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.

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: World's End #3 - A Review

The most aggravating thing about Earth 2: World's End is a lack of credits by page number for the artists involved.  This annoys me because I need to know who to blame for the fact that Dick Grayson is being drawn like a combination of Mr. Spock and Goku.

I could, in theory, look up each individual artist's name and try and compare this offending page to their other work on-line. But with nine credited artists on this issue alone, that is far more effort than I feel like spending on so mediocre a title.


Mediocre is a strong word, I admit, but it is aptly applied here.  There are many good things about Earth 2: World's End but any greatness is mitigated by the work of less-skilled creators.  The old saying about "too many cooks" has never been more aptly proven.

This applies to both the writing and the artwork.  I've enjoyed the work of Marguerite Bennett and Mike Johnson before and there are a number of well-written scenes with great dialogue throughout the book.  However, the actual plot, as paced by Daniel H. Wilson, leaves much to be desired.


Granting that there are a lot of subplots to balance out, I feel it would be more effective to spend each issue focusing on one or two subplots rather than trying to devote at least one page to each one.  We really need more than one page to convey the scope of Green Lantern's solo effort to rid Rio De Janeiro of monsters.

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

Taken on the level of a summer blockbuster, Earth 2: World's End #2 is an enjoyable story. Building upon last issue's explosive climax, our heroes scatter around the world to deal with the reactivation of the four Apokolptian fire-pits and the emergence of four apparently dormant villains from that evil world.  The first one they encounter is K'li - a preteen girl who raises the dead and introduces herself as an avatar of War.


There's a lot of good action sequences here, but this book suffers in comparison to the monthly Earth 2 book.  There, we had amazing action but we also got a number of good character-building scenes. The closest we get to that here is the implication that Lois "Red Tornado" Lane really hates zombies because they remind her of her own status as a dead woman's spirit in an inhuman body.


As before, the artwork is all over the place.  There are a number of artists with a number of conflicting styles and the final effect is not a positive one. Stylized renditions of our heroes clash with more realistic artwork and naturalistic action scenes look awkward next to more forced poses.

On the whole, I see little reason to pick up this book unless you, like me, are deeply interested in the final fate of Earth 2.  Even then, the lackluster artwork may drive me away from this story.  I really wish DC Comics would assign different art teams to individual issues rather than having multiple artists doing a few pages in each issue of these extended series.

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.

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.

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

Five years in the future, systematic discrimination against the refugees of Earth 2 has become the rule on Earth 1.  And on the eve of futurist Michael Holt's releasing his latest technological wonder to the public, he quickly finds himself a wanted man.  All of this is due to the machinations of the evil genius Terry Sloan and his accomplice... the evil genius Terry Sloan?


Unlike the Future's End special devoted to Green Arrow, Future's End Earth 2 presumes the reader is already well familiar with the events of both the Future's End weekly series and Earth 2.  This is problematic on many fronts, particularly since there is so little of the characters that have made Earth 2 so interesting a title in recent months.  This is not a slight on Michael Holt or Terry Sloan but they have been bit-players in the drama of Earth 2 for much of the last year and to suddenly bring them front and center with no explanation of how they established themselves on Earth 1 is jarring to say the least.

Most of the characters who held the center stage in Earth 2 are absent from this issue.  Indeed, the only nod to these characters is a quick cameo by Jimmy Olsen and a cutaway that reveals Lois Lane - a.k.a. The Red Tornado of Earth 2 - being disassembled in a Cadmus lab.  None of this is explained for the readers who haven't been following Future's End and the only reason I understood any of the significance of this scene was due to Future's End: Green Arrow #1 taking the time to explain the Cadmus connection.


That said, the action of the story is well-written once one gets past the confusing continuity questions.  And the artwork by the same team who did fill-ins for Nicola Scott on Earth 2 is quite good all around.  In the final analysis, this isn't a bad comic but it doesn't seem like it is a wholly necessary one if you are an Earth 2 fan with no interest in Future's End.

Earth 2 #26 - A Review

It is a rare thing for a comic writer to recap the events of the previous issue in-story for the benefit of new readers in these days where dozens of websites can give you a synopsis of the on-going story-line of nearly any comic you can name.  It is rarer still for this action to be taken in a story's final chapter!  Yet Tom Taylor opens Earth 2 #26 with such a sequence.


Taylor has made Earth 2 his world, after inheriting the title from James Robinson.  Taylor plays the tapestry of the DC Universe like a virtuoso pianist, putting forth ideas that are uniquely brilliant yet obvious expansions on what has come before.  A good example of this is Taylor's method for using this world's Queen of Atlantis to stop a telepathic New God.

Such cleverness is sure to please old-school comic book fans but not half so much as Taylor's understanding of these characters, as they are viewed in a new light through the prism of another reality.  Though Jimmy Olsen may now be a hacktivist with built-in WiFi and Lois Lane an android, they are very much the same people we know and love on Earth One.  And Val-Zod - the new Superman of this world - is cut of the same heroic cloth of idealism that formed the core of The Silver Age Superman.


This issue shall be the last for artist Nicola Scott and she will be sorely missed.  For my money, Scott is one of the most consistently underrated artists to work at DC Comics in recent years.  Thankfully, though Scott will not be on Earth 2 anymore, her Twitter feed has promised that big things are in the works.  I look forward to seeing them.

Earth 2 #25 - A Review

Earth 2 #25 is the distillation of everything that makes up great superhero comics.  It is hope.  It is love.  It is idealism.  It is the eleventh-hour, million-to-one long-shot that just... might... work.  It is the kind of book where characters can say that they accidentally pushed a villain into infinity or that they are going to hold the entire Earth in place and you believe it.  You honestly believe it with all your heart.


What Tom Taylor, Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott have done with this title is truly magical.  This issue is perhaps the best of the series so far and I will eat my hat if it is not nominated for an Eisner or an Eagle or some manner of award for Best Single Issue.  If it has a flaw, it is that as the penultimate part of the current storyline it is not easily accessible to new readers.  As such, I advise those of you who have yet to read this series to start with Issue #0 and start catching-up.  You won't regret it.

Earth 2 #24 - A Review

I remember having a conversation at a convention a few months back, describing Earth 2 to a skeptical comic fan who loved the Golden Age heroes but didn't like much of what The New 52 had offered so far.  He was excited about the concepts as I described them - how they were taking the basic idea of the original characters (man who can run fast, man with a magic ring, woman who can fly, etc.) but creating whole new takes on those base ideas while staying true to the core character.   So we have a Jay Garrick who is still a curious science student who is now blessed with the power of the Roman god Mercury and an Alan Scott who is given the power to harness the energy of the Earth itself through the engagement ring he bought for his lost love.


The part where this skeptic froze up was when I described Jimmy Olsen and how he has a superpower in this world.  He said he wasn't sure that he could get into any series where Jimmy Olsen had powers.  Now, ignoring that Jimmy developed superpowers more than a few times back in the day (temporarily, of course), that doesn't change that Tom Taylor still writes Jimmy like Jimmy.  Indeed, Tom Taylor writes one of the best takes on Jimmy Olsen I've ever read.

Sure, the boy has the power to absorb and recall information like a sponge and is a living wi-fi connection but that's completely incidental to who Jimmy is.  Jimmy is honest.  Jimmy is courageous.  Jimmy is an idealist in a world of cynics. And all of that comes to the front in this issue's most glorious scene, in which Jimmy Olsen delivers a The Reason You Suck Speech to Batman.

And yet, Jimmy is still enough of a fanboy to want to be Robin and enough of an egoist to think he'd be doing Batman a favor.  Hell of it is, I think the kid's right and this new Batman would be lucky to have Jimmy as his moral compass to keep him from going over the edge.  God knows he needs one.

I didn't say much about the artwork of Eddy Barrows and  Eber Ferreira  in all of this talking.  How could my words do it justice without panels to show off right then and there?  Just look at the pages above and I think you'll see for yourself how good it is and why I think everyone should be reading this book.  I said as much then and I'll say it again - this is one of the best books on the stands and everyone should be reading it.

Earth 2 #23 - A Review

I have no idea why Earth 2 isn't the most acclaimed title that DC Comics publishes right now.  It can't be because of the artwork.  Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott turn in Eisner-worthy pages every month.  Just look at this splash of Green Lantern below!


It can't be because of the writing.  Tom Taylor has an amazing grasp of the characters of the DC Universe but enough of a creative spirit to play with several classic concepts in ways that change the game while still remaining true to the heart of the characters' histories.  Consider how he has turned Lois Lane into the new Red Tornado and Jimmy Olsen into a living social network called Accountable yet the two characters are still largely unchanged despite their super-powers.  This issue sees them conspiring together to use their powers in tandem in a way that is reminiscent of the two working together as Superman's allies in other stories.


Earth 2 is a hidden treasure that deserves a wider audience.  The stories and characters are great.  The artwork is amazing.  And more than any other book DC Comics has published in recent memory, it lives up to the promise that the New 52 universe had to offer.

Earth 2 #22 - A Review

The cover of Earth 2 #22 is somewhat misleading.  Based on it, one might conclude this issue would feature Green Lantern fighting hordes of Parademons.  In truth, Green Lantern does appear briefly at the start of the issue but only to confirm that - despite all appearances to the contrary several months ago - he is still alive and well.


The main focus of this issue is on Lois Lane (restored to life in a robot body known as The Red Tornado) and the Kryptonian Val-Zod.  An agoraphobic raised in a space capsule and imprisoned underground, Val is an innocent who has just been exposed to the outside world for the first time and is only now beginning to show signs of the powers that Kryptonians display under Earth's yellow sun.  There is a magical sequence where Lois tries to teach Val how to fly which evokes memories of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder.  This sort of sequence is the bread and butter of writer Tom Taylor, who has made this book his own following James Robinson's departure from this title.


The artwork by Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott is as amazing as the story.  I've said repeatedly that The Scotts are one of the most underrated art teams in the business and I will stand by that statement.  It is a crime they have not been nominated for an Eisner for their work on this title.

Earth 2 #21 - A Review

"Five years ago on a parallel Earth, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman died defending their home from the forces of the dark planet Apokolips.  And a new group of heroes emerged - Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkgirl, Doctor Fate, Red Tornado and more.  With another war brewing, this new generation tries to avoid the destiny of their predecessors as the dangers of Apokolips return..."

The first page of Earth 2 #21 summaries the story so far with these words.  It is a good summary and captures the base concept of the book and the current state of the world quite well.  And yet this book is still largely inaccessible to new readers due to the sheer number of subplots this book contains. 


Tom Taylor excels at getting into the heads of his characters and giving them all good moments to showcase their personalities.  The best scene in the issue - for my money - depicts World Army Commander Khan's anguish as he contemplates the deaths of the soldiers under his command  and the sheer scope of this war being fought across space and time.  It is all well written but there's no real sense of momentum to the main story.  One hero seems to die but little is made of it.  And the subplot involving Project Beyond is resolved as quickly as it is introduced.


Thankfully, while this is an off-issue for Taylor, the artwork is as great as ever.  Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott are one of the most consistently underrated creative teams in the business today.  I have no idea why their work on this title hasn't been nominated for an Eisner.

Earth 2 #20 - A Review

I heard about the controversy regarding Earth 2 #20 long before I got a chance to read it.  The problem stemmed from the revelation that The Red Arrow - a hero who had gone unnamed and largely undefined apart from a snarky personality - was named Connor Hawke.

For those who don't know, Connor Hawke was the name of Oliver Queen's illegitimate son and the second Green Arrow in the pre-New 52 DC Universe.  He was also of mixed-heritage, his mother being half-African/half-Korean.  Unfortunately, many artists and colorists did not bother to portray this and Connor was frequently depicted as a light-skinned, clean-shaven clone of his father despite being meant to be quite different physically and in terms of personality.

Some are bothered that Connor Hawke would be revived looking more like Roy Harper - with white skin and red hair - than as he appeared before.  I understand that and agree with it to a point.  However, I'm reluctant to label this as a case of "white-washing" given the nature of the Earth 2 series and the personal track record of the creator involved.


The world of Earth 2 has taken many characters and combined them, creating new characters that may seem familiar while offering new twists on classic formula.  For instance, multiple versions of The Atom have been condensed into one character with the name of the original Atom (Al Pratt) and the size-changing powers of his successor (Al Rothstein).  Taking Oliver Queen's two sons and combining them in a similar fashion honors both.

