Earth 2: Society #22 Review and *SPOILERS*

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

Written By: Dan Abnett

Art By: Vincente Cifuentes, Rex Lokus, Travis Lanham

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: March 8, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

After everything all of us Earth 2 fans have been through, it's finally over and it doesn't look like our Wonders will get another chance and get a Rebirth, like most of us want now that the series has picked up and became something that we actually like reading.  That's right, this is the final issue of Earth 2: Society and in the previous issue we saw our Wonders stand against Ultra-Humanite and his Sandmen army and overcome, but in the end of that issue it looked like the Humanite might have killed Dick Grayson Batman.  Let's jump into this issue and see where we leave these characters and what they'll be doing in a Universe that's so close to the one we normally read about, but yet so far because it doesn't look like we'll be seeing them again anytime soon.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us seeing our Wonders all over Metropolis, saving lives, stopping crimes and just plain living their lives............ You know, the stuff that we've always wanted to see out of this book.  Really, there isn't too much to say about the majority of this issue because it doesn't really move like an ordinary issue does and simply takes us from one moment to the next to show us the greatest hits of our heroes as they be the very best they possibly can, while also giving the reader a history of everything they went through to get them to this point.  Yeah, it's a little strange that a robot Lois Lane is working as a reporter and everyone thinks it's just fine, but besides for that, we get to see that everyone gets to have a life here.

In the end, our heroes converge at their headquarters so that they can discuss upcoming threats and that's when we see that there's been a bit of a dynamic change in our Batman and Robin team......... which is cool because we actually have a Batman and Robin team and the change is that Helena has taken the costume and the name of Batman because Batman is a symbol and not a gender and John Grayson has become her Robin.  Dick seems to have survived his encounter with Ultra-Humanite, but is wheelchair bound now and goes by the name Oracle and runs the show for our heroes by pointing out where they should be and who the threat is.......... and that's about it.  We leave this Universe knowing that our heroes got a second chance at live and that they're not going to let that chance get away from them.

That's it for this final issue of Earth 2: Society and I have to say that as final issues go........ this was pretty underwhelming.  We just got a clip show of our heroes saving lives and seeing how everyone loves them on this new Earth 2, but all the questions I still had are left open because we don't really know anything about what the Pandora Vessel did or what these people actually are.  Yeah, we know that they were created by the memories of our heroes, but what does that mean?  Are they real?  What lies beyond Metropolis and how the hell did Ultra-Humanite and Green Lantern get there before the rest of our heroes?  A lot of loose ends are left open and while this doesn't really feel like a loose end, the biggest problem I have with this issue is the feeling that Dan Abnett was just saying that Dick Grayson was paralyzed after his fight with Ultra-Humanite and that's why Helena took over for him, when in the last issue it looked like Dick would never stop being Batman because it would go against everything that he's become thanks to his mentor Thomas Wayne.  Another glaring absence I want discussed in this book is Mr. Terrific, who we found out at the beginning of this series was the one who built Dick his Batman suit that allowed him to walk, but here he's just not mentioned or shown and I'm left scratching my head as to what happened to this character?  Was he just wiped out because he wasn't a part of Earth 2 originally?  The art in this issue looked great though, I just wish we could have had more things explained so that we could have gone out of this series with a sense of closure.

Bits and Pieces:

With this being the final issue, I was really hoping that all those glaring loose ends would have been tied up, but instead we get a montage with some flashbacks to show us a clip show of our heroes' finest moments on their new Earth as they get back to business as usual.  The art in this issue was great, but too many things were glossed over in order for me to have any satisfaction out of it.

5.8/10