NB of the Week

She is not my spoils, but I love her. You may not love her, but she is your spoils.

Earth 2: Society #22

Written by Dan Abnett

Drawn by Vicente Cifuentes

Earth 2 has had a pretty hard ride over the years. Started in 2012 under the direction of James Robinson, it immediately hit "controversy" when it was announced that old school Green Lantern Alan Scott would be gay (while a part of the New 52 relaunch, it was still a separate continuity Earth from the main one leaving us with a gay Scott and the normal straight Hal Jordan so it was soon forgotten about). Despite the hubbub over that, it was an extremely well written book with updated takes on the golden aged heroes of the DCU. However, its glory did not last very long as Robinson was gone from the book (and DC all together) with issue 16 being his last. 17 saw Tom Taylor take over which was a pretty decent fit as his dark rendition of DC in the Injustice comics had been doing pretty well. Sadly, it felt pretty clear that even though the story was well written, his book switched tone and direction drastically from what Robinson has established. By issue 27, the title once again took another hit as Taylor was joined by an eventual 4 other writers to help finish Earth 2 with a bi-weekly title called Earth 2: World's End. This forced event saw Darkseid come to Earth 2 in the attempt of taking their planet as the new Apokolips. The story was entirely flipped in every way from what had already been written. All suffered through this. It was poor plotting, poor characters, poor writing. It felt clear as day that DC pushed this agenda into the title. By the end of both titles (Earth 2 and Earth 2: World's End), the planet had been taken by Darkseid and all that was left of humanity fled to try and find another home.

In 2015, DC launched Earth 2: Society where we followed the survivors as they found a new planet and having to deal with everything that comes from creating an entire society (clever title, I know) from scratch. It was launched by one of the World's End writers and Robopocalypse novelist Daniel H. Wilson. Wilson's story wasn't bad, It was leaps better than the garbage World's End created and it was, at least at first, a very interesting idea: How to the heroes deal with running an entire world instead of "merely" saving it? However, readers saw yet another change with issue 8 as Dan Abnett came aboard as writer. Thankfully, this is where the title began to shine yet again. Abnett took what he had been dealt and was slowly creating a superhero book worthy of the heroes it had. He was able to balance their world plots with superhero plots while also being given free reign to start over. Which he did. We eventually saw the rise of the Ultrahumanite who wanted to open Pandora's Box to create his own world. To try and stop this, the heroes opened the box first and ushered in a new world. One that was familiar in tone to what readers of these "older" characters knew while still being a modern relaunch of everything. They had to fight one more battle for control of this new world but in the end, heroes do what comes naturally and they won.

What this, the title's final issue does, is reaffirm what we all want from a comic. We are given a high note to end on and we see that now that some time has passed, these heroes are the Justice League of their world. They all have their parts. Some days are harder than others but they try their damnedest to work together and make sure the good days outweigh the bad. And nothing more. This last issue was almost all monologue essentially telling the readers that even though we've went through all this crap with the characters, they made it through with us as well. It ends on possibly the highest note any of the titles have seen and that makes very hopeful that when DC relaunches it as part of their Rebirth wave, we'll be in good hands. Unless they change it all and screw it all up. But what are the odds of that happening again?