Would I have preferred a visibly mixed-race Connor Hawke?  I think so, yes.  But I'm reluctant to scream racism at a series that has done so much to give us a more diverse DC Universe.  So far, this series has given us a Hispanic Hawkgirl, an Arabian Doctor Fate, an Indian World Army commander, a gay Green Lantern, a senior-citizen Batman and - if the end of this issue is any indication - a black Superman.  To complain about one character going from mixed to Caucasian in the face of all that seems short-sighted to me, particularly when we know so little about the character and his background so far.  And it's ludicrous to call Tom Taylor a racist when the independent comic series he's created and is currently developing into an animated series is based around the adventures of a mixed-race family of super-scientists.

Ignoring all the controversy, this is a damn fine issue.  Taylor is a great writer of dialogue and he has a great grasp on the classic characters of the DC Universe.  The best moments in this book involve Lois Lane - now inhabiting a robot body - attempting to comfort a young Kryptonian named Val who is agoraphobic thanks to his having spent virtually his entire life either trapped inside his Kryptonian birthing matrix or locked inside a government facility.  These scenes offer a glimpse at a Lois Lane long absent from the most recent Superman books - the Lois Lane with an iron will and nerves of steel who was as strong as Superman in all the ways that matter.


The artwork by Barry Kitson is a match for Taylor's script.  Kitson is a skillful artist and inker and a tremendous visual storyteller, who gives a certain sense of emotional power to alll of the scenes in this issue where people are just talking.  Robson Rocha and Oclair Albert are less skilled in depicting the issue's lone action scenes, in which the villain Brutale orders all the holy sites on Earth destroyed in the name of Darkseid, but the work here is competent if not as fine as Kitson's.

Earth 2 Annual #2 - A Review

Earth 2 Annual #2 reveals the background of the second man in this world to call himself Batman.  There is little more I can say than that without giving away the whole game and I refuse to do that.  Suffice it to say, this issue is a must-read for all fans of the Batman mythos.  


It spoils little to say that most of the story is told in flashback and centers upon Bruce Wayne investigating the murder of the man who killed his parents and the deaths of several other figures in the Gotham Mafia, who died under similar circumstances.  It also ties into the past of Bruce Wayne's father and how his own heroism came to influence his life and the life of his son.  I don't know if Tom Taylor was intentionally paying homage to the classicUntold Legend of Batman but this story explores similar themes.



I despaired when I saw that the artist on this issue was Robson Rocha, whsoe artwork drove me off of World's Finest.  For whatever reason, Robson's inability to keep facial shapes consistent from panel to panel seems less pronounced in this issue.  Perhaps this is due to inker Scott Hanna, who does far more to define Rocha's pencils than Wayne Facher ever did?  Either way, the final work is competent but not particularly exciting.  But neither  is it poor enough to make me not recommend this book. 

Earth 2 #18 - A Review

Tom Taylor hit the ground running with Earth 2 last month and - much like The Flash - he hasn't stopped for a moment since.  Half of this issue centers around a running battle between The Flash and Superman, who has been revealed as being alive and well but - unfortunately - now in the thrall of Darkseid.  The other half of the issue centers upon a new Batman and his efforts to free a number of metahuman captives who have been held in stasis by The World Army for several years. 


Tom Taylor was the perfect choice to take over this series after James Robinson's departure.  As fans of Injustice: Gods Among Us can vouch, Taylor is incredibly skilled at taking the base concept of a character and finding new things to do with them.  It's hard to say which concepts in this issue came directly from Taylor and how many of them may have been bequeathed to him from Robinson's playbook  In the end, it doesn't matter.  All of these ideas grab the reader immediately and I can't wait to see more of Aquawoman, the new Red Tornado (i.e. Lois Lane's personality in a robot body) and Accountable - a teenage Jimmy Olsen who has the power to control the flow of electronic information..



The artwork of Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott continues to wow me.  I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite artist but Nicola Scott is easily one of my top-five and probably the most criminally underrated artist working today.  How she and Trevor Scott haven't gotten an Eisner nomination for their work on this book is beyond me.

If you're a DC Comics fan who rues the New 52, there's a home for you on Earth 2.  Despite the dark setting, there is a sense of hope and creativity in this series that most recent DC Comics books lack.  All this and a good story and good artwork too!

