An evil Hulk calling himself Maestro rules the Battleworld realm of Dystopia with a green fist – but an underground resistance led by the Thing plans to topple the despot.
I only read a bit of Peter David’s original Future Imperfect because I wasn’t interested enough to keep going. Hulk as a kind of barbarian king with a harem of women and a trophy room always felt like the most obvious and easy version of the character. And while that’s what we get for just under half of this newer Future Imperfect, David does enough in the second half to make this a decent comic.
Having read the main Secret Wars event, I was expecting this tie-in to actually reference that storyline where the Maestro does appear; except he doesn’t – I guess that was a different Maestro (there are multiple versions of these characters roaming Battleworld)? Do any of these fucking tie-ins have anything to do with Secret Wars!? However, this story does have something to do with God Doom as Maestro proposes working with the Dystopia resistance to become ruler of Battleworld himself.
That plotline was definitely more interesting than watching Maestro and Thing punch each other (though I did like the alternate origins of the Thing - it ain’t Ben Grimm!) and David throws in a great twist ending I didn’t see coming.
Greg Land is the artist on this one – oh dear. His artwork, usually sourced by Google Image Search, remains as generic as ever – Land’s speciality! He’s an artist completely without vision or imagination. This book is competently drawn but uninspired and you won’t see anything here you haven’t seen before in a hundred other Marvel comics. At least he doesn’t seem to have used porn stars as his female models for a change!
The book closes out with a weak short story from Battleworld #4 where Maestro fights Silver Surfer – a very blah encounter as it turns out. I suspect the Battleworld miniseries is quite the stinker.
Future Imperfect is an imperfect comic but not a terrible one. Despite the slow start, Maestro’s quest to become ruler of Battleworld is beguiling. Don’t expect to be blown away but give it a shot if you like your Hulk comics (especially when he's doing Odin cosplay).
Warzones: Future Imperfect
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