Since its launch in May, the all-new ongoing series EARTH 2 has been building and expanding upon its universe with many new and exciting elements: new characters, origins, settings, costumes, powers, and more.  And with yesterday’s launch of a brand new story arc in issue #7, fans of EARTH 2 have lots of upcoming events to be excited about. For starters, next month’s issue #8 sees the return of Steppenwolf (who killed Wonder Woman in