Earth 2 #17 - A Review

When it was announced that James Robinson would be leaving Earth 2 after its' 16th issue, there was some concern among fans of the book.  Robinson is widely regarded as the best writer in the business when it comes to the heroes of the Golden Age and the only person capable of revisiting and reviving these characters in a way that was exciting and new while still being respectful of the core concepts.  It would be a difficult task for any writer to follow after Robinson and build upon what he had started.

Thankfully, DC Comics did have a writer with a fair bit of experience in building upon the basic skeletons set up by other people.  This writer also had a fair bit of experience in revamping and revising classic characters in unique ways.  This writer is Australian Tom Taylor - author of the year's surprise hit series Injustice: Gods Among Us - and he is well on the way to making Earth 2 his own.   


Taylor takes over the series in medias res, starting with the surprise revelation at the end of the last issue that Superman - presumed dead in the battle with the planet Apokolips some five years earlier - was alive and had been brainwashed into becoming a living weapon of destruction in the service of Darkseid.  Most of this issue deals with the remnants of The World Army and a new group of Wonders (this Earth's name for superheroes) trying to cope with this disaster and the unveiling of a new Red Tornado, whose origins are truly surprising in these days when Previews spoils so much months in advance.

Taylor sticks with Robinson's original characterizations and this book is a wonderful jumping-on point for those readers who have yet to give this series a shot.  Taylor's take on the mysterious new Batman is of particular interest.  The same is true of Jay Garrick's Flash - a nice guy who appears to be toughening up in the heat of battle.    


One thing that has not changed about this book is its' incredible artwork.  Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott are one of the most underrated creative teams in comic books today.  Indeed, I would say that they are the best artist/inker team anywhere and this book showcases why that is so.

Bottom Line - Read this book, if you are not already doing so.

Earth 2 #16 - A Review

This issue is James Robinson's last and he elected to go out with a bang.  The battle between the World Army and our fledgling team of Wonders versus the Apokoliptian forces of Steppenwolf proves to be as epic as anything we could have expected.  And yet, Robinson concludes the issue with a shocking twist that I don't think anyone could have anticipated.  I regret only that we shall never see how Robinson might have built upon such magnificence. 


Thankfully, we'll still have the equally excellent artwork of Nicola Scott to look forward to in the months to come.  Scott is one of the most underrated artists working today, in my humble opinion.  Her work on Earth 2 thus far has been some of her best and this issue continues to build upon her already amazing oeuvre. 


The only flaw with this issue is that it's not easily accessible to new readers.  That's to be expected, given that it is the final chapter of a long arc.  Presumably Tom Taylor's first issue will prove a more friendly first issue for those who have yet to check out what's going on in DC Comics' other new universe.

Earth 2 #15 - A Review

For all the hype Trinity War, Forever Evil and Batman: Year Zero have received, I think the only story DC Comics is telling right now worthy of the name epic is being told in the pages of Earth 2.  The vast collection of New 52 titles read like disparate stories forced together unnaturally into a shared universe.  Earth 2 is different, making the reader believe they are being given a glimpse into a vibrant, preexisting world.





This month's issue may seem like a collection of unrelated super-powered battles on the surface but writer James Robinson gives the material a depth rarely seen these days.  The plot of the issue deals with four separate groups of heroes combating a second invasion by the super-powered villains of Apokolips but Robinson's subplots and complex characterization make the action all the richer.  Robinson is one of the few writers I think who could balance such huge story concepts as the romance between Mister Miracle and Big Barda, the revelation that Gotham City is now a savage land roamed by dinosaurs and a battle with Wonder Woman's brainwashed daughter all together in a single scene.


Nicola Scott is similarly underrated.  Her character designs for every character in this series have been gorgeous and unique, conveying the basic idea for some long-established characters while still remaining true to the basic concept   Big Barda's armor, for instance, looks more like real armor than ever before yet the basic form of Jack Kirby's design remains intact.

Earth 2 is one of DC Comics best-hidden treasures.  It's a great read if you like dynamic stories full of action and the artwork is always excellent.  However, what will keep you coming back month after month is the relationships between the characters and the sensation you are truly peeking into another complex universe.