Late last week, Newsaradar finally shed a little light on what we should expect from the upcoming Future State event in an interview with Dark Nights: Death Metals writer Scott Snyder, who says

Death Metal ends in January, and then January and February is Future State, which is going to give glimpses of possible DC futures. That was built while we were doing Death Metal to lead into some stuff which isn't happening anymore, but those plans have taken a new shape, which is exciting.

The article authors, Michael Doran and Kat Calamia, speculate that the "stuff which isn't happening anymore" is more than likely the 5G event promoted by former DC Comics publisher Dan DiDio before he was abruptly fired back in February. It looks to me like Future State is the company trying to salvage the sunk cost of that project in a month-long alternate-continuity event similar to the sort of stories we saw in 2011's Flashpoint and 2015's Convergence. Whether they call it "Future State," "Elseworlds," or "Hypertime," DC loves these things.

I don't know Scott Snyder, so I don't know if his "is exciting" comment is sincere or salesmanship. (Was it not exciting in its original form? "Exciting" like a roller coaster or a car fire?) Whichever the case, so long as Booster Gold is involved and on covers like these, I'm on board.

Generations: Shattered #1 card stock variant cover by Lee Bermejo

You can read the original article at GamesRadar.com.

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Over at Newsarama/GamesRadar+, Michael Doran has started speculating about what DC might have in mind for January/February 2021 in regards to the mysterious "Generations" event teased in Detective Comics #1027.

I don't agree with all of Doran's theories, and he altogether avoids guessing how we'll reconcile getting both the original 1985 Booster Gold (seen on the solicited Generations: Shattered cover) and the 2007 time cop Booster Gold (hinted at in the dialogue of Detective Comics #1027) in one event. But his general conclusion seems reasonable enough. I quote:

In summary, 'Future State' won't be a precursor to a reboot (which DC really wants you to know isn't happening), but a lead-in to coordinated refresh/line-wide jumping on point the publisher can market heavily without alienating existing readers and throwing the continuity baby out with the bathwater as it did with 'The New 52.'

Not a reboot but a "refresh"? Sure, okay. Whatever. I don't have any problem with that. I didn't have any problem with that when DC tried it with Convergence or 52 or Zero Hour or any of the many, many other non-reboot reboots DC has attempted over the past four decades or so. If you read superhero comics long enough, you'll get used to publishers trying new initiatives to bring in new blood, which they should. Children are the future, after all.

(Trivial digression: We didn't call Crisis on Infinite Earths a "reboot" back in the day, either. Interestingly, Google and Wikipedia sources credit the term "reboot" in its modern, "continuity reset" meaning to fan discussion of Mark Waid's 1994 re-imagining of Legion of Super-Heroes continuity in the wake of Zero Hour, which was itself the second major overhaul of LSH continuity. Those fans were computer-savvy users of the World Wide Web-precursor Usenet, so the adoption and retasking of the computer term came naturally. Therefore, DC's own history of recreating their properties over and over again was the reason the term was created in the first place. You brought this upon yourself, DC!)

To make your own informed guesses about what the future might hold (and get a glimpse of the issue's alternate cover, which also includes Booster Gold!), you can read the whole article at gamesradar.com.

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