Earth 2 #29 - A Review

The Earth 2: World's End weekly series introduced us to the Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon of Earth 2.  On this world, Barbara Gordon is a Chicago cop and her husband (yes shippers, they are married in this world!) is a journalist.  They have a son together. They're struggling to survive in the wasteland that is Chicago in the wake of the attacks of the Furies of Apokalips.

That is the Alpha and Omega of everything we've learned about the characters so far.  Given that Babs and Dick are two of my favorite characters, I was looking forward to this issue, which featured Barbara in a defensive position on the cover.  Gun in hand, ready to defend her child and kick some ass as only a redhead from Chicago can.




Sadly, the adage about judging a book by its cover has never been more accurate. Barbara spends most of the issue as a hostage and the story is told from Dick's point of view. It is Dick who is pressed into action when they are abducted by a doomsday cult and Barbara is chosen as a sacrifice to a captured Parademon. While the story of the pacifist Dick choosing to turn to heroism to save the woman he loves is an interesting one, it is still disappointing to see Barbara Gordon placed in the damsel-in-distress role even if it is acknowledged how unnatural that is for this version of Barbara.



The pencil work by Andy Smith is just odd.  Most of the characters seem remarkably clean and well groomed for people we've been told have been living in a ruined city.  The doomsday cult looks more like a group of college kids at a rave than a group of  dirty nihilists.  Worst of all, there's no continuity in the artwork, with Barbara losing the head wound that she had in the first part of the book just before she is taken to be fed to the Parademon.

All in all, this issue is something of a disappointment.  It isn't bad as such but it could have been so much better.

Earth 2 #28 - A Review

Titled Origins, Earth 2 #28 gives us the origin stories of four characters we have seen in the Earth 2: World's End weekly book.  Well, technically we've only seen the effects caused by a few of them but this is no time to argue semantics.  This book is all about the secret origins of the Four Furies of Apokolips - women chosen to exemplify the forces of War, Famine, Pestilence and Death.


Marguerite Bennett brings her usual sense of heart to these stories.  All but one of them have tragic backgrounds and the one lone hold out - the glutinous Fury of Famine - would be hard to sympathize with even if we did know how she came to be who she was.  It's an interesting point that Apokolips now seems to recruit talent from off-world, as the Furies include a Green Martian (Death), a Czarnian (Pestilence) and a Tamaranian (War).


Each story is illustrated by a different art team.  This gives each story its own individual appearance and each creative team seems well matched to the story of their respective Furty stylistically.  The whole book looks wonderful.

Earth 2 #27 - A Review

Set sometime after the start of Earth 2: World's End, Earth 2 #27 is nominally about our heroes trying to rescue a group of trapped scientists.  What the comic is really about, however, is relationships.  Specifically, the relationship between the new Superman and Power Girl and the relationship between the new Batman and Huntress. The former group are childhood friends who seem to be transforming into something more.  The later are estranged family and Huntress prefers to keep it that way, despite Batman's efforts to reach out to her.


This sort of thing is the bread and butter of writer Tom Taylor, who once again partners up with Marguerite Bennett for this issue.  Bennett's something of an unknown quantity here, but her previous work on Batgirl and Batman has proven her to be a writer of no mean skill.  It's unclear just how the writing duties were split between them but the fact that one fails to detect any difference in the writing styles between scenes proves that the two writers play well together and that we all benefit from the partnership.


The same can be said of the artwork, which is handled by two separate teams of artists.  One group handles the pages involving flashbacks to Huntress and Power Girl's pasts.  The other handles the main action of the issue.  Both teams do a fine job depicting the action and there's no glaring difference in the styles that might wreck a reader's focus.