Earth 2 #29 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Marguerite Bennett, Mike Johnson
Art By: Andy Smith, Trevor Scott
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: December 3, 2014

People Done Lost Their Minds

Welcome back to Earth 2 and while I was hoping to report better news from this parallel front, I'm sad to say that shit is getting real.  Our issue today takes place from an ongoing story in Earth 2: World's End where Apokolips has boom tubed next to the moon, creating a massive amount of asteroids plummeting towards Earth.  Green Lantern did his best to try and break these asteroids apart, but even he's still human and a bunch get past him.  These falling pieces of death seem to have localized over the Chicago area where Dick Grayson, Barbara Grayson and Ted Grant were fighting off a horde of mad refugees inside their camp when the sky began falling.  It looked like Barbara met her end, but we'll see what this issue has to say about that.  So let's check out this issue of Earth 2 and see how our heroes fair.

Explain It!:

Our story begins on the worst day of Dick Grasyon's life as he tries to dodge falling death and get to Barbara and their son Johnny, but just as Dick gets a hold of his son, we see a giant explosion from what looks like a asteroid completely taking Barbara out.  Now this was the cliffhanger for the preview and it got me thinking about how cool it would be if Barbara died there and then became the Earth 2 Spectre and after all the time I spent laying back imagining how Dick and Barbara's story would play out in this scenario and giggled to myself about how clever I was............. It was immediately dashed when we see that Barbara is fine and is just pinned down by a girder........ Even though we just saw a giant burning crater where she was a page ago.  I'm going to have to notify Annie Wilkes about this cockadoodie cliffhanger.  

So Barbara is alive and we trade up Ted Grant for a woman who helps Dick get Barbara free.  Her name is Lotti and she plans on getting the Grayson family out of this hell hole and bring them somewhere safe.  Lotti gets on her motorcycle and the Graysons get on the sidecar and they leave the camp only to find that the people outside the camp are even crazier.  When a horde of civilians come to raid what this group has, we see that Lotti's a lot more than she came across at first.  She pulls out a big sledge hammer and then we make a connection.  This woman is a Earth 2 counter part to Harley Quinn or you could say that since Lotti is such a odd name that she's the Earth 2 counterpart to Lotti Duff from the last issue of Grayson only with Harley Quinn tendencies, but then you'd just sound like an asshole, so we're gonna shy away from that.  So after a massive sledge hammer beating and a quick prevention of Johnny Grayson getting kidnapped, the group continue their journey to Lotti's safe place.

Here's a quick piece of advise for anyone out there that wants it.  If anyone ever tries to take you to a place called Gomorrah...........Don't fucking go!  Yeah, Lotti's safe place is a walled up town kind of like Terminus was to the Walking Dead, but instead of eating people........... I'm not sure that they aren't eating people actually, but instead Dick is knocked out by one of two massive twins and Barbara is taken away as Johnny is cast back to the refugee camp because they don't allow children there.  This book just got dark as shit out of nowhere.  When Dick comes to, he's told to take food out to the main worship area and we see a old man sitting on a throne at one end and a parademon in a cage at the center, surrounded by nutty zealots chanting for the beast they worship.

All at once this became something you'd see in The Stand and I'm terrified when I see the Twins pull out Barbara Grayson to be sacrificed to the beast (parademon).  Now here's the best bit of luck that I've seen anyone in the two Earth 2 series have.  When the twins open the cage door to throw Barbara in, the parademon escapes and Dick makes his move knocking his captors down and grabbing Lotti's hammer to break Barbara's restraints and as our couple exits Gomorrah, we see the parademon turn back around to rip the preacher of the beast's head off.

In the end we're left feeling a little empty inside as we think about all the people that called this Gomorrah their home and what they did for entertainment there.  As our small shakes subside we see Dick and Barbara get back on Lotti's motorcycle and make their way back to the refugee camp to find their son and Dick tells Barbara and us that everything is going to be fine and even though we know he's lying, after what we just saw I take it as a small piece of comfort and go with it.

That's it for this issue of Earth 2 and man did this series decide to become bleak as shit.  Now I know that sounds ridiculous because we've already been through Brutaal's murderous rampage and have seen some really fucked up shit since the forces of Apokolips reared their ugly heads again, but for some reason this felt worse than all of that other stuff.  Here I was hoping that Barbara would die in the beginning and we'd get some Spectre action and then by the middle of the book I'm praying to a god that I don't believe in to save my fictional characters from certain doom.  Yeah, I know I'm a weirdo.  So yeah, a really compelling, on the edge of our seat kind of story that was presented with superb art by Andy Smith.  Now I'm not saying that I won't ever stop being a Nicola Scott fanboy, but Andy Smith brings a style and crispness to his art that allows me to accept someone else besides Nicola on this book and Trevor Scott inking the title doesn't hurt either.  It feels like Earth 2 and that's all that really matters to me.  So make sure you come back for Earth 2: World's End and next months Earth 2 to continue your adventure to this parallel world in it's final days.  See you then.

Bits and Pieces:

While I'm not completely happy with Earth 2 taking a back seat to Earth 2: World's End's stories, it has been kind of nice having smaller stories that you want to see more of featured in this monthly book.  I've been waiting for Dick and Barbara Grayson to get a featured story and while this isn't exactly what I thought it would be, it was still entertaining as hell as it filled me with dread and suspense.  It's a really dark story that makes you stop looking to the skies of Earth 2 at the raging parademons and makes you realize that the majority of the terror in this world is being dispensed by it's own people.  I really hope we see more of this story because now I'm really compelled in what's going on outside of the super heroics.

8.5/10