The New 52: Futures End Cover Has Shades of Days of Future Past

The iconic image that for years has defined the classic X-Men story "Days of Future Past" for fans -- of Wolverine and Kitty Pryde standing in front of a wall of wanted posters, bearing the faces of their fellow mutants and notations like "captured" or "dead" -- set the stage for an alternate future story where anything goes, and anyone can die. That it wouldn't actually "count" when the timeline was restored was not as relevant as the reading experience of entering a world where the stakes were so high for characters fans loved. That's what DC seems to be trying to capture with The New 52: Futures End. The latest piece of art released in support of the series is the cover to the upcoming weekly series' sixth issue (posted to DC's main website), featuring the body of Tim Drake and, behind that, a newspaper story by Lois Lane proclaiming him "the last Titan." A piece of Lois's story is readable on the cover, and it says, "The losses of the Earth's defenders continued to mount as they battled in defense of Western Europe today. Red Robin, Teen Titan and former associate of the Batman, was found dead in a severely bombed section of Paris that saw some of the heaviest fighting of the war to date." Given the presence of the Brother Eye satellite in so many of the preview images for the series, it's hard (especially with the X-Men: Days of Future Past movie in theaters in less than a month) not to make connections between Futures End and the classic Claremont/Byrne tale featuring the mutant-hunting Sentinels. The reference to Drake as the "last" Titan clearly implies that the rest of the team -- currently about to relaunch in a contracted form as Beast Boy, Bunker, Raven, Red Robin and Wonder Girl -- is dead at this point in the story. Green Arrow is also killed at some point fairly early in the terrible, possible future of the miniseries. You can read solicitation text for the issue -- which is written by the regular Futures End team of Jeff Lemire, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens and Brian Azzarello and featuring art by Patrick Zircher -- below. The book is on sale June 11. Ray Palmer, Frankenstein and Amethyst take a dangerous journey into the Phantom Zone! And Batman Beyond's mission could be over before it begins when someone discovers his arrival five years from now!