Earth 2: World's End #5 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Daniel H. Wilson, Marguerite Bennett, Mike Johnson
Art By: Jan Duursema, Jonathan Glapion, Tyler Kirkham, Joe Weems, Eduardo Pansica, Jaime Mendoza, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: November 5, 2014

More Battles

Okay let's get down to business here and talk about what's been going down with World's End.  Last week we saw....... you guessed it more battles, but I guess there was a little more going on as well.  Batman, Power Girl, Val-Zod, Red Tornado and Huntress decided to go down into the Geneva fire pit to try and shut it down, but it might be harder than they hoped because they came across that tyrant of torture, Desaad.  Elsewhere Hawk Girl was having a hell of a time trying to keep up with Doctor Fate as he tried to find a new, less crazy host and it looks like since Constantine is currently in Earth 2, he just might fit the bill, leading us to the possible future we saw during the Futures End event.  Aqua Woman is also having troubles when she discovers that the Fury: Death made a visit to Atlantis killing and resurrecting a lot of her people making them into her monsters.  Finally when Green Lantern was on his way to check in on Aqua Woman's dilemma, he was held up by a resurfaced Grundy, who if you didn't remember, really likes hurting Alan Scott.  Okay let's check out this issue and see how our pilgrimage to a parallel planet places this week.

Explain It!:

Our issue this week begins exactly how the solicits say they will, with Green Lantern fighting Grundy.  Now that's all the solicit really said and I'd really be happy if this issue were just a Green Lantern issue, but don't you know it, the rest of the Earth 2 party crashers have to come in and wreck up the joint.  But we're not ready for that yet, so let's get back to Alan Scott.  So it's Green Lantern and Grundy fighting..... again, but this time the fight is stopped when the actual embodiment of The Green shows up and tells Alan that he will make an alliance with Solomon Grundy.  Now please someone tell me if I'm wrong here, but I had a real problem with this issue calling the avatar of the Gray, Solomon Grundy.  Yeah, yeah, we all know who this character is but I was pretty sure that up until this point we just called him Grundy and I was okay with that.  As I'm writing this I have a vague recollection of them maybe going with the Solomon thing during the Earth 2 Villain's Month and if that's the case then I still don't really care for it because that issue was awful........ Anyway, Grundy agrees to team up with Alan for the sake of survival after all this Apokolips invasion stuff is over and she tells the pair to search out the other Avatars of Earth, such as the Red, which we know of, the white that represents the air and the Blue that represents the water.  So I guess it's a questing we will go with Green Lantern and his smelly sidekick as we leave this section hopeful for the Green Lantern stories it will bring in the future.

Down in Atlantis, Aqua Woman sends some old monster like guardians of Atlantis to defend the survivors of Death as the Fury's zombie Atlantean horde still threatens the kingdom.  With Atlantis protected for the time being, she makes her way down to the tomb of the old gods, where it looks like she's going to unleash the Krakken.  I don't know what she'll really release, but if it is a Krakken....... well that usually doesn't ever turn out well.  Over in London, Flash, Hawk Girl and Doctor Fate do their best to try and help survivors flee the area as they try and control the Fury: Famine.  Now get this, because I don't really get it myself, so hopefully you will.  If you read this week's Earth 2, or have happened to see Famine in other issues of World's End, then you'll know that she's a big blob of a alien woman with some sort of armor on her.  Now Flash sees this as being some kind of machine and being of........ well normal intelligence figures that machines can be taken apart and he strips her of her armor.  Now this is the part I don't get, since that little bit of armor is gone, Doctor Fate can now cast a spell to turn her power against her.  He couldn't do that with that bit of belly armor going on before?  Magic's weird.  Besides for my ignorance in how things work, this whole section is great because....... Well because I really want to see more of these characters, but we're left on the cliffhanger of Doc Fate just casting the spell.  We don't get to see him become a old gypsy man and then run his finger across her cheek while saying "Thinner".  Well that's how I imagine this spell to work and if you don't get that reference then you should really read Thinner, or at least watch the movie.

Elsewhere Jimmy Olsen is communing with the mother box and it tells him he's special and that today is the day that he dies, while Dr. Crain is Robot Manning it up next to him.  Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about all our other heroes that are hanging out with the World Army.  Fury and Big Barda want Mister Miracle to Boom Tube them into the war, while Terry Sloan shows them his dimensional camouflaged ship and outs Mister Terrific as not being from this Earth.  Now I don't know if I'm just an asshole here or what, but it seems that there's a lot in this I'm not getting.  Now when Terry Sloan is explaining about how his ship camouflages itself by sitting in another dimension, I don't know if I'm looking at the small ship that is plain as day, or the gigantic ship that seems to be out of phase beyond it.  Am I just nitpicking here?  Whatever, Now that Mister Terrific is kind of outed as a Prime Earther, he shirks the question about what Sloan's talking about and instead shows them his new inventions, Boom Spheres.  If you don't remember we saw these "God Killers" in the Earth 2 Futures End, so even though I really thought that that timeline would eventually be erased, we're inching closer to it all the time it seems.

In the end we head down into the fire pit of Geneva to check in on our Batman/Superman heroes.  Who apparently can't do shit to stop Desaad because even though he's horribly out numbered, Desaad simply summons some sort of gigantic fire pit tendril that opens up and allows him to enter with Huntress before plummeting back down into the lava while our heroes just seem to watch.  It's a good thing that Batman put a tracker on Huntress's suit.  So now the team head down further to find their captured friend, but what they find in the last page is something I never would of expected.  Yeah you wouldn't guess it either, it's Superman apparently alive.

That's it for this week's issue of Earth 2: World's End and with that cliffhanger I'm sure the interwebs are going to be rife with disparaging remarks.  I don't know how many times I've read already about how people would love this book more if it wasn't so focused on the Batman and Superman characters and now here we are with what looks like a living Superman......... Riots on the message boards people!  Hopefully it's just another Bizarro and Val can simply stop it like he did the last one by touching it........ because that was a thing.  Make sure you come back next week as we see more cluttered stories about our Earth 2 heroes and maybe get a more one directional story so we can wrap our heads around what's going on every week.  See you then.

Bits and Pieces:

So much going on, so little attention span.  DC's really jamming these issues with as much stuff as they can and with two titles now telling this story, I'd think they'd be able to focus on more individual characters at a time instead of throwing them overhand at our faces and saying "You're Welcome".  I don't know, maybe that's a little harsh, but as much as I want to get into this series.......... It's hard.  A ton of story a little at at time with a ton of artists doing their best to try and tell it.  It just doesn't seem like a winning combination.  Hopefully as the series progresses I'll get my wish and we'll see more of the heroes I love instead of a page or two snippet each week.  For what it's worth though, the ton of artist did do a fine job and I really didn't have a problem with anything I saw.  Good job you tons of artists you.

7/10