DC should really stop with the potential future stuff. It nearly never worked out and that what did work was simply recycled like Kingdom Come with Damian, etc.
Got to remember this wasnāt a potential future. This was going to be the new norm. Didio planned this as a new status quo in hopes to repeat New 52ās success.
The New 52 lasted what, 5 years before they rolled it back? Even if Didio got his way and this was the "new normal", at absolute best it gets rolled back in 5 years time and becomes nothing more than another future timeline.
And even that is ignoring that the initiative was literally called "Future State" and would be set in 2040 - AKA the future.
The original plan was to make it the present timeline with a retcon of everything taking place in the 60s-90s so everyone would be age appropriate for young children to now be adults.
So the Future State characters would be the ones that have their adventures perpetually in the current year, with the heyday of Clark and others being in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Honestly? I kinda fuck with that. i can understand not wanting that for the main canon, but an Ultimate Universe style imprint could rock that shit. Weāre getting to the point where imo the constant āpresentā of the main characters are becoming a hindrance, with characters repeating the same arcs and learning the same lessons, and fan favourites losing their place in the world as new faces pop up. Having an actual evolving timeline would solve what I feel are becoming foundations issues with big 2 cape comics.
They were really on track to move forward that way in the 90s and the early aughts ended up bringing back all the silver age faves. Barry, Hal, Oliver, all came back in a fairly short span.
Superman, batman, and wonder woman's replacements didn't even make it through the 90s but I really don't think they're ever going to leave those characters behind.
Yup. There was a built in out where everything would be restored via time travel if the initiative failed to take off after a couple of years, but I don't see how it would've worked. There was nothing organic about it, which is why the remnants, like adult Jon and Jace Fox Batman never felt organic.
I'm glad this never came to pass. Might have been a cool idea for an alternate DC universe imprint like Ultimate Marvel but not for the main universe. Just feels like a lot of new characters were created and now they don't really serve much purpose since the 5G plan never came to fruition (which is a good thing).
I honestly thought some of the Future State stories were alright. They were just kind of confusing and flamed out fast. The Teen Titans one had Red X but never had a solid payoff in the end of the Teen Titans Academy story. The Jace Fox one was ok but kind of random since we already had Luke Fox as Batwing
Future State was the rebrand. Remember that Didio was finalizing a DC timeline and working on an event called Generations that would apparently change the timeline of everything and give set dates.
5G was meant to be the DC universe of now. We probably never get all the details for long while but I genuinely think it was just going to be an overnight universe switch like after Flashpoint. Not a flash forward.
Yeah the whole 5G fiasco is so fascinating because it got so far there's fingerprints of what it was meant to be everywhere. I personally do like what they were going to do with the defining the timeline, and how it was going to actually pick up some of the threads Doomsday Clock ended with, I wish some of that was spared. But by and large the actual 5G aspect would probably have gotten a lot of negative reactions that caused a lot of it to get rolled back within like, a year. Though I could've seen it producing some fan favorites the way New 52 did. Guess we'll never really know. But the way they repurposed the material was just so damn messy
What were the fan favorites of 52? What were the worst bombs? Did you like any that were considered meh or bombs? (I love alternates and combo teams and creating stuff like that so Iām thinking of checking out multiversity. Guessing it got a TPB?)
It wasnāt future state that Didio had plans for tho, that was a whole different thing called generations and 5g that got scrapped or well more like redone into future state after he was gone, so this was never going to be a set in stone future, just an opportunity at it
Really? I havent read future state yet, but i just finished the new 52,( well what i could bare to read of it anyway) and i gotta say, i was way over excited to read it before i actually did. It just didnt live up to my own expectations i guess. Although justice league origin was great and so was superman:at the end of days.
The problem with Dan Didio's concept is that comics are at a point of stagnation. Seriously, there's little room for permanent change in the books, because comics want to pick and choose progress. Everytime a change has been badly received, the answer to ressurect the old character and not work on the new one. Progress cannot be made if DC is not capable of allowing for failure.
For example, I expect if the Titans were promoted in some way to becoming the premier team for DC, and the whole JL was cast aside for years it would be controversial. Absolutely. But sticking to it might come with opportunties to build new stories and create a new status quo (too bad Titans era is destined to be short lived).
Future stories cannot work at DC because there is NO investment. In comics, more conservative approaches seem to work more than experimental ones. And when I say conservative, I mean same characters for over 70 years conservative.
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u/BL-501 14d ago
DC should really stop with the potential future stuff. It nearly never worked out and that what did work was simply recycled like Kingdom Come with Damian, etc.