Earth 2: Society #5 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Unfortunately, I have to say I'm done now.

I've complained in previous reviews that I'm pretty confused about the overarching story that Wilson is (allegedly) telling.  But, the last straw for me is really that Wilson seems to be changing everyone's characterization willy-nilly to fit this (still-unclear) story.

Most egregiously, Flash is shown as a spoiled brat and reluctant hero.  I would be OK if Wilson were telling a story where Flash couldn't handle the pressure anymore.  After all, we learn that he spent 30 days in constant motion, helping to move supplies around New Earth 2 to build the cities after planetfall.  But, Wilson isn't telling that story.  Instead, he shows Flash as reluctant to help.  It's the exact opposite of the Jay Garrick that we saw in the first series.  That Jay was often the only one still trying to win when the odds seemed overwhelming to everyone else.  To make matters worse, Wilson has Flash just suddenly change this characterization, deciding to redeem himself and save a crashing Overwatch-One with no explanation for why he had the change of heart.

Moreover, we learn that Jimmy Olsen is the Big Bad, the man behind Anarky.  He's decided that he's a god and, for some reason, he stole the Source Vault and wants to activate it.  Again, I could see how Jimmy get here, given that he's come to possess so much power (via his merger with the Mother Box) in such a little time.  It makes sense that he might lose touch with reality.  But, Wilson doesn't actually show us this evolution; Jimmy is just the bad guy now and we're supposed to go with it.

Even Wilson's characterization of Batman is odd.  He's arrogant and judgmental, which would totally if he were still Thomas Wayne.  But, he's not.  He's Dick Grayson.  It's almost like Wilson forgot that.

In other words, I hung in there through "Earth 2:  World's End" and "Convergence" because I had hopes that this series would return to letting us get to know the characters.  I longed for the great first few issues of "Earth 2," where we were introduced to them.  But, everything went off the rails with the Darkseid War and we never really returned.  Wilson's scattered storytelling and bizarre characterizations makes these new issues difficult to read, let alone enjoy.  In fact, I'm only giving this issue two stars for Jimenez's art and Sachez's beautiful colors, particularly on the Batsuit.

[Sigh.]  Good-bye, New Earth 2.  Hopefully we'll have a reason to visit later.

** (two of five stars)

Earth 2: Society #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue suffers from the same problem as its predecessors, with Wilson leaving huge gaps from issue to issue.  But, for the first time, the story in this issue actually makes sense in and of itself.

This issue begins abruptly, with Batman arriving in Nexus, the city that Val has created for himself, and trying to arrest him for killing Terry Sloan.  Flash arrives to defend Val, though we're not told why he just so happened to arrive at the same time as Dick.  Also, Dick's reasons for wanting to arrest Val are entirely circumstantial:  Val hated Sloan so...he killed him.  (Dick didn't seem to have gotten the memo that Val's a pacifist.)  The attempted arrest devolves into squabbling:  despite us seeing Flash last issue building Midwest City pretty much with his bare hands, Dick accuses him of hiding in the wake of Planetfall.  Oddly, Flash doesn't seem to dispute that assertion, instead just accusing Dick of doing the same thing, hiding in the shadows.  These moments, where each issue includes information that seems to directly contradict something that we learned in the previous issue, make it feel like a committee is writing this book and not just one guy.

But, everyone puts aside their issues for story time!  Val reveals why Karen hates him:  he constructed the Fire Pits.  Of course, he didn't know that he was constructing the Fire Pits for Sloan, but Karen hates him nonetheless, since it was the Pits that killed her father.  (Of course, I don't really remember it that way, but let's just keep going.)  It all gets revealed as a result of an attack by the Earth 2 version of Anarky on Neotropolis, where she steals a set of engines part of the original ship.  Sloan uses a stun blast from Overwatch-One to disperse the crowd of civilians that Anarky has assembled, and Kara and Val decide that enough is enough.  They storm Overwatch-One to take down Sloan, and Sloan tells Kara the truth.  Fast-forwarding to the present, Val's story time comes to a close when they learn that Anarky has hacked into Overwatch-One and set it on a collision course with Neotropolis.

I really want to give this issue three stars, but I just can't.  It's starting to feel like work reading this series, and I think Wilson's best course of action is recognizing that throwing us a year into the future was a bad call.  We need to spend a few issues focusing on each character in the wake of Planetfall, instead of getting the information in awkwardly inserted flashback stories that leave us (or, at least, me) more confused than enlightened.  I'll give Wilson to issue #6 (maybe), but then I think that it'll time to reassess.

** (two of five stars)

Earth 2: Society #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I am quite honestly totally lost here.

It seems pretty clear that I need to forget the preview of this series entirely:  Huntress and Red Arrow (at least for now) are firmly on the side of the heroes trying to prevent Terry Sloan from terraforming New Earth 2 in this issue.  But, I'll admit that I keep defaulting to that storyline in my head, forcing me to take a moment each issue to remember that it's not (at this point) the story that Wilson is actually telling.

However, putting aside the preview, I'm still confused.  We still haven't been given any reason why Sloan wants to terraform New Earth 2.  To the extent that he addresses it, Wilson seems to imply that Sloan is doing it in anger over the people of New Earth 2 not appreciating the fact that he's the one that saved them.  However, we're not given any reason for why he just now decided to get all "vengeful god" over that transgression.  It's like he's a kid that woke up one day and decided to disassemble his Lego fortresses.

Moreover, Wilson continues jumping from the past and the present, and it's getting hard to keep them straight.  We're supposed to juggle the revelation that Power Girl now hates Val-Zod in the present with Lois's story of discovering her humanity in the past.  The problem is that the Lois story is a moving one:  after a group of scared refugees reject her, she later uses her network systems to connect people to relatives from whom they were separated during Planetfall.  Given that Alan is now a lobotomized avatar of the Green, Lois is the closest this series has to an emotional core.  But, we're distracted from her story by the chaos surrounding it.

I have to say that I just can't believe that we're here.  I loved this series when it started, but, just as we got to know the characters, we got caught in the Michael Bay movie that the Darkseid war was.  Now, a lot of those characters are lost to us; beyond just Alan, Kendra is reduced to exploring the world on her own and Jay is building houses in "Midwest City."  Honestly, I think we need an issue or two where we just stay firmly in the present and focused on one character so that we can have something approaching a connection with a central character.  Wilson starts to get there with Lois in this issue, but I'm doubtful that the focus will remain on her.  I guess we'll see, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to give Wilson to show me.

** (two of five stars)

Earth 2: Society #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, it too me a while to piece together the events of this issue with the events from the "Earth 2:  Society" sneak peak that DC released a while ago.  The problem is that they don't really match that well.

First, we have the events of this issue.  While approaching New Earth 2, Terry Sloan discovered that one of the metahuman refugees was trying to destroy the rescue ships, and he was forced to crash land all of them before the saboteur could destroy them.  (It seems to me that the only two candidates for the saboteur are Mr. Terrific or Jimmy Olsen, though I'm not sure why either of them would try to destroy humanity.)  Sloan decides that it's not worth trying to explain his actions to the general public, since no one would believe him anyway.  (This part sort of makes sense, but it comes across as a way too convenient ploy meant simply to re-establish Sloan as the villain.)  He and Commander Sato establish themselves as dictators from Overwatch-One, the rescue ship that they were controlling and that they decide to keep in orbit around Earth.  (I'm less clear on how exactly they become dictators from such a remote position or why anyone would follow them given Sloan's actions  What power does Sloan wind up having over them?)  In the aftermath of the crashes, Sloan invades the TSS Endurance (the progenitor of New Gotham) to secure Batman's Source Vault before the others (i.e., Helena) can secure it.  A year later, Sloan has inexplicably returned to the proto-tunnels of the TSS Endurance to combine the Source Vault with his Genesis Machine to recreate the world in the original Earth 2's image.  (Unfortunately, we're not privy to why Sloan decided to act at this point.  He's originally worried about the alien species inhabiting New Earth 2, but you'd figure that humanity has found a way to deal with them after a year.)

