Spoiler Saturday--The Future Ain't What It Used To Be!

Begging your pardon, but today's post involves spoiling some reveals from this week's Justice League 3000 #3.

So, if you want to avoid spoilage, click out of here and come back later.

SPOILERS commence after the 5 pictures of the Legion Of Super-Heroes...

So, in the last issues of the nu52's Legion Of Super-Heroes, they dropped some pretty broad hints that the whole series took place in the future of Earth-2, NOT Earth-1:

Well, of course.

I mean, in its original incarnation the Legion took place in a (relatively) utopian future, where Earth is the center of a interstellar confederation, and the young people across the galaxy are inspired by the career of Superboy and other 20th (or 21st) century heroes.

Does anyone believe the cold, cynical, anti-heroes world of the nu52 could ever lead to something like that?

Take, for example, Takron Galtos, the prison planet of the future, created to hold the worst villains. Well, in JL3000 this week, some of the "heroes" end up there:

Of course, that gratuitous double-page spread is just setting up the later big reveal in another gratuitous double-page spread:

Well, of course.

See? The Earth of the nu52 never has a nice future. No United Planets HQ, no bright and shiny.

Nope. It's a fetid cesspool, abandoned and converted in a prison hell-hole.

Yay, future!!

And as for being inspired by the heroes of the past? Yeah, as if:

Well, of course.

The heroic deeds of the 21st century are forgotten, consigned to a dungpile of garbled myths and legends, believed by nobody and inspiring no one!

And given that our current Superboy is a murderous git whose goal is to destroy all super-heroes, somehow I just don't see that inspiring anyone in the future to take up the heroic mantle.

So of course The Legion Of Super-Heroes couldn't be from the nu52 Earth-1's future. The same minds that tell us that villains are cooler than heroes, and have Lex Freakin' Luthor leading the Justice League; the same creators who have their universe dominated by arrogant jerks who spend more time fighting each other than criminals; the same guiding forces who want us to believe that in 5 years, their entire world will be a crumbling dystopia--and expect that we'll gladly buy a weekly title trumpeting that fact; well of course those same minds could never believe in a brighter future where things have worked out well and the youth is inspired by heroic tales of the past.

Long Live The Legion--just not in this universe, with these guys in charge. It's not in their skill set.

Prediction--Justice League Like Lightning?

I made this prediction on Twitter a few weeks ago. But now that the house ads have started running, I want to make sure I'm on the permanent record here:

The "Justice League 3000" will turn out to be the surviving members of the Crime Syndicate, beaten in Forever Evil. They've fled to the future to pose as reborn heroes, pulling a Thunderbolts.

Tune back in a few months for the I-told-you-so's.