Sunday, June 14, 2015

Earth 2: Society #1 - A Review

One Year Ago - Against all hope and reason, the heroes of Earth 2 were able to find their way to another world.  Another Earth to replace the one destroyed by the forces of Apokolips. But the savior who created the ships that carried humanity into the stars also caused the disaster that cut the number of survivors down from millions to thousands.

Now - Terry Sloan, the most-intelligent and most-hated man in the world, is on the run in New Gotham. A new Batman is on his hot on his trail. But so is one of the few villains to have made the journey to the new Earth...


I lost interest in Earth 2: World's End early on.  Even then writer Daniel H. Wilson seems more interested in crafting tense action sequences than interesting characters. This is problematic as the best parts of the original Earth 2 book under James Robinson and Tom Taylor involved the relationships between the characters.

What little character development exists in Earth 2: Society comes in the form of exposition. And even then only Dick Grayson receives any... if you can call angsting over his dead wife and missing son while describing how his life sucks "development". Personally, I think it's the most cliched motivation for a male superhero in existence. And don't think I've forgotten that they fridged a far more interesting version of Barbara Gordon to make this possible...


Perhaps the biggest problem with Earth 2: Society is that Daniel H. Wilson apparently missed the memo about how the new DC You books were meant to be jumping on points for new readers.  To say that this book is thick with continuity would be an understatement. There's no way of knowing all the characters or fully grasping the consequences of the action unless you've been reading the previous series.

As such, despite some good artwork by Jorge Jimenez, there is no reason to read this book unless you were one of the few enjoying Earth 2: Worlds End.  I wasn't. So I won't be. Unless they have the good fortune to bring back Tom Taylor or put Marguerite Bennett to work on it.

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