovered last issue (and are teased a bit more here), this future Superman is not what he seems.

So while a reader’s first inclination may be “great, another future”, there’s more to this world than meets the eye.  And while it may be done to death, Snyder (along with absolutely fantastic art from Jiminez and colors from Sanchez) has given us something different, a chapter in a massive undertaking that anybody but Snyder would have failed attempting.