Wilson and Jimenez put a cap to the first arc of their story.
Written by Daniel H. Wilson
Illustrated by Jorge JimenezThe utopian society of Earth-2 begins to show cracks as the new world reacts to the assassination plot that’s left a huge power vacuum on the planet. Which hero can step up to fill the void?
Gather ‘round, ye unwashed masses, and let me tell you a story.
It was 2012, the Justice Society of “Earth 2” was being relaunched under the custodianship of writer James Robinson and artist Nicola Scott. Though the elder statesmen of the DCU were de-aged, the book and its premise had the heart of heroes and the spirit of growth and looking forward. And then DC chased James Robinson off to Marvel and Image, decided to put a dead stop on all the cool world building, launch a complete debacle of a weekly with “Earth 2 World’s End” and “Convergence” which saw their world literally destroyed and now they inhabit a new one.
Why am I telling you this? Stick around and it will sink in.
Let’s get some positives out of the way first, mostly about the artwork. Jorge Jimenez is a really fun artist. He has a very fluid and cartoony style to his work. It was really good on the short run he did with Aaron Kuder on “Superboy” and I thought it worked so well in the “Amazing X-Men” one-shot he did with James Tynion IV that I wanted those two to relaunch an “Academy X” ongoing. Colorist Alejandro Sanchez also provides a moody setting for the battle that confers here, but is also to put in the optimism and brightness, especially on one page with Red Tornado Lois Lane and Superman (Kal-El, not Val).
That’s not to say that the artistic work is perfect and, frankly speaking, there are times where I feel Jimenez may not be the exact best fit for this series. While there is a good deal of praise I have given to the fluidity of his work, sometimes it does go a bit overboard during the action scenes, resulting in very awkward posing and some of the facial expressions can be a bit…weird.
I will say, in the flashbacks to the year prior dealing with Lois Lane are pretty good. Daniel Wilson does have a good handle on the characterization of Lois and this is how I believe she would act if she was in the position of a superhero. Her heart. Her soul. Even if she is a bunch of circuitry and memory data, she is still a human. The human that Superman loved so much. Dare I even say, this Lois is being written better than the Lois in “Superman” right now.
Are you ready, boys/girls/non-binary? Because the above is what we call “damning with faint praise”.
Now recall back to that above explanation to how we got here. From Robinson/Scott all the way to the present (which, included a change of editorial team, I should mention). After all the world building that happened and all the destruction, chaos, death, devastation and eventual planetary annihilation. After all this pain and frustration, both in the comic and out of it. It was this issue that made me come to a realization:
This whole property is back at square frickin’ one.
Seriously. It is a book about a world coming out of a very traumatic series of unfortunate events led by a bunch of heroes who are frankly new to this whole hero business. And it’s first main antagonist is a former hero.
Here’s the thing though: It does none of those elements as well. In fact, there are some characters that have either been put in positions that make them insanely bland or some characters where, and I hate to use this, the writer just doesn’t get.
Let’s start with Alan Scott, the Green Lantern. Now, I really liked the reboot Alan Scott. I also loved the idea that the most powerful person in the world, literally the champion of the Earth and the spiritual successor to Superman, was a gay male. Yes, his acquisition of the power resulted in the death of his fiancée and that sucked, but the knowledge that his story and love life could continue was enough to see where it was going.
Continued below“Earth 2: Society” Green Lantern is literally the conduit for the Green, the life force of the planet. It has absolutely no personality. At all. Whatsoever. The character will just show up now and again to give cryptic words about being the life force of the planet and its guardian and oh-my-god this is so tedious. Sure he does some actions here in this issue, but there is no more emotional connection to it.
I will acknowledge that Daniel Wilson has the most handle on the character of Jay Garrick, the Flash. From the beginning of the reboot, Jay’s been one of my favorite heroes and it is nice to see that he still wants to do good for good. What I will say about Jay is his new costume. Now keep in mind: Jay’s original Earth 2 costume essentially was spandex and a salad bowl. His new costume: Did anyone not look at it and say: “Hey, this really looks like Johnny Quick’s costume. You know, the homicidal lunatic speedster from Earth 3.”
Now, I could go on about the other characters, but for the sake of word count, let’s get to the most egregious example of really just bad, boring, generic characterization: Terry Sloan.
To put it simply, the creative team took all the potential Terry Sloan had as an anti-hero/anti-villain and shot it in the head.
One of my favorite issues from the first “Earth 2” series was its zero issue, which was essentially the origin of Terry Sloan. It was the tale of a fallen hero, who went through a war that made him incredibly jaded to the point that he betrayed his more hopeful comrades in arms. But it was also the establishing of a very patient, very in-control man. A man that I believe could potentially be a fascinating, nuanced and compelling character.
The character has completely devolved into a ranting and raving megalomaniac in these last three issues. There is no sense of that ice-cold precision, the self-control. All of it was thrown away in order to “scare” him to bolster up some new unknown villain. It’s boring; it’s been done.
I have watched this entire franchise start with so much promise only for it to crash and burn due to mismanagement and just really dull and overdone plots. Sure, Wilson does introduced some interesting science fiction concepts in building this new world, but as we have seen over the last year, DC editorial doesn’t hesitate to literally blow up all of that, so why should I care? This book may have some technical strengths, but it is representative of some very bad habits in the Big 2 world.
Final Verdict: 4.0- A world that was ripe with potential falls into some very bad habits.
