Earth 2: Society #1

Earth 2! Featuring nobody you remember from the Golden Age!

I hope by the end of this issue, Helena and Oliver terraform the planet and it destroys everybody, replacing them with the Justice Society. I was really hoping World's End and Convergence was going to put Earth 2 out of its misery. But here it is still on life support and as much heroin as the nurse will allow it. I hope somebody doesn't accidentally trip over the plug to the respirator!

The issue begins with Batdick climbing the walls of Macross City. He's under attack by somebody. I'm sure it'll be somebody recognizable since the only people that exist on this planet are the Earth-2 Wonders that survived Convergence and the citizens of Earth-2 who escaped on the TSS Endurance. Unless maybe Skartaris still exists in the center of the planet and all of the time traveling bad guys will eventually escape. Until then, I think the bad guys of the planet are The Huntress and Doctor Impossible and Green Arrow who might actually be Red now. And I wouldn't say they're actually bad guys. It's more like they and the other Wonders have a difference of opinion. One side thinks Planet Brainiac should be terraformed into a perfect look-a-like of Earth-2 while the other side thinks it should remain a figment of Alan Scott's imagination. One side is very, very wrong although I think I'm probably supposed to be siding with them. Whichever side has Batdick is probably the side the reader should be rooting for.

Batdick is after Terry Sloan, the original Mister Terrific who now goes by Mister Eight because fuck if I know. I don't know if he's trying to save him from a sniper or capture him. Terry Sloan is the smartest man on New Earth-2, so the "good" guys may just need him to fix their computers full of porn viruses thanks to Power Girl.

Looks like Batdick is trying to save Sloan from Johnny Sorrow and the Ministers of Truth. That sounds like a gang from The Boomer Bible.

Since this is all taking place one year after Planet Brainiac's conversion to New Earth-2, we need some flashbacks to figure out what's going on!

In the flashback, Dick Grayson remembers enough of World's End and Convergence to satisfy anybody smart enough not to have bothered with them. Green Lantern and Telos transformed Planet Brainiac into a new Earth and shoved it into a binary star system in a Goldilock's orbit. Green Lantern then set off a beacon to call back the survivors of Earth-2. When they arrive in twelve separate ships, Terry Sloan causes them to crash in twelve carefully chosen coordinates. Luckily Green Lantern is around to save the lives of New Earth-2's new citizens. No thanks to Terry Sloan! I hope the Ministers of Truth kick his ass!

Dick Grayson is saved by Mister Terrific (the new Michael Holt version) and declares they've arrived to build a better world. Ha! Not if Green Lantern can help it!

Back to the present, Batdick takes a moment to check on some kid to make sure it's not his kid. Fucking father of the year still can't find his son, enh? After Batdick feeds the kid's dog some chocolate, he returns to rescuing Terry Sloan.

I guess the Ministers of Truth show their faces and whoever sees them (even themselves) goes mad?

Terry Sloan gets away leaving the reader with a whole lot of explication, a few mysteries, and a story that might work if Daniel H. Wilson can figure out the pacing. He also needs to work on what needs to be said and what can be left out. I think this issue would have been better off telling most of its tale in the present and telling only so much of the flashback as Dick Grayson would have been aware of. The ships coming in and then mysteriously crashing. Maybe seeing Green Lantern helping out and then his rescue by Mister Terrific. Fill the pages you've saved with more interaction with Johnny Sorrow to get the reader interested in the story that really matters. The back story can be filled in tiny portion by tiny portion and in a variety of imaginative ways that don't need a flashback scene that walks us through every single moment. Do writers and comic book companies fear readers closing a monthly title with lots of questions? I think they like to stick with just one because they probably think readers are dumb. So the big question this book leaves us with is this: who is Terry Sloan afraid of?!

Earth 2: Society #1 Rating: I'm afraid this book is going to get overwhelmed by all of the characters. It really should just be Earth 2: Batdick. Twenty pages every month isn't a lot of room to deal with multiple characters. Especially when Earth-2 comic books have been going on for three years and we've yet to even come close to any kind of Justice Society group. How about simply dropping the Just Forget About Us Society and give the lead to Dick Grayson?