So after a month of pretty terrible one-shot comics starring DC's villains we're on to Forever Evil #2, an Event that's a lot like every Event comic that the Big 2 put out in terms of its poor quality. Except it has this going for it - it's not as bad as Trinity War was. But it's still not that great. The Crime Syndicate (the evil Justice League) have apparently done away with pretty much all of Earth's superheroes and established a new world order of bad guys. Except a few pockets of resistance hold out like the Teen Titans who, in this issue, mount an offensive move to save Nightwing, and Lex Luthor who gathers his tools to fight back and save Earth, his tools being his green Iron Man suit and New 52 Bizarro. Let's talk about the good points in this issue first. The arbitrarily melodramatic ending to the first comic was Ultraman (evil Superman) moving the moon in front of the sun, turning the part of the world where the Crime Syndicate are into darkness, was annoying because it seemed like Geoff Johns wasn't aware of something called orbit. But in this issue we at least see the moon moving slightly away from its position, so its not a permanent fix. It's a small point but one I felt relieved to see - this comic isn't THAT stupid, thank god, I can still respect Johns a little.
Beyond that, we learn more about the Crime Syndicate, like the fact that they're running from something that destroyed their world - we don't know who or what that is yet (maybe Darkseid?) but it's an interesting piece of info about them. Power Ring (evil Green Lantern) has some weird disease, Owlman and Superwoman are plotting against Ultraman and share a dangerous secret, and a hooded figure kept tied up is apparently extremely threatening. It's alluded to that this figure might be Earth 3 Dick Grayson who's somehow responsible for tearing apart the team before, and might be why Nightwing, after being unmasked in the last issue, is still being kept alive. These are all things we haven't seen before and make reading about the Crime Syndicate more interesting. Lex's scenes in this issue are mostly just table-setting for the next issue when he and Bizarro start kicking ass and chewing bubblegum, so they're nothing special. But in the fight between Johnny Quick and Atomica against the Teen Titans, I did like the way Johnny Quick used Kid Flash's powers against him and sent the team spiralling into a timewarp - it was at least an inventive use of the speedforce's power. Those are the good points of the issue. Now we get onto the more problematic, more irritating elements that make up this issue and series. Johns starts off the second issue with another Lex monologue but unlike the first issue, this second monologue is much less intelligent and a lot more obvious. Lex talks about the effectiveness of mousetraps and, as if we can't imagine this, we see a mouse having its neck snapped by a mousetrap. Duh. Then we're seeing screens saying "This World Is Ours" on every screen. I didn't understand this in the first issue and I don't understand it now, but when you knock out power in a city, how do electronic screens continue to work? I guess Grid uses some kind of evil Cyborg power, right? And what about the message - if this is showing on every screen in the world and the Crime Syndicate and the villains are pretty much all in America, and very specific parts of America, what the hell are the rest of the world to make of the message? People in Australia must be wondering who is claiming ownership of the world. "Am I being punked or dunked or bunked by Jamie Kutcher or something?". Not to mention the childishness of the message. It sounds like something a kid would say: "This World Is Ours, nah nah na na naaa!". So even though we haven't seen the Justice League die at the hands of the Crime Syndicate (still! they just jumped from Trinity War #6 where the Crime Syndicate show up, to them having defeated them - why don't we see the most important and interesting event in the story!?) as well as seemingly every other hero, the Teen Titans think they stand a chance and head out to the fallen JL Watchtower to "save" Nightwing. And of course they don't. Johnny Quick and Atomica take out the Teen Titans embarrassingly easily, though it's mostly Johnny Quick who does it. Atomica jumps into Cassie's mouth after saying the dumbest line in the issue: "God, you're annoyingly sweet. Like sugar-coated sugar." (worst simile ever), does something, then jumps back out - what exactly did she do in Cassie's mouth? We don't know, but when she exits, the fight is pretty much over, so Atomica is more or less useless.
Also, despite the efforts of Johns in this issue, it's still unclear what the goals of the Crime Syndicate are. The other villains run around Gotham overturning cars and starting fires, then we cut to Central City where the Rogues - who, besides Lex, are the only villains to hold out against allying with the Crime Syndicate - are told they want the whole city levelled though we only see a small fire in the middle of a street. Then Owlman says he needs infrastructure in order to control the people of this world. So what is it - burn everything or not? If you burn everything, you destroy the infrastructure you say you need to control people. And what kind of dumbass solution is moving the moon in front of the sun? Moving past this issue and looking at the series as a whole, Forever Evil is not a new concept. If you want to read about Lex Luthor saving the world, read Monkeybrain's Edison Rex. If you want to read about evil Superman, check out Mark Waid's Irredeemable, and if you want to read about superheroes being bad, read Garth Ennis' The Boys. Forever Evil is a day late and a dollar short - supervillains killing superheroes and running the world has been done before and better by other writers and artists. Johns isn't doing anything particularly novel with this series and it remains woefully underwhelming to read. Forever Evil #2 has some moments of interest but it's like every big event comic in that it's overhyped and fails to live up to its own billing. The ending is interesting and, like the other good points in this issue, hints at a more compelling storyline, but so far we've yet to see one emerge in this series. Somewhere in Forever Evil is a good story but it doesn't look like Johns can tease it out and as such it remains an incredibly average comic at best.
Published by DC Comics, Forever Evil #2 by Geoff Johns and David Finch is out now