'Till Destiny Do We Part
Sigh, I was hoping this trend of weaker issues this week wouldn't extend to Earth 2, but it did. Don't get me wrong, this was not a bad issue, not even as much weaker as the others were, but I was hoping I could give this another 5/5, especially with an Alan Scott focused issue! But I can't.
The big elephant in the room was my concern at the end of the previous issue. I'm not even going to spoiler tag it, we find out in the first few pages, and the way the last issue ended there were only two possibilities. Sam dies. Alan Scott won me over with his heartwarming gay realtionship, enough to be a candidate for my second favorite Green Lantern (Sorry Alan, but I have to give the top slot to Guy Gardner); and instantly he's given the cliche dead lover card. The whole thing is just really disappointing. Surprise us with his homosexuality, make it all warm and fuzzy, and then use it to create tragedy. Predictable, and disappointing.
His interactions with the Green Spirit are utterly fascinating. While Jay Garrick now has an origin mirroring Earth Zero Green Lantern, Alan Scott has one mirroring Swamp Thing of all people. The Green, an explosion, a chosen lineage... there's a completely different wrinkle to the whole thing, but overall it's just so interesting to see how utterly different his backstory is from Earth Zero Green Lanterns.
Meanwhile, Jay Garrick is getting to know Hawkgirl, sewing the seeds of the JSA. Jay Garrick is forced to realize his very realistic inexperience, and Hawkgirl alludes to Dr. Fate. There's a BIZARRE line of dialogue where Jay suddenly yells out "Trust you? TRUST YOU?" and.... I have no idea what prompted it. She asked him to trust her almost three pages ago in the middle of their conversation. Why'd he suddenly jump back to that?
Long ago, there was a foe of Alan Scott. He later became a bigger, more JLA threat. And sometimes Batman. But originally he was a foe of Alan Scott, and his weakness to wood. Like Swamp Thing and Animal Man's exploits against The Rot, Alan Scott's 'Green' has a foe in 'The Grey.' The Champion of The Grey makes TONS of sense, but I'm not totally feeling his new design.
In Conclusion: 4/5
This issue has a lot of hiccups, so it doesn't come out as flawlessly as the previous two. But I can't go all the way down to a 3.5 because the good stuff really was excellent. The exploration of the entirely different origins for the Earth 2 versions of these heroes has been a phenomenal read, I just had some annoyances this time around, and overall things didn't flow with quite as perfect smooth execution.
