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I've followed the story from the beginning, and this issue junked nearly everything that transpired earlier, to tell an out-of-sequence, stand alone story for the new Batman. When the story was over, I thought it was an error on my part, that maybe some pages were stuck together. This sort of spotlight is cool when you've established the foundation, but the E2 heroes just gained this new homeworld, and it's wrecked all ready when we're brought to it, so it's more backstory you're not given, and more maudlin storytelling.
Earth 2 is like Gotham City on Apokoliptan steroids. It's a downtrodden place for no apparent reason other than the writing has no direction other than dark and dreary. It's a new world and it goe sto hell in the space of a year? And we won't know why for at least 4 issues, after dealing with all the war and Convergence?
It's not what needs to be done to invite or maintain readership, but DC seems to excel at driving readers away these days.
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I have the working suspicion that corporate comics publishers today have an institutional aversion to successful writers with a popular vision for whatever they happen to be working on. An aversion to popular talent.
Ever since the days of Alan Moore, Frank Miller, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, and even Rob Liefeld and his peers, the big two publishers (but in particular DC) have endeavoured to make sure no creator rises to have that sort of independence and collossal success over their corporate properties. The property comes first, not the work-for-hire.
DC, particularly since 2011, are a working example of this practice. James Robinson performed a minor miracle by reinventing the Earth-2 concept in a very modern and convincingly nuanced way which instantly connected with a strong and loyal readership - sales of 40'000 were still the norm well afer much of the rest of the publishing line had fallen to 20-30'000. So rather than maintain this success and momentum DC put James Robinson into such a position that he feels he has to walk away from the book after just over a year in and the series is thereafter an exercise in editorial plotting and a script-robot giving the plot words... parallelling this look to Green Arrow for a very similar effect in Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino' phenomenal overhaul, only for it to be brought to a close a year or so later and in comes the crew from the television series delivering generic comicstrip action.
It's a pattern repeated elsewhere, Grant Morrison on Action Comics for example, freelance creators who come to a title, overhaul it to great acclaim, only to exit after only a year or so. A year being not long enough to stamp anything of lasting value onto either book or audience.
Earth-2 reeks of editorial decree. This book longsince stopped being written by a writer with any personal vision and is instead a corporate peg-holder for the brand, stuff happens in these pages but not a lot of it actually makes sense or feels believable - i.e. Organic. And that is a sign of the management dictating the plot, not any writer.
At this point the property is damaged goods.
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