Veteran Spider-Man and Captain America Artist John Romita, Jr. Covers Batman Beyond

DC Entertainment have released (via Blastr) a first look at Wednesday's The New 52: Futures End #0, in which fans will get a much more in-depth look at the world of Five Years Later...and John Romita, Jr. will do some of his first published DC work, depicting an unexpected character. That's it above -- a variant cover for Futures End that features JR Jr.'s take on Batman Beyond. The character -- real name Terry McGinnis, and the star of a fan-favorite animated series that ran from 1999-2001 and recently was briefly revived for an animated short to celebrate Batman's 75th anniversary -- makes his first appearance in the New 52 (or indeed in any canonical DC book that's part of the main timeline) today with The New 52: Futures End #0, DC's Free Comic Book Day offering. You can get a copy at your nearest comics retailer (find it here). It is not yet online, and while it may well be soon (the last few years, most of the Free Comic Book Day titles have eventually worked their way to ComiXology), there seems to be no official comment as to if or when it will be made available outside of the direct market. The New 52: Futures End teams best-selling writers Brian Azzarello, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens and Jeff Lemire with a rotating cast of artists (including Jurgens and, possibly, Giffen and Lemire along the way) tackling a dystopian-future version of the DC Universe. In the story, McGinnis is sent back in time from his place 30 or so years in the future and ends up five years ahead of our current timeline, battling alongside StormWatch to save the integrity of space and time.