Bennett and Taylor at least try to make this issue match the events of "Earth 2: World's End" #1, in the sense that Helena, Kara, Lois, Thomas, and Val all find themselves at CERN outside Geneva. I appreciate the effort, since "Batman Eternal" doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of the ongoing Bat-family books.
The problem is that the two issues have entirely different endings. At the end of "Earth 2: World's End" #1, the five heroes plus Green Lantern face K'Li, Fury of Apocalypse. At the end of this issue, the characters had just defeated a zombie scourge infecting CERN (more on that in a minute). This issue specifically says that it happens after "Earth 2: World's End #1," but that makes no sense, unless we learn that they defeated K'Li between issues #1 and #2 and then the events of this issue happen. In fact, it makes more sense the opposite way, that the fought off the zombie scourge in this issue and then found themselves facing K'Li. If this series isn't going to descend into "Batman Eternal" levels of chaos, they're going to need to keep the continuity a lot tighter.
Beyond that problem, this issue is silly and not in a good way. Zombies have essentially overrun CERN; I assume that Bedlam released them in part to cover his escape with Mister Miracle, Mr. Terrific, and Terry Sloan. It's the resolution of this problem that's ridiculous, with Kara and Val flying around the collider to themselves collide, so that the energy released by said collision could somehow burn off the virus infecting the zombies. That doesn't seem to make sense on a basic level, but whatever. I guess that I'll go with it.
The main point of this issue is to throw together Kara and Val and Helena and Thomas. We learn that Kara and Val knew each other on Krypton, sharing a bond because they were both orphans, and Helena and Thomas' reunion is as tense as you'd expect it to be. If you can look past the fact that they all already met in "Earth 2: World's End" #1, then this issue does a decent job of exploring those relationships more than we saw in that issue. (I'm not sure that I buy Helena so quickly warming to her grandfather, though, particularly, as she said, since she already has family in the form of Kara.)
Anyway, I'm willing to give everyone a few issues to find their footing in this new publishing situation. I really enjoyed "Earth 2: World's End" #1, and I'm hoping that it doesn't somehow overshadow this series. I wouldn't want to see a scenario like we saw with "Batman R.I.P."/"Final Crisis," where the main title actually wound up not telling the real story, but a facsimile of it. Fingers crossed.
** (two of five stars)
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