Maybe it's the nostalgia of youth;
maybe my memory has been colored by listening to one too many comics
podcasts or reading too many blogs. I remember the Justice Society
and the greater world of Earth 2 as being a place where the heroes
always won, even if victory came at a cost. It was a place of light
with characters you could look up to. Even after the Crisis, when
they had big parts of their histories rewritten, the JSA survived. In
fact, they more than survived. They thrived.
Crisis on Infinite Earth
really hit Earth 2 hard. For all the good that Marv Wolfman and
George Pérez did for the DCU with Crisis, it still created
more than its share of problems. The Golden Age Batman, Superman, and
Wonder Woman no longer existed. That alone would have a pretty big
impact since the characters had already had so many adventures over
the previous 50 years, but the influence those three had on other
characters was huge and also had to be dealt with. Catwoman of Earth
2 didn't exist either, so she obviously couldn't marry the
non-existent Batman and give birth to the Helena Wayne, therefore
Huntress is gone (for a while anyway). Superman and Lois Lane weren't
there to raise Power Girl who did still exist but now had no family
or past and her origin was rewritten badly to say the least. Wonder
Woman's daughter, Fury, no longer had a mother but Fury was still an
active member of Infinity, Inc. and involved with Silver Scarab, the
son of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl. The entire series of
Young All-Stars was basically created to patch some of the
holes that Crisis left in DC continuity.
Oh yeah! How is all this relevant
to TKF? No Golden Age Batman meant no Golden Age Robin either.
Dick Grayson of Earth 1 still existed as Nightwing with his character
history left mostly untouched, so 10 year-old me was pretty okay with
things at the time. But good ideas are good ideas, so DC slowly
brought back Earth 2 and its characters over time through a variety
of events culminating in the New52 Earth-2 series. I
reread the series as well as its follow-ups, Earth-2: World's End
and Convergence this last week. I'm shocked by how much they
could do well when they got so, so much of it wrong.
Earth-2 was still defined by being
a world at war, but this time World War II had nothing to do with the
story. Right out of the gate the reader gets introduced to new look
versions of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in a five year
flashback to a war with the armies of Apokolips and they were dead by
the end of the first issue. This time Helena Wayne was back, but she
was her dad's Robin, again ending up as Huntress. Once again, Dick
Grayson was nowhere to be seen. Dick never even showed up in Earth-2
until issue # 29 after first being introduced during Earth-2:
World's End # 1. Where do we first see Dick? He's a reporter in
a hospital room, standing next to his pregnant wife, Officer Barbara
Gordon of the Chicago Police Dept.
Fast forward a few years in the
comics, a couple of weeks in real time,and the happy couple is
fighting for survival in the second great Apokolips war with their
son, Johnny, in tow. Their story is one of several subplots followed
through World's End and, just like most of the stories from
that series and its parent series, the Graysons' story is one of
tragedy.
However, the Grayson family tragedy
is mostly one of poor writing and editorial decisions. Barbara
protects her mostly helpless husband long enough to lose their son,
find him again, then die trying to keep the two of them alive. Dick
manages to lose track of the boy again and learns to fight from TedGrant, who had only been seen previously as a name on a marquee.
Somehow, an afternoon with Ted turns Dick into a competent enough
fighter to allow Dick to recover his son, Tommy. (That isn't my
mistake. For some reason, the writing team couldn't be bothered to
keep the boy's name straight from one issue to the next; they
flip-flopped between Johnny and Tommy at least four times.) When he
found himself unable to secure a place for the two of them on an
escape vehicle, Dick ended up entrusting his son to a woman dressed
in robes. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Dick, the woman was Barda,
the disgraced leader of Darkseid's Female Furies, with her traveling
companion the Fury of War. Dick also went on to meet the second
Batman of Earth-2, Thomas Wayne. Another series of events led to Dick
learning of his alternate selves' connection to the legend of Batman.
He adopted the symbol after Thomas' death. As of the current Earth-2:Society (E2S) series, he has fully adopted the mantle of Batman
and is still looking for his son.
I have a lot of problems with the
handling of the Earth-2 characters. Turning Terry Sloane from the
original Mr. Terrific that inspired Michael Holt into a
megalomaniacal super murderer is one of the problems. I have always
been a fan of Mr. Miracle and Barda as a couple. That's out the
window now as Barda is a total villain; not cool. I don't have any
real attachment to Barbara Gordon, but her death was used as little
more than a plot device. Neither Ted Grant nor Yolanda Montez gets to
be Wildcat? Something is wrong there. Jay and Joan Garrick used to be
the fun grandparents of the Flash family. Making them younger wasn't
a big deal but having her coldly break up with him in their very
first appearance was absolutely wrong. Connor Hawke's personality was
written as pretty much the opposite of his previous incarnation. AlPratt and Alan Scott were jerks through most of the series. The
majority of the whole cast were just meaner, and these were the
heroes.
There are some bright spots. Except
for the Atom, I really like most of the redesigned costumes. The
artists have generally done a magnificent job illustrating the
various books. Hawkgirl was and continues to be consistently awesome.
Despite how badly his relationship was handled, Flash is generally
still well-written as a hero. Huntress' solo mini-series was pretty
good. Worlds' Finest wasn't bad with Huntress and Power Girl
in the lead, although sales led DC to turn the series into another
Batman and Superman showcase. However, the two ladies were heavily
featured in World's End, Convergence, and currently in E2S,
albeit in a somewhat diminished capacity. Dick Grayson is now the
third Batman of Earth-2. I actually think he's suited for the role,
but I hope some more of his training will be fleshed out as the
series progresses because the guy I'm reading in E2S now is
not the same one from a year ago.
Dan Abnett has recently taken over
the writing chores on E2S. Much like his other project TitansHunt is doing for the classic Titans team, Abnett's E2S
run has the enormous task of trying to fix the problems that his
predecessors created. If he can inject some heart into the book, then
a lot of the other problems might go away. The characters of Earth 2
were never meant to suffer the ringer that they have been put through
since being introduced in the New52. Hopefully, we'll get an Earth-2:
Rebirth once the current series ends. There is still a lot of
potential and many new stories to be told with these characters that
have endured for the last 70+ years.
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