10 Comic Books Where Evil Won

4. JLA: Earth 2

JLA Earth 2
DC Comics

If there's one thing Grant Morrison just LOVES it's classic throwbacks to old Silver Age staples. It's present throughout their run on Batman, and they sprinkled in similar nods towards the sci-fi laden DC era in their Justice League works from the late nineties and early aughts.

JLA: Earth 2 is one such occasion where Morrison's Silver Age hijinks are on full display, as the Justice League of Earth Prime take on their evil counterparts from the antimatter universe, a reality that naturally gravitates towards evil outcomes rather than good ones.

Morrison's comic, which features art from Frank Quitely, ends in a stalemate between the two Leagues, but there's no getting away from just how evil the antimatter universe is. Earth 2 has Ultraman rather than Superman, Owlman instead of Batman, Superwoman as the evil Wonder Woman and then Johnny Quick and Power Ring as the stand-ins for Flash and Green Lantern, and they are all bad to the bone.

In the antimatter universe, literally every hero who emerges is doomed to fail, whereas in the main DC reality, they're usually meant to prevail. Apply that to the entire history of the old Earth 2 (which also directly implies Benedict Arnold successfully betrayed George Washington to the British), and you're left with countless lifetimes of evil endings.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.