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Earth-2 #22
DC Comics, $2.99, 32 pages
Story Grade: C+
Issue Score: 59.50
ALTERNATELY RECOMMENDED
I have a love-hate relationship with Tom Taylor’s tenure on this book. On the one hand, I love what he has done with introducing new characters. I was on the verge of dropping this title from my pull-list and I’ve stayed mainly to see what new and interesting thing Taylor will try next. Frankly, James Robinson’s writing on this title read like self-indulgent fan-faction to me (the equivalent of Bryan Singer’s Man of Steel), while Taylor’s work feels more like the construction of an actual alternate world in the DC universe. That said, what I hate is Taylor’s plotting, more glacial even than Geoff Johns’. I think we’ve advanced all of five minutes since Taylor took over.
Green Lantern reappears after several issues in absentia on the cover and in the prologue, but then appears nowhere else in this issue. That might read okay when several issues are collected into a trade paperback, but it doesn’t work at all within the confines of these covers. GL should have shown up on stage to face off against Superman (and it’s been WAY too many issues now without getting some clue was to what his deal is) at the end of this issue, in order to tie everything together. Otherwise, the prologue of GL’s “rebirth” reads like three pages that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Panel space to allow for GL’s return could have been found by truncating the scene of Val-Zod learning to fly. I mean, honest to God, how many times have we seen the wobbly first-flight thing in comics? The battle with the parademons also could have been done in fewer pages simply by reducing the size of the panels.
My biggest beef with this issue is that, due in part to the first flight and wordless fight scenes, I read this issue in just under seven minutes. That’s not much time in escapist fantasy for $3. If I do drop this book now, it won’t be because Taylor’s scripting has no entertainment value, it’ll be because it’s a poor dollar value.
Regarding the coloring, unless one is able to render a photo-realistic depiction of trees on one panel, one should refrain from creating photo-realistic clouds in the next. It's not clever. It's a jarring juxtaposition that detracts from the story.
[COVER: 6.0 — PLOT: 4.75 — SCRIPT: 7.25 — LAYOUT: 8.0 — ARTWORK: 8.5 — EDITING: 4.0 — COLORS/PRODUCTION: 5.75 — DOLLAR VALUE: 4.25 — COLLECTIBILITY: 5.0 —GOSH-WOW FACTOR: 6.0]
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