Is anyone getting this weekly series from DC? I've picked up the first two issues, and am not sure how long I'll continue.
DC made what I consider a really generous mistake in the first issue, giving the reader a 40-page book for only $2.99, essentially 20 pages for free. But those 20 pages were deadly dull, a lifeless recap of everything that had gone on in Earth 2 and Worlds' Finest up to that point. It was an extensive recap, but it just left me exhausted before I started the first page of the real story. (Maybe someone who hadn't read the comics in question would feel differently about it.) And now, two issues in, I can't say I'm crazy about the story. We're getting wall-to-wall action with very little quiet time, and I just don't think I have the patience for 25 issues of it. There's a little characterization, but most of what we've gotten is psychic landscapes and mind-control punching, and there's not a lot about that that interests me.
Future's End has a very 52 vibe for me -- select teams of c-listers participating in one sprawling story with very different tones and beats. Two issues in, and World's End is already starting to show signs of the senseless sound and fury of Countdown.
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I'm picking it up and I'm determined to keep doing so until I figure it out. So far it's mostly been a lot of misery, in fact when I think of Earth 2 now I think of it as the Misery Earth. The Earth 2 heroes have been a pretty helpless lot so far. Even Power Girl was nothing to worry about as far as Cadmus was concerned.
There's a lot of puzzles to this book. Fury is a full out villain on Earth 2, yet she seems a heroine now, the world justice system seems to have been short circuited. I think the story is so long and so vast as far as characters go that it's a bit like reading War and Peace one page per day. It hasn't showed me anything that'll make me just quit on it yet.
I haven't read anything that would make me want to quit it, true... but I haven't read anything yet that would make me want to continue, either. And I prefer my comic buying to be a positive decision (why should I buy this?) than a negative decision (why should I drop this?). If the only joy of reading a comic is finding out what happens continuity-wise...well, there's Wikipedia for that.
If I don't get something I want to actively follow by next issue, I think I'm done... and I'll maybe drop Earth 2 for the duration, as well. I've really enjoyed that book, but if it's getting all wrapped up in this -- and it is -- I'm probably better off keeping my distance for a while. Same goes for Worlds' Finest. I might keep picking up the Constantine crossover, since him meeting his Earth-2 duplicate is something I've never really seen with that character before, and the art on the first issue was an appealing callback to the Sean Phillips years.
At the moment, World's End most reminds me of the four World War III issues published toward the end of 52 -- a brand expansion that offered bombast, but little else, and overall made the whole experience less pleasant, just due to their emptiness. When I decided to drop Countdown, it was because the experience of reading the book was somehow making my experience of reading all my other comics worse, just because I approached them having already read something so lackluster. The dullness rubbed off on other books -- even books from other publishers. Dropping it made me indescribably happier.
Rereading the above, my dropping World's End is almost a fait accompli at this point. Let's see if I decide to cut out with issue 3, and use the remaining $69 I'd have spent on it on something more exciting.
It is a vast story being told in very small snippets. I've felt that frustration too and at first didn't pay attention to it because I thought it was just another reboot.
I think anything like that has to be grounded in character to keep the reader invested. I think Earth 2 did that pretty well (though it would have benefited from the weekly pace), but I haven't seen the same care being taken with World's End. I'm going to reread issues 1 & 2 before next week, but I simply don't think they're of the same quality as the monthly, or Futures End.
One of the reasons I'm staying with it is Huntress and Power Girl. The relationship was so good in Worlds Finest and I hope that they keep that.
I hope so, too. I like them both.
I just reread issues 1 & 2 -- aside from the recap in the beginning of 1 -- and there are a few elements that I like. I'd like to see where the Graysons go, I'd like to watch Jay search for his mom, and I've enjoyed seeing Kara and Helena reunite with Lois, Val, and Thomas.
BUT: The Bedlam/Mister Miracle/Misters Terrific stuff is nearly incomprehensible, the new Apokalyptan villains are uninspired, and there action is so hard to follow that it makes it even harder to care. There's a conversation that takes place on Apocalypse that I simply cannot bring myself to focus on, it's so rote and packed with portentious exposition. This is so frustrating. I want to LOVE this book, and it's so noisy it's impossible to pay attention to.
I don't think I'm getting as far as issue 3. I think I'm done.
On the other hand, The Delinquents from Valiant is a superhero team-up as they try to track down hobo treasure. I hadn't heard of it until today, but I think it's more my speed.
The Delinquents does seem to be fun, although I haven't read it yet. It teams up Quantum & Woody and Archer & Armstrong, both of which are pretty entertaining on their own.
As to World's End, Rob, I noticed exactly the same flaws you did. The recap in issue #1 was tedious even for me, and I haven't read all those issues of Earth 2. There are good ways to do a recap, but this isn't one of them. As for the Future's End issue, I was disappointed that 1) Kara was defeated to easily (and so stupidly -- is she a moron?), and 2) that we got little information as to what the hell was going on there. Maybe if I was following Future's End and all the monthly one-shots I'd know but is a line-wide commitment now required to read a funnybook? And the second issue of World's End read to me for all the world like an issue of late '90s X-Men books. And I really, really, really didn't like late '90s X-Men books, just so's you know. You had non-stop action where extremely powerful characters were easily defeated to progress the plot, and where numerous seemingly invincible characters were introduced without back story, information of what they can do, motivations or, in some cases, even names, and tossed into the mix lickety-split where it led to a dramatic climax that wasn't dramatic, because it seemed totally arbitrary. The heroes were beaten because they needed to be, the end. Also, many bad decisions were made. ("The heroes as a team are losing to one of these four creatures. Let's send Green Lantern off to fight another one solo, even though he's already been kicked around by this one when teamed with a Kryptonian. What could possibly go wrong?") And we still know next to nothing about who or what the victors are, but don't worry, they'll be handily defeated when the plot calls for that. It really is late '90s X-Men, when every new character introduced had power enough to break the planet in half, had sketchy characterization and disappeared when they became inconvenient.
Hey, you now who was Marvel editor in the late '90s and wrote a lot of those bad X-Men books? Bob Harras. You know who the editor of DC is currently? Yep, you guessed it.
It's odd. So many of DCs books seem to be getting better lately -- the tertiary Bat Books are on the upswing, Superman has at least two good writers with Johns and Pak, and there seems to be a willingness to try some new things. But at the same time, this series (so far) really feels like a backslide.
Of course, Daniel H. Wilson, one of the series' main writers, has never written comics before, and his co-writers, Marguerite Bennet and Mike Johnson, are both newcomers -- Bennett's first comic was after the New 52 began, and Johnson's looks like it was an issue of Titans in 2010. I have a hard time blaming them for not being able to handle the runaway train of a weekly series. I suspect editorial has a really strong hand in this, made even stronger (perhaps by design?) because of the relative inexperience of the writers, compared the the vets writing Futures End or the 52 dream team.