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‘Earth 2: World’s End’ #15 drops the ball

‘Earth 2: World’s End’ #15 drops the ball

Cover

Earth 2: World’s End #15

Written by Daniel H. Wilson, Marguerite Bennett, Mike Johnson

Art by Scott McDaniel, Eduardo Pansica & Paul Neary, R.B. Silva & Walden Wong, Jorge Jimenez, Robson Rocha & Guillermo Ortego, Tyler Kirkham, Eddy Barrows & Eber Ferreira

Published by DC Comics

Another week, another issue of Earth 2: World’s End. Without repeating too much from any of last weeks’ reviews, the art is rushed and poorly organized, Dick Grayson’s segments are a particular eye sore, items and characters can acquire powers or abilities with no explanation, few characters have under gone any significant character change, the battle between the planetary forces of Earth and Apokolips has been going on for eight issues now and is more like a terrible fight scene from Dragonball Z, and despite being half way through the book’s run, very little has been accomplished. It’s long become clear that this series is little more than bloated filler until DC’s upcoming event, Convergence, and this book can thankfully end.

The plot so far has been thus: Apokolips has made its way to Earth 2 with intent to destroy the planet and enslave the populace. What little remains of the World’s Army has been creating a shelter for refugees underground and launching a small last-ditch effort against Darkseid’s forces which failed. The Superman and Batman families consisting of Val Zod, Power Girl, Lois Lane, Batman, and Huntress have traveled into one of Earth’s many fire pits to shut it down. While inside, Huntress was taken capture and turned into a new Fury. The others found the original Superman, Clark Kent, being held prisoner along with Earth’s Avatar of the Red. Alan Scott, Avatar of the Green, has recruited his fellow Avatars to combat the Furies and turned into a waste of page space. Meanwhile Dick Grayson has being doing nothing of importance except for getting his wife killed, his son lost, and himself beaten up by Ted Grant.

Instead of going into further boring details, here’s the only thing of note within the twenty plus pages: the major highlight of this issue ia an ultimately hilarious moment with Clark Kent and one of the new problems with World’s End. With the very first issue of Earth 2, the original trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all introduced, mostly to be killed off to establish a new status quo. It’s why Clark Kent’s return in this series has been so baffling. It seems to be rather pointless and in fact is. Clark Kent’s been held up in Desaad’s laboratory for years, serving as the template for countless twisted clones. Apparently these clones (despite being based off Superman’s DNA) are easily killed when injected with Clark’s blood. To save his family, Clark sacrifices himself by draining all of his blood into the clones.  At first it’s honestly  a sad and moving moment. The first great hero of this world dies to save the family that had already lost him. Everyone is sad and most are drawn to tears. Unfortunately the entire image is ruined by the Avatar of the Red, a big hulking monster, lurking in the background looking completely confused. It’s an impressive display of killing all dramatic weight to the scene. It’s impressive to see any tone or mood utterly lost because of one image. Earth 2: World’s End #15 is little more than continuation of the terrible issues that have preceded it. Avoid at all costs.

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