This week in the Future State line up we get a sequel to a previous title. Dark Detective 2 continues the story of Bruce Wayne in an era where he has lost everything and he is now the hunted. Then in a second story we get some insight into a choice made by a member of the Bat family that many consider to be traitorous.

With the first story we don’t get much of a current story, but we get a ton of backstory which clarifies at least some of the ‘inconsistencies’ between Future State comics. It starts out with Bruce patrolling a warehouse in his new low-grade batsuit. Everything seems normal until some of the Magistrate’s cybers crash the party. It’s here that Bruce jumps into a flashback about how Peacekeeper-01 ‘killed’ Bruce Wayne. It’s nice to finally understand what really happened to Bruce that night.

This backstory takes up most of the issue, but it does jump back to the present where we see how Bruce Wayne lives in the here and now. He rooms with a schizophrenic roommate named Noah. Noah swears they are watching and forbids all tech, especially cell phones. What better place to hide? Little does Noah know Bruce set up a mini Batcave in the basement where he is trying to piece together where all this tech and power came from so quickly. In the process Bruce realizes Noah may not be as out of line as he previously thought.

Dark Detective 2 – The Red Hood Surfaces

In a previous title we heard about Jason Todd, Red Hood, betraying the bat-family and joining the Magistrate. Now we finally get a bit of his story in the second story here.

Red Hood seems to be a walking pile of contradictions. He joined the Magistrate, yet he does not seem pleased with it. He sleeps with Rose, aka – Ravager (Slade Wilson’s daughter), yet their relationship seems strained to say the least. Rose kills. Hood captures. Jason acts with purpose, yet he holds true to Batman’s detective style and seems to try to maintain principles. It doesn’t make sense, but that only adds to the story and over all question. Why did Jason side with the Magistrate?

Jason chases down a man in a suit and red helmet shaped like half a pill capsule. They guy only steals food, but he wears a mask (bad one). He must be brought in. Hood wants to help him, but Ravager kills the man before Hood can question him. He may have been a normal kid, but he was controlled by Mad Hatter mind control tech. After a quick hunt, Ravager and Hood find out Hatter is dead, so who is using his tech?

To this point the story really intrigued me, but then it up’d the game even further. A mask alert goes of on Hood’s phone. The target in question is none other than Hood himself!

Dark Detective 2 – Setting Up the Future

Batman returns from the dead
Some things never die.

My only problem with this issue is the problem all good issues have. It ended far too soon. I really liked both stories in this issue and they did a great job pushing the story forward. I can’t wait to see where the next parts of the story take us.

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