Earth 2: Society #18 Review and *SPOILERS*

Back To Reality

Written By: Dan Abnett
Art By: Bruno Redondo, Juan Albarran, Rex Lokus, Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: November 9, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Earth 2 is doing its damnedest right now to try and pull itself out of the muck that its been stuck in ever since we had that weekly series, Earth 2: World's End and all I can say is....... It's about damn time.  I have a special place in my heart for this series........ Well, not this series, but Earth 2 in general because it's what got me into the New 52 and I've struggled for so long now to keep reading the adventures of these Wonders because it's just been pretty damn bad....... and that's when it's still keeping with its own continuity.  Previously, we saw Fury open the Pandora Casket so that Ultra-Humanite couldn't get his damn dirty paws on it and with that act, the entire world was bathed in light and when everyone could see again, they seemed to be transported to a ghost world, where the cityscape they inhabited was merely an outline of a Metropolis that was destroyed when Apokolips consumed the original Earth 2.  Yeah, things are weird and they didn't getting any less weird when a robotic voice started talking about cohesion being imminent and that lethal force was approved for the anomalies detected........... which meant that multiple Golden Age Sandmen were sent out of nowhere to kill our heroes.  Let's jump into this issue and see if we can wrap our head around what's going on.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a look at Batman, Huntress and Batman's son John, which is nice because we didn't see them with the rest of the group in the previous issue and I was starting to get a bit worried about them, but even after I see them here I continued to worry because previously we had a robotic voice counting down to "Cohesion" that only Red Tornado could hear, which just made me think that it was because she was a robot, but here we see that John Grayson can hear it as well and I have to wonder what the hell Ultra-Humanite did to John that he's able to hear a voice that seems to be pretty keen on not being heard.  Like we had with our other Wonders in the previous issue, we see our trio here ambushed by dozens of Golden Age looking Sandmen falling from the sky like Batman or just coming at them from the street.  Now, we don't learn a whole lot from this confrontation besides for the fact that John can handle himself pretty well and that Dick seems pretty impressed with his baby boy, but goddamn did it look great.

Back with our other group of heroes, we see Val-Zod thinking about how the world could simply be trying to tune into a new reality and that they're just not there yet....... hence the countdown and this epiphany leads Fury to go smashy-smashy on some of those ghost buildings, which leads us to find out that the interiors to these buildings seem to be real and in sync with our heroes, but whatever is controlling this re-do of reality doesn't seem to like its things smashed so like before we see an army of Sandmen descend on the Wonders, where they're forced to fight them off so that they can survive until the countdown is complete.

In the end, "Cohesion" is completed and our heroes are confronted by a real-life working Earth 2 Metropolis, where it seems just like any other day for the city......... this awesome 1950's futuresque city, which I love, but as we come to a close we see Batman, Huntress and John confronted by what looks like Commander Steel........ only a Commander Steel we've never seen in this series, who's telling them that they need to come with him if they want to survive the hour.

That's it for this issue of Earth 2: Society and while we do get a lot of the same things that we saw in the previous issue, I have to tell you that the developments in this got me excited as hell for what's to come because it looks like I may get the one thing that I always wanted from an Earth 2 series and that's our heroes getting the chance to be heroes in a normal world that isn't under constant threat of war.  Yeah, it's still too early to tell what we'll get from all of this, but I know I had a good time reading this issue and loved seeing the Earth 2 Metropolis in all its glory here, not to mention all our heroes working together as a team to survive........ even if Batman, Huntress and John were separated from the group.  Like the previous issue, Bruno Redondo just killed it in art here and I don't know if it's because he got to spend more time on the characters because of the sparse backgrounds, but whatever the reason, this book looked great and that includes when we finally got a background with Metropolis showing up because the city looked amazing as well.  I've waded through so much shit when it comes to Earth 2 that I'm almost afraid to get my hopes up with where the series is going, but I can't help but feel excited and a little optimistic.

Bits and Pieces:

This series seriously feels like it's trying its damnedest to right all the wrongs that we've suffered through Earth 2 over the years and I couldn't be happier about the progress it's making.  The story is compelling and the art is fantastic and for the first time in a long time, I find myself really willing to let my guard down so that I can maybe love this series again.

7.8/10