Earth 2: Society #10 Review *SPOILERS*

That's The Power of...........?

Written By: Dan Abnett
Art By: Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sanchez, Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 9, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

You know what I want from a book that places heroes, who we've never really seen be heroes with the exception of acting as super soldiers in a war for their world?  Why politics of course!  No, no, I'm lying, nobody wants that, but for some reason that's what we've been dealing with since Dan Abnett (who I love more deeply and strangely than he'll ever know) took over this book.  Now I don't know what will go down with our Earth 2 heroes once Rebirth goes and rebirths all over our faces so I don't know if Dan doing this bit on this book is just a way to get our heroes into position for that or if it's just keeping the series going while DC is retooling behind the scenes, but hopefully this series picks up a bit from what it's been for the remaining time that we have with it.  It's all about natural resources, writing constitutions and corrupt energy companies so far with a strange story going on in the background dealing with Hawkgirl finding Fury with a secret army of Amazons........ which kind of feels like the most interesting thing going on right now besides for Batman planning on kicking a little ass, but there's just so much and the story feels stretched too thin to properly deal with all of them.  Hopefully with this issue I'll have to eat my words and this becomes amazing, but I don't expect too much from this series anymore.  Let's jump into this issue and see if it can change my mind.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Now this issue jumps around a lot so I'll just start out with our World Council stuff because it's pretty important since they're telling us that they're all fucked because this planet that Telos set them up with is devoid of natural resources and apparently from what they've got from the space ships they arrived in, the energy situation will only last for about a year and after that the consensus seems to be the whole "fucked" scenario.  Our heroes do have the clean energy option, but apparently even though they have technology that can take them across the stars and even a machine that was capable of terraforming the planet............. which really doesn't seem all that bad in hindsight, does it Wonders?  Well, apparently even with all these miraculous things at their disposal, they're years away from creating a clean energy solution and as they just pointed out, they don't have years.  Hell, even with this binary star system they've got going on, Val-Zod tells us that solar energy is out of the question for some convoluted reason that I don't understand, but then again, I never claimed to be a rocket surgeon.  If that wasn't bad enough, the people of this world are on a "No Wonders" kick and even Ma Kent comes out of the woodwork....... that's right, Martha Kent survived World's End and made it to this new Earth 2 and is now on the television telling everyone that her son was Superman and that he was a piece of shit because he killed her husband............ and I know that the world was going to hell back then, but I would think that somebody somewhere........... say a Power Girl for instance would have relayed the information to her that the person responsible for John Kent's death was a evil clone of Superman and not actually her son, but maybe that's just me.  Anyway, the point of all this is that Martha Kent denouncing Wonders on television has led Val-Zod to denounce his Superman name and ban Wonders from his city.  Really though, with this whole binary star system they got going on here, I'd change his name to something like Twelve-Hour Man because half the time he's just a normal dude........... Goddamn, was that a weird decision to make for this series.

Over in the hidden city of the Amazons, Hawkgirl has decided that she better get the hell out of there and start warning people that Fury's kind of gone off the deep end a bit because she believes that the bastard child of Wonder Woman and Steppenwolf killed all the normal people on her ship, but I'm personally under the impression that she somehow turned the women of that ship into Amazons........... so yeah, she totally killed the men then so I guess Hawkgirl has the right to be fearful of her captor.  Too bad Hawkgirl isn't Mr. Miracle though because she totally botches her escape and ends up right in front of Fury and a surprise guest, Aqua Woman.  It's also too bad that Aquawoman wanted her meeting between her and Fury kept a secret because it looks like she's talking about taking Hawkgirl out to lunch.......... and murder's on the menu!  Not to put Hawkgirl's possible murder on the back burner, but if Aqua Woman and the Atlanteans are having secret meetings with these Amazons........ well, I think this world has bigger worries than some resource issues.  

In the end we head over to New Gotham, where Batman has Red Arrow and Ted Grant taking out a warehouse belonging to Nimbus Solutions, while he took on Kyle Nimbus himself.  I really enjoy this part of the book because for one thing, it's where all the action lies and for another, it's just plain fun.  We've got this villain Kyle Nimbus making jokes after Batman crashed in through his skylight and throughout this whole section, we have Nimbus acting completely nonchalant about being brought down.  I should also point out that we also have Dick Grayson's variety of Batman in full effect here as he's making jokes himself and I really appreciate that because we really haven't had a lot of Batman in this series and when we have, we really haven't had a whole lot of things to grab a hold of and really tell us who this character is.  Here though, we see Batman take on Hourman, who's now working for Nimbus and we get to see that this Kyle Nimbus is rocking some Wonder powers of his own as he phases through a batarang.  Our issue closes with Batman getting taken down by Hourman and Nimbus escaping........... Now, I don't know how far away the warehouse was that Red Arrow and Wildcat were taking down, but I hope that they're some serious sprinters because Batman is in bad shape.

That's it for this issue of Earth 2: Society and while I haven't been a fan of the political aspect to this story........... well, that's all.  I just don't care for it, but luckily for me that isn't a problem in this issue because the politics go to the wayside as our heroes deal with their new problem of not having any natural resources on the planet.  It's a cool element to this story that I hope ultimately gets our heroes to flee this planet and get back to something that more resembles a civilization, whether that be Prime-Earth or not.  The only issue I have with this is all of a sudden everyone seems to be on my level of intellect and can't figure out a way to keep power going to the different cities and we've got some smart ass people on this world like Mister Terrific and even a god if that's what you want to consider Alan Scott now so they should be able to develop something with relative ease.......... but that's just my opinion.  The rest of the book was really enjoyable though with all of it's different stories and the characters that encompass them, I just wish that we'd focus a little more on a individual because at times it comes off that we're spreading ourselves a little thin with everything that Dan Abnett wants to tell......... Like I still don't know where all these Amazons came from and Hawkgirl is jumping to some conclusions that I don't know if I should embrace or not.  As for the art, it's as solid as always, but there was something about this issue, especially the Batman parts that made me appreciate how nuanced Jorge Jimenez' style is and while I've always enjoyed what he gives us, this issue for some reason just made me notice the awesomeness even more.

Bits and Pieces:

To my surprise, Earth 2: Society has finally pulled together a decent issue and for the first time since this series started I find myself caring what's going on with our Wonders and the world they inhabit.  Yeah, some things come off feeling a bit thin when we're constantly jumping to different stories going on, but all in all this was a enjoyable read with some amazing art.  I don't know what Rebirth will bring us when talking about these characters, but if we get more issues like this until then we might have something to finally talk about when it comes to this series.

7/10