Not Quite Enough for Ten of a Kind

Talk all you want about it not being tremendously faithful to the original concept, but I'm really diggin' the idea of DC's new Earth 2.


Cover of Earth 2 #1 (July 2012), pencils by Ivan Reis, inks by Joe Prado, colors by Rod Reis

I like the idea that we're not necessarily seeing exactly the same heroes we've seen before, that the costumes and characters and events may be surprising to us.


Cover of Earth 2 #2 (August 2012), pencils by Ivan Reis, inks by Joe Prado, colors by Rod Reis

At the same time, if it gets too far away from the familiar, it risks turning into the Tangent Universe or Stan Lee's "Just Imagine." But so far I'm liking it, right down to the re-invention of Power Girl and Huntress as the next-gen Supergirl and Robin of their earth in in the accompanying title Worlds' Finest (note the placement of the apostrophe that sets it apart from past World's Finest books!)


Cover of Worlds' Finest #1 (July 2012), pencils and inks by George Perez

It's the first time in a long while that the idea of Earth 2 has moved away from being "The Golden Age" and instead has become "The Next Age"—what happens after the fall of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, not before their rise. So at last we've got the universes numbered in the right order! If I'd been Alan Scott and Jay Garrick and Ted Grant I'da been mighty ticked off at being called Earth-2 when hey, they were around a lot earlier than those young whippersnappers in spandex. Only Futurama seemed to nail the terminology right: call one world "Earth-1" and the other "Earth-A."



And, I'm certainly looking forward to the exploration of Alan Scott, Earth 2's Green Lantern, as a gay man. Done with good taste and subtlety (something you can't always take for granted in a superhero book), this is going to be an interesting take on the character.

But I certainly hope there's not going to be a big deal made of how much Alan Scott used to hang around construction sites, which he has done on numerous occasions that almost but don't quite add up to ten of a kind:















So, despite all the appearances of evil construction workers, please...no Village People jokes.



Anyway, it's not like Alan Scott's the only Green Lantern who fought villains on construction sites, right? In the words of Bill Cosby: Right.




We wish you all the best, freshly-out Alan Scott! May you never be replaced as cover feature in your own book by your dog: