Earth Two #10 – Review

By: James Robinson (story), Nicola Scott (pencils), Trevor Scott (inks), Alex Sinclair (colors)

The Story: Khalid and Jay find their world turned upside down and inside out—literally.

The Review: Robinson may have bitten off more than he can chew.  Earth Two doesn’t simply purport to establish a new super-team, which is already daunting in itself.  This title establishes an entire world, which includes not only the superheroes, but their respective villains, supporting casts, bases of operation, and back stories.  And we haven’t even touched upon Earth Two’s unique qualities that have nothing to do with superheroes.

No wonder, then, that the series has been so uneven and scattered.  Sometime after that first arc, perhaps around the zero issue, we’ve lost quite a bit of focus from the plot.  With every character doing his or her own thing and not in concert with each other, Robinson is forced to jump from one scene to another, often with little transition, either tonally or substantively.  This results in a fairly muddled read overall, but worse still, each plot thread gets cut a little short to make room for the others, leaving you dissatisfied with all of them.