Review by Frank Plowright
Under DC’s designations, Earth-3 is the alternate Earth controlled by the Crime Syndicate, evil counterparts of the Justice League, and in the opening pages it’s invaded by Amanda Waller and the 2022 version of the Suicide Squad. That bit’s easy enough to understand, but don’t become complacent, as comprehension is very low on the agenda. Apparently there’s a second Suicide Squad led by Rick Flag, and they’re not doing very well on Earth-0, which may be very confusing to anyone who’s not been following Robbie Thompson’s Suicide Squad, starting with Give Peace A Chance.
Even if you have, War For Earth-3 is muddled and far from impressive. Four writers and ten pencil artists over six chapters tell one story, and it reflects the confusion throughout. The sample art is from Tom Derenick, one of only two artists to draw an entire chapter, Will Conrad being the other, on Teen Titans Academy and the Flash respectively. In those chapters the ongoing series subplots predominate, while plots affecting this story are only allocated a couple of pages. The purpose is to gather characters from those series for the finale, but they offer little to anyone not already caught up in their lives, and just wanting to know what Waller and the Suicide Square are up to. To make matters worse, primary writers Thompson and Dennis Hopeless choose to complicate an already difficult to follow story by constantly jumping back in time from the action they’ve just shown to supply the build-up. It’s almost designed to alienate.
Waller’s plan is that she wants to leave Ultraman and his super powered thugs to indulge themselves while she acts as their regent, controlling the planet on their behalf with her own super powered thugs. Exactly why she wants to do this is never clarified. Or perhaps it’s just lost in the constant shuffle from location to location, but the justification supplied at the end is way too trivial.
When that arrives another three artists are required for forty pages, and while the storytelling is at least clearer than earlier chapters, it doesn’t amount to much. The constant switches of allegiance are cheap thrills, and pretty well everyone’s lost in the shuffle. War For Earth-3 is about as poor as superhero comics come these days.
