Earth 2: World's End #5

This was a great cover. The cover's for World's End have been fine, just really generic mostly crowd shots or action shots. This one's got a nice simplicity to it that says all you need to know with a sense of intensity. I also love how this issue demonstrates something I had hoped. Each month that giant circle cracks a little more. I thought it might happen each issue when I saw the first one, and I was disappointed when it seemed like that wouldn't happen, but now I'm happy to see it's happening in some fashion.

The biggest drawback with this series is obviously the massive inconsistency in the artwork. Each issue has about 5-6 artists working on it; that's not counting inkers and colorists, that's pencilers alone. Fortunately the choices do a good job at avoiding any jarring transitions. The artists all have fairly common styles and they generally work together well enough. There weren't any particularly bad artists in this issue, and there were never any mid-scene art transitions so that worked to the advantage of the flow as well. I feel like it would make more sense to stick an artist to a particular character or characters' scenes, but it's fine.

The other problem with this series that has become more and more clear as it goes on is that... there's just too much going on. This is why this is a weekly series; this would indeed be horrendously slow to go through as a monthly series. Future's End balances their stories pretty well; but they're at a different pace. The problem with World's End is that it began with a climax, so everything has to happen all simultaneously; and when you have this many plotlines all spinning out of an opening climax... trying to maintain the same pace with them all equally at once is just perhaps impossible. At the very least it would take a massively adept writer or group; and the team here is demonstrating they aren't fully up to the task. Things are crawling along and each issue is crowded with short bursts of story.

IN CONCLUSION: 3/5

I really like where Aquawoman's story is going. We kind of got cheated out of an Atlantis vs. Death story, but what's set up here makes up for that. The 2 Mr. Terrifics are both doing some interesting shady things; the discovery team Batman/Superman make is pretty interesting... there's a lot of interesting things in this issue, it's one of the better issues so far; but the whole thing still feels over cluttered. Plus things felt mostly at a lull; except the Flash story. There's a weird inconsistency in pacing here, where some stories feel calm and some are still mid-climax; which is weird because they're all in the middle of a massive climax.