However, these events conflict with the events that we saw in the preview.  There, it's Helena and Red Arrow, working with Jimmy Olsen (calling himself Dr. Impossible) that are activating the Genesis Machine, with the rest of the Justice Society (Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Power Girl) trying to stop them.  Moreover, Helena refers to the gift from her father as the Genesis Machine itself, not the Source Vault.  I'm not sure the significance of that.  It seems notable, except for the fact that Sloan controls both items already in issue #2, so it functionally doesn't matter.  It seems incompatible for Helena and Sloan both to activate the Genesis Machine, so I have to wonder if Wilson was forced to change stories?  I just don't see how it'll work otherwise.

At any rate, even without the sneak peak, I'm seriously confused about the story that Wilson is telling.  He uses flashbacks and flash-forwards to tell the story, but I feel like we don't really know enough the new status quo to stay grounded.  Moreover, they were essentially the same story, with the Wonders trying to stop Sloan from doing something.  It just all wound up feeling repetitive.  It's particularly egregious because I've got a ton of questions that I'd love to see answered.  I'm hoping that we don't again spend a lot of time on some overarching crisis (like Darkseid in the last series) and eventually get to know the characters a little better.

** (two of five stars)

Earth 2: Society #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

If you read the sneak peek that appeared in late May, then you're probably as confused as I am.  In the pages contained in that issue, we saw a team composed of Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Power Girl rush to prevent the Huntress, Jimmy Olsen (now called Dr. Impossible), and the Red Arrow from activating the Genesis Machine, using it to wipe clean the life on New Earth 2 and replace it with lifeforms that existed on the original Earth 2.  However, this issue covers a time well before that confrontation happens.

Instead, this issue focuses mostly on the time after planetfall.  With Telos and his influence over the world gone, Dick Grayson finds himself paralyzed again.  From his viewpoint on the newly terraformed New Earth 2, he watches the twelve ships that fled the original Earth 2 arrive, thanks to the message sent to them from Green Lantern at the end of "Convergence" #8.  However, they weren't meant to land, meaning that they crash into the planet.  Terry Sloan, on TSS Overwatch-One, narrates that the people that survive this crash landing will form twelve different cities, to be ruled by the "Overwatch-One."

In the present, a year after planetfall, it doesn't appear this plan is going so well.  Gotham is the same den of scum and villainy that it was on Earth 2, with Batman noting to himself that every ship carries some rats.  He's in pursuit of Sloan, but he's got to fend off his own (unidentified) pursuers.  We also learn that Dick hasn't found his son yet, since he pauses in his pursuit to see if a kid getting mugged by two men is his son.  Meanwhile, someone named Johnny Sorrow is also after Sloan.  Sorrow tries to grab Sloan, but Batman intervenes, announcing that Sloan is wanted for "crimes against society."  Sloan notes that he is Overwatch-One, but tells Batman that Overwatch has been compromised.  He uses a rocketpack to flee, but not before he asks Batman if "he" sent him.  Failing to capture him, Batman wonders who possibly could have scared Sloan so badly.

Despite deviating from the sneak-peak story, this issue is a solid enough start.  It doesn't blow your mind or anything, but it does a good job of establishing the current status quo without answering so many questions that you feel like you have nothing left to .  We still don't know how Dick has regained use of his legs or where the other heroes are.  (All we learned in the sneak peak was that Val appears to have retired.)  We get a hint that Alan has lost his humanity.  It's clear that the politics of New Earth 2 are complicated, but we're going to have to wait to get more information.

But, I actually have high hopes for Wilson answering those questions.  The Apokolips storyline dominated virtually the entire run of "Earth 2;" I actually have problems remembering the stories not related in some way to Darkseid.  In that way, this series actually feels like the first time that we're really engaging with these characters on their own terms.  It's almost like the last series didn't happen.  Given how that series started with an amazing burst of creativity but ended with a depressing jumble of chaos, maybe it's not a bad thing to view the past as the past.  In other words, I'm hoping that this issue is the fresh start that we need to enjoy this setting in the way that it was originally intended.  I'm going to dare to hope.

*** (three of five stars)