Thanks to the local Hickory library, I was able to read another graphic novel that I previously had not read. This time it was JLA: Earth-2 - written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Frank Quitely.
Now, there were a couple reasons why I had not picked this up before. When it first came out, it came out at a $25 hardcover. I'm sorry, but I could not justify shelling out the cash for a first-time comic in hardcover. Nope, no way. It came out a few years later in paperback, but by then the creative teams on JLA had changed a bit so the story would have been out of place to read. Still, even for $15 I was not springing for it. Luckily, with the library, it was free.
The second reason is that it was part of Morrison's run. Now, I'm not one of those folks who think he was the second-coming to the League. His run, in my opinion, was good but not that great. I've been reading the League non-stop since the 70's - plus I've read all the early days stuff too - and Grant's stuff just doesn't do it for me.
As for this story, it started out okay. Earth-2 is a telling of a tale of an alternate Earth where evil triumphs mostly over good. This has been done before, in the JLA comics way back in the 60's with Earth-3 as well as in other forms of sci-fi - like Star Trek's mirror-universe, for example. So, the concept wasn't that original. Again, some of the story elements in this tale were interesting - but the story started to fall apart as the end quickly approached. I definitely did not like the conclusion - that the JLA would just throw their hands in the air and let things go back to how they were with the Crime Syndicate running things as they always had on their world.
So, for me, I was glad to have not spent a cent on this story. That would have been a penny too much for me.
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