Earth 2: World's End #26 (DC)

writer: Daniel H. Wilson, Marguerite Bennett, Mike Johnson, Cullen Bunn

artist: many, many artists

This finale to Earth 2: World's End, and in fact Earth 2 itself (to be relaunched as Earth 2: Society, and thereby finally making the Justice Society thing official) demonstrates in dramatic fashion what happens when Darkseid is successful in defeating humanity.

And I still don't get it, because anytime I've heard someone talk about this particular weekly it's been negative.  Maybe it's because I didn't read it weekly, and I stopped reading Earth 2 monthly a while back, and so my impressions would necessarily be different from someone who read along the whole way, I don't know.  But, and certainly in this last issue, I think World's End has been quite the example of weekly event book, arguably the best out of the three just concluded at DC (the others being, of course, Batman: Eternal and The New 52: Futures End).

Maybe it's been an issue about trying to keep all the characters straight, or wanting to see one or another have more of a focus.  Well, this one's all about Alan Scott, the character who made the earliest and most sensational impact in Earth 2 when it was revealed this version is gay.  And now he's also the most powerful superhero in this reality, having merged all the avatars into himself and once again redefined what it means to be Green Lantern (it perhaps needs reminding that he was in fact the original Green Lantern, too).

Earth 2 was always set in a reality where Darkseid won.  It was an alternate version of how the New 52 Justice League began.  And now that Darkseid is scheduled to at last return to Justice League, it's only fitting that he has at last finished what he started elsewhere.  Shouldn't there be at least one story where the ultimate villain really and truly wins?  Where else but in a comic book landscape where something like that can actually happen?

In the spotlight to a lesser degree is Earth 2's Flash, who like Alan Scott is a version of the original, although in Jay Garrick's case the link is much more tenuous.  For his part in the issue, Jay has to make the heartrending decision to abandon his mother at the end of the world.

There are a bunch of other characters who appear, but the ending closes out the story and offers a segue to Convergence.  Yes, this was the one that led directly to DC's big event.  So maybe, at some point, people will realize they should have been paying attention.  Or they'll stop by in the trades...