Earth 2 Annual #1

What the world needs now is MORE BATMAN!

While half asleep last night, I came up with a plan for you to use if you ever want to scare your friends. So here's what you do if you ever find yourself with a group friends in a stark urban/lonely rural/disquieting natural landscape!

How To Properly Scare Your Friends

1. Gather your friends together.
2. Light the room with candles.
3. Invoke Satan's name loudly.
4. Begin playing a scary children's game like Bloody Mary or Ouija or Hide and Seek or Machete Tag.
5. After the game has been going for at least fifteen minutes or so, excuse yourself from the room.
6. Kill yourself.
7. Come back and haunt them!
8. Congratulate yourself on a job well done.

If they don't seem to be afraid of you, look in a mirror. If you don't look like something from a Japanese Horror Movie, you might have to use your brains instead of your good looks to scare them. Try manipulating the Ouija board so it spells out, "NO MORE CANDY" or "I HAVEN'T HAD ANAL IN YEARS."

This is the super trimmed down version of my late night vision since remembering all the random thoughts that enter your half-asleep head is stupidly impossible. I really need a secretary to dictate my pre-sleep and post-waking thoughts so I stop spilling them all over the bedroom floor and losing them. I think the entire thought began with a flow chart of things to do to survive a Japanese Horror Film! The first decision was something like, "Look around at your friends? Is everybody Japanese?" If Yes then "You are fucked." Actually, it went on to ask multiple questions like "Are you making a typical stand against Japanese Cultural Homogeneity?" If Yes, then "Do you harbor any horrible secrets like the way you might have treated the fat kid in elementary school?" It would be a long string of questions that if you answer yes to all of them, you'd eventually get to the "You're fucked!" conclusion because not only will you die in the horror movie but you're most likely the cause of the horrible spirit as well!

That whole last paragraph just seems to come across as lazy because it's simply an example of something I should have just put together. And I might have, too, if I'd thought of it with a clearer head! But I don't feel like dredging up all the half-remembered ideas that I loved so much last night as I was falling asleep and now can barely grasp in the morning. That's work and, as Future Retard so eloquently put it so many years ago, work is not fun.

One more thing before I begin reading another stupid Annual: my cat's new nickname is Captain Blasters.

The American Motto: "We get it done without expending any significant time questioning what 'it' is!"

Al Pratt, now known as The Atom, is on his way to find the new Batman or defeat Steppenwolf or imperialize another country as he remembers when he finally gave some consideration to the phrase, "Get it done." At the time, his therapist was an amazingly intuitive genius that realized Al had problems because he hadn't smiled for a full year. At the beginning of that year, Al was blown up by a nuclear missile and survived. That's the kind of thing that would have me dancing in the streets! Except I'm pretty sure he has Survivor's Guilt and that can make you think all kinds of crazy things like you don't deserve to live or that God actually exists.

Al Pratt also remembers fighting vampires with Steel two and three quarters years ago. He may or may not have been a Manhunter. Two and a half years ago, his therapist asked the most important question of all.

Oh! Oh! I know! Because this is a Teen Rated comic book! Also because our patriarchy has had a serious issue with showing the penis, even when it's flaccid! I don't know if it has to do with stodgy old white men with small dicks or somehow trying to control the sexual urges of women by allowing them very few mainstream opportunities to see the male genitalia. Recently there have been more movies willing to show the flaccid penis and I say, "It's about fucking time!" Not that I was particularly clamoring for it! But I never understood why it had to be such a huge issue that my aunt kept a mental list of the handful of movies she could rent at the video store that might give her a glimpse of the dong.

So Al Pratt, The Atom, has entered Phnom Penh to seek out some guy named Henri Roy. Meanwhile Steel has a meeting with Commander Khan of the World Army. The meeting is about the Fire Pits of Earth which Sloan set up probably because he had some kind of back door deal with Darkseid. That sounded sexier than I expected. Oh, but it gets even sexier! Commander Khan wants Steel to penetrate the Fire Pit in Rio De Janeiro!

That part with Steel and Khan was just an interlude and since it didn't say, "First Interlude," I'm guessing that's going to be a story for another day. I think it's about time we learn about the new Batman and how he's going to rescue The Atom.

Except I was taken in by The Atom's disguise myself and forgot he was The Atom! Why should he need to be rescued? He just grows into a giant with atomic fists and begins getting it done. Meanwhile the newest Batman sits in the rafters doing research. Roy climbs into his Mech and runs off while Newest Batman makes his debut taking out some reinforcements so The Atom can chase after Roy who opted for the Grasshopper over the Atlas because he's more the turn and run type than the stand and blow 5,000 missiles down your opponent's throat type.

Here he is! The newest Goddamned BAAAAAATMMMMMMAAAAAAAN! (Sang to the tune of whatever fucking song is stuck in your head right now)

The Atom captures Henri Roy but that's just the backdrop for the real story. War has been declared on Steppenwolf's country of Dherain and the World Army is sending in The Atom with Red Arrow and some of the Sandmen. Also, Henri Roy's boy, Henri Junior, has been having oncoming super power headaches for some time now and Sloan wants to run some tests on him. Also also, the World Army is bringing back their Heroes Initiative to gather up heroes for their cause. Ostensibly overseen by Terry Sloan, the Heroes Initiative will be managed and run by Sonia Sato, The Atom's crush. But I think that whole war with Steppenwolf thing can wait for the regular issues. For now, let's get back to Newest Batman!

Newest Batman is busy with detective work. Seems a bunch of super villains on Earth were given their powers by Kanto of Apokolips. And Kanto has been calling in those super villains to do some work for him as payback for their special powers. Newest Batman has been trying to track down where they're going and what Kanto is up to.

Is Newest Batman a killer?

Meanwhile in the epilogue (or the prologue for Earth #13 depending on how empty or full your comic books are), Scott Free and Barda are killing dinosaurs in Gotham City's Lost Land. The Gotham of Earth 2 is full of broken down buildings and burnt out skyscrapers, lush jungles, mad scientists, and roaming dinosaurs. In other words, not half as dangerous as the Gotham City of Earth Prime. Barda and Scott are in search of Newest Batman but have found no sign of him.

They do manage to find Fury though.

Earth 2 Annual #1 Rating: It mentioned Kanto the Assassin! That should be good enough for everybody's dog's mother.