Future State: Superman: Worlds of War #2 Review

BoreWorld

Written By: Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Brandon Easton, Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad,
Jeremy Adams

Art By: Mikel Janin, Jordie Bellaire, Dave Sharpe, Valentine De Landro, Marissa Louise, Michael Avon Oeming, Travis Lanham, Siya Oum, Hi-Fi, Gabriella Downie

Cover Price: $7.99

Release Date: February 16, 2021

It's the year 2030 and we're heading back to Warworld to see what not only Superman is up to, but also Shilo Norman, Midnighter, and the new Black Racer. Yeah, we have ourselves a thick book that's full of stories but let's find out if they feel like they're worth their price tag by the end because while I initially was really looking forward to this book when it was announced, after reading the last issue it didn't seem like we got enough of anything and I left that feeling disappointed, especially since we got about a page of actual Superman in the Superman story. Let's jump into this issue and see if we can get more this time around and if it comes off better. Let's check it out.

For our initial Superman story we do get more Superman than we did in the previous issue but the way it's framed left a lot to be desired in my mind because while Phillip Kennedy Johnson is setting up a feeling of what Superman is...... which is a hero whether he's Clark Kent or Superman... and that's fine, but I was looking for more of a story of what's been going on with our Man of Steel instead of narration about a solider and civil rights advocate that Clark Kent wrote about while showing Superman fighting as a gladiator until the end of the story when we finally find out that he's fighting to break the chains of the slaves of Warworld, while Mongul is trying to break Superman. The ending to this story is great, but I just wish it was told in a more interesting manner that actually told a Superman story instead of a story from the Daily Planet.  

For our Shilo Norman story, we spend our time with Shilo fighting and trying to send a distress message to Earth to warn them about Warworld and that Superman's onboard and it's all rather boring but when it turns into Shilo sending a message to himself in the past because of how time works in space creating a causality loop..... I realized that we didn't really do anything here but explain why nothing made sense with his story in Superman of Metropolis. As for our Midnighter tale..... We get a bloated mess that just shows Mignighter fighting Andrej Trojan, who's in a robotic body that looks like Apollo... Why? No reason besides to give us our cliffhanger last issue and it's just basic bad guy stuff where he wants to do something awful to do something that he feels is right, but it just fills up its page space by saying the same things over again until it takes a left turn down convoluted avenue when like the Shilo Norman story it adds time travel and on top of that a bootstrap paradox and by the end, I'm not sure what Midnighter's initial mission was supposed to be but it doesn't seem like he finished it. Finally, for our Black Racer story, where I wanted to know more about this new character and what she's up to, we see her move through Warworld where she just says that she's the Black Racer to herself and that's about it. Yeah, she's a badass but you learn little to nothing about her and that's seriously disappointing.

All in all, there wasn't much to any of these four stories in this oversized issue. Yeah, you can at least take away a feeling of Superman being super from the initial tale or that people love Superman... but it just left you wanting more..... or at least it did for me anyway. The rest of the stories felt incomplete and for the Shilo Norman and Midnighter stories it felt like they had nowhere to go so they went "time travel" to try and make things seem important when they only became convoluted and showed that there wasn't much of a story to begin with..... speaking of that..... there wasn't much to the Black Racer at all. Yeah, the art is pretty much fine throughout, peaking at the Superman tale and hitting its low point at the Midnighter story...... which I really had a hard time following what was going on at times because of the art, but really, it's the story that falls short here all around because when you spent $8 to buy a comic, you think you'd at least get something that feels complete but nothing here really did and all it ends up doing is telling us to go read another comic where we might find some closure or resolution but judging from what we get out of a lot of these Future State books, I wouldn't bet on it.

Bits and Pieces:

While you come out of the Superman story knowing that Superman's a hero and inspires others, there's little else that can be taken away from any of the four stories that this comic holds. The art is decent overall but by the end of this book, it didn't feel like it did enough to warrant the cover price and just seemed to pad itself out to fill up its page space. It's a shame because I was looking forward to what Superman and Warworld were up to in the future but even with us getting four tales of Warworld in each issue, you didn't get much of any kind of background about it or where it might be heading.

5.8/10