Earth 2 #28 takes a slight break from the forward momentum being pushed within the World’s End weekly series to give us four 5-page vignettes, detailing the origins of the Furies on Apokalips; The Czarnian Pestilence , the Warworld champion Famine, the Tamaranean child of War and the Martian mother of Death.
Positives
Seeing Tom Taylor’s name back on the title, in any capacity, is a relief. After it’s absence from last month’s issue, I feared there were no further storylines left that he had contributed to. But there it is, getting a co-credit for the story, along with Marguerite Bennett, who handled the scripting as well. And I must say, she did a bang up job. With only a few precious pages each, she manages to tell heart-breaking and horrifying stories for each of the Furies, giving much needed scope and pathos to these emerging threats to Earth 2.
An issue of this sort is perfect for multiple artists, and each section was handled by a different team, all contributing excellent work. The amount of names on the cover looked a bit daunting, but once you dig into the issue, you quickly realize that it was all divided up perfectly and well mapped out.
Negatives
I’d have to stretch to come up with a complaint. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps folks only reading the monthly and not following the accompanying weekly series might be a little lost. But even that’s a ho-hum attempt to find flaws.
Verdict
Though very different from any issue in the series before it, Earth 2 #28 manages to be one of the best of the series so far. It’s also not often we get to see “done-in-one” issues much these days, and this one pulls it off great, proving it’s still possible to hit a grand-slam with the format.