The CW television tie-in comics crossover Earth-Prime had been far down on my reading list for a while, falling lower the farther we get from when most of these shows ended (I’ve got the last season of Superman and Lois in my TV queue). But in figuring the ins and outs of a different comic, I found out about a surprising cameo in this book, and that was enough to get me to check it out.
This book is not great. There’s a trinity of notable artists here (with, maybe not coincidentally, similar styles) — Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett, and Paul Pelletier — which might make this book something to see, but they’re not always inked well and they’re often having to work around dialogue enough to crowd out the art. Most of the book’s writers have television but not comics credits, and it shows in a book that’s at times overfull, at times meandering, and where story and art don’t always coincide.
There’s a mystery villain (insofar as he’s revealed on the back cover) that’s kind of wild. It also seems like the issues are shoehorned directly within the contemporaneous episodes of their respective shows, which must have been fun to read at the time. But even as an avid watcher of those shows, it now reads like a lot of inside baseball to me, some of which I didn’t follow. I’m glad to get another one out of my reading pile, but I wouldn’t call this time well spent.
[Review contains spoilers]
The villain of Earth-Prime is Kingdom Come’s Magog, and indeed the Arrowverse heroes versus Magog is cool for about a second. But the creative teams struggle until late to do anything interesting with him; after Magog attacks Flash’s future kids Impulse and XS in the final chapter, STAR Labs tech wizard Chester P. Runk just happens to be able to know that Magog is David Reid, a former scientist who flaked on his investors. But at almost the end of that same issue, we learn Reid has a grievance against heroes because his family wasn’t saved from a fire and his scientific work was collateral damage in Martian Manhunter’s fight with a foe.
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
The reason for the discrepancy isn’t clear, such to make it seem a mistake. Also, in answer to Magog’s message that humanity should rise up and cease to rely on superheroes, XS' answer is that heroes may make mistakes, but they never stop trying. Those may seem to coincide, but really Magog and XS are talking past one another; for a book based on the aesthetic of the CW shows, I was surprised there wasn’t more an acknowledgment of Magog’s legitimate grievances and some reconciliation.
Again, however, Earth-Prime is clearly set within and around the Arrowverse TV shows, and that’s very appealing. The first and possibly best chapter, the Batwoman issue by Natalie Abrams and Kelly Larson, includes a guest appearance by Lena Luthor, in step with the end of the Supergirl show a few months prior. The Legends of Tomorrow issue, titled “(Ex)Legends,” features all characters who’ve left the show, parallel to the show’s seventh season. That Legends issue also has a short story following Booster Gold in and around the final episode’s abrupt cliffhanger; it does really nothing to explicate Legends' end, but at least someone had the thought. The “all together now” finale not only lets XS and Impulse share page-time with Supergirl, Batwoman, and Superman, but has some “deep cuts” in the crowd scenes like Green Arrow Mia Queen and the future Canaries.
But there is a lot to slog through for these small rewards. Insofar as a story of young Clark and Lois trying to find time to celebrate their anniversary is cute (drawn by Tom Grummett), it’s a story neither set in the main of the Superman and Lois TV show nor does it factor at all into the Earth-Prime crossover. The Legends story is overpacked with both dialogue and characters, telling a shaggy dog story that starts broad (Atom wants to help the Legends) and ends very niche (drama between Necrian alien Kayla and her parents).
The Stargirl story is what brought me here, written by James Robinson and Paula Sevenbergen with art by Ordway. One single splash page shows the Human Bomb’s sidekick Cherry Bomb, a new character who would make her official debut about a year later in the DCU-set Stargirl: The Lost Children book by Geoff Johns. It’s a cool Easter egg, likely because Robinson and Johns are associated or because Ordway is drawing parts of Johns' New Golden Age, but not really enough to make reading Earth-Prime worth it. Further, the Stargirl story is awfully mild — Courtney saving boy scouts from a bear, and then 10 whole pages used for Golden Age villain the Needle to refuse to join Magog’s cause, with Stargirl completely absent.
Paneling gets inexact in a variety of places, including the Flash issue by Jess Carson and Emily Palizzi with art by David Lafuente, where Impulse Bart West-Allen collides with a woman doing … something with her hands? Later there’s a few panels where characters stare at each other, mouths open as if to speak, but there’s no words, a mismatch that sometimes happens when an issue is drawn from a synopsis before the dialogue is written (aka the Marvel Method).
The conclusion by Jeff Hersh and Thomas Pound, with art by Will Robson, is set in 2049, when both Supergirl and Batwoman would be in their 60s, but neither look any older. None of the characters react to a Superman seemingly gone rogue, despite that none should know he’s a doppelgänger of their Superman. Elsewhere, the writers fill an entire page with dialogue, Superman telling a story of the first time he met Lex Luthor that I can’t quite imagine fits with Superman and Lois' continuity. And for a book that’s advertised to contain “a host of behind-the-scenes material,” it amounts to one page of two character sketches and three pages of pencils.
I grant I’m reading Earth-Prime well outside the time it would be most relevant; maybe the Arroverse heroes versus Magog would be cooler a couple years ago. But in the here and now, there’s not much to recommend this; maybe you’ll win a trivia contest with the first appearance of Cherry Bomb, but Earth-Prime doesn’t read as a competent comic.
[Includes original and variant covers, character sketches and pencils]
I was reading these comics around the time I stopped watching the shows, and I had the sense that they were doing the least interesting things with the premise. Batwoman had a Clayface, which seemed like a fun "things you can't do on a TV budget" premise. Stargirl and S&L were buoyed by mainstay artists, but I didn't recall them having very much to do with the show or the Magog crossover.
ReplyDeleteThen the actual Magog stuff is super underwhelming, partly because of the weird gaffes you mention but also because the bulk of the climax takes place in the future... why not check in with the characters we know and love in the time period where we knew them best? And there's so much push and pull between parallel worlds that it's hard to care by the end. Sort of like the "Crisis" tie-in comic, this was a really good idea that largely squanders the potential.
(I also recall the S&L issue taking a weird swipe at "Man of Steel," like ten years too late. It's an odd backhand, too, given that the show is largely respectful in its homages to nearly every iteration of Superman.)