Earth 2: Society #22 (DC)

This is the final issue of Earth 2: Society, as well as the conclusion to the whole New 52 version of Earth 2.  I'm glad the series stayed on the publishing rolls well into the Rebirth era, that Dan Abnett was given a chance to give the concept a proper ending.  I may not have been a dedicated reader, but I loved that Earth 2 was always an alternate to the New 52, right from the start, an Elseworlds book, in some respects, in which alternate versions of characters and concepts were given a chance to breathe, for quite a lengthy period of time.

I know plenty of readers complained about the quality of the material over the years, especially after James Robinson left and World's End seemed to entirely dilute a product they no longer saw as worth the attention.  But DC, to its credit, kept the concept alive, and World's End as a weekly companion series still led to an actual Earth 2 event, Convergence, that ended up leading indirectly to Rebirth.

Society ended mostly because DC decided to bring back the classic Justice Society concept.  Earth 2 was always an alternate JSA, an effort to reinterpret some of DC's oldest characters, to take them out of the Golden Age and make them contemporaries in every sense to their successors.  It's a shame, actually, that we never got a proper team-up between Earth 2 and Justice League.  Just imagine...!

But Abnett ends it perfectly.  Quietly.  Just a meditation on things finally settling down, and the last rolls of how Earth 2 diverges from the rest of continuity.  Dick Grayson's son has become Robin.  Helena Wayne, Bruce Wayne's daughter, has become Batman.  If this were Marvel and if Helena had been in her own series, that would've been a huge problem for some fans.  But Earth 2 kind of became DC's Astro City, a self-contained story with a huge cast of characters, each with their own legacies (which is to say, different from the Legion of Super-Heroes).

Abnett probably realized that of all the characters appearing in the final issue, the new Batman and Robin most deserved being singled out.  In a lot of ways, Batman had become the unspoken lead of Earth 2.  In the original concept, Bruce Wayne was among the icons to die in the alternate version of how the first arc in Justice League played out.  But another Batman later emerged: Thomas Wayne's.  This was one of the most clever things Earth 2 did over the years, creating an ongoing version of a character who first appeared in Flashpoint.  But eventually, even Thomas died, and Dick Grayson took over.  Apparently Dick died in the penultimate issue of Society, and so Helena's ascension to the role is something that happens between issues.

Well, like I said, in some other reality, Earth 2 and Society itself continues, because that's the kind of storytelling that made it all worth it.