CREDIT: DC Comics
Rating: 3/5 – Too Many Characters. Confusing For Readers New to Earth 2?
by ComicSpectrum reviewer Shawn Hoklas.
Earth 2 World’s End packs in as much story as possible in this first part of DC’s third weekly event. Following Batman Eternal and Futures End with Earth 2 World’s End, DC is now filling almost an entire month with a weekly release. For those who have not been following the main Earth 2 series, this book may be tough to get into with it’s immense cast of characters. Although they have familiar names and looks, they feel very different from the main DC New 52 Universe versions. For those that have been following it, it’s heavy on the “what’s happened before” and only towards the final third of the book do they start to move the story forward.
Although the story is driven by Daniel Wilson, writers Marguerite Bennett and Mike Johnson also contribute to this first issue that deals with the heroes of Earth 2 and the armies and agents of Darkseid. It’s packed full of characters and because there’s so many, no one character truly stands out. Although Green Lantern narrates the first part of the book, that switches about halfway through and different characters take different turns narrating and driving the story forward. It lacks a singular focus that could have benefited a book with this many characters, especially those that may be new to readers I would assume DC hopes to capture with this series.
For as many characters are in this book, it seems as though there are also that many artists. The breakdowns are by Scott McDaniel, and then eight different artists work on the book including Ardian Syaf, Eddy Barrows and Cam Smith, to name a few. The art is strong throughout the book, but I noticed differences in quality, especially during the book’s middle section. That said, the art is the strongest part of this book and I’ll be curious to see how the different artists will handle future issues.
DC has consistently taken this type of multi-creator approach to their over-sized first issues and weekly series, and at times it pays off like this one did with the art, but because of the amount of characters and story lines presented, this one failed to hit the mark with me on story content, which is disappointing considering how strong I’ve felt the main Earth 2 series has been. This is a series that can benefit in future if they don’t try to fit every Earth 2 character into one issue. Allowing single characters time to shine so readers can become invested in them would be a smart path to follow, in my opinion.
Reviewed by: Shawn Hoklas
(shawn@comicspectrum.com)
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i just read all the Earth 2 series last weekend leading up to this, and i found Worlds End 1 very satisfying. it was that old thing where the reader is rewarded for knowing all the canon and getting all the references. i’m looking forward to reading this one every week. i wonder, are they setting it up for Worlds End to be a prequel of sorts to Futures End, and in Worlds End we’ll actually see the Apokolypse War everyone’s been referencing in Futures End? that’d be even more rewarding for me, following both of these comics every week, that would be such a huge payoff for a couple of huge endeavors. i’ve not been a fan of DC in the past, but if they pull this off it would earn them a lot of respect from me