Earth 2: World's End #1 - A Review

If you've been reading Earth 2, then this first chapter of Earth 2: World's End will offer some welcome information about the history behind the Earth/Apokolips War that kicked off the start of the series.  And if you haven't been reading Earth 2, may the gods of all the pantheons have mercy upon you should you attempt to muddle your way through this book.  This book isn't entirely incomprehensible to new readers, but for every point of The Story So Far it explains, another two go untouched.


Case In Point: The book does a great job of explaining the back-stories of Supergirl and Robin (Now Power Girl and Huntress) and depicting their journey to Earth One and back. But the issue does nothing to explain the story of the new Superman, Val-Zod, or the importance of Jimmy "Accountable" Olsen.  This is doubly vexing since this book unloads a major bombshell that isn't easily understood unless you already know about Jimmy Olsen's superpower in this reality.

That's the damnable paradox of this issue.  It is meant to be bringing new readers up to speed with the story of Earth 2 so far but it is so incredibly piece-meal as to what information it chooses to offer up that it is completely useless as an entry point for new readers. This is doubly unfortunate because there are a number of highly touching scenes in this issue once you get past all the history.  My favorite is Power Girl's reunion with her mother, Lois Lane.  Well, the Red Tornado body housing Lois Lane's personality... but why quibble? It is still a touching scene.


I have little to say about the art on this book.  With eight artists working together, there is very little consistency or visual continuity, but that's been a problem with most of DC Comics' weekly titles.  The nicest thing I can say is that there isn't any artwork that is glaringly awful but I still think these books would benefit from having one artist each week rather than a team working on three or four pages every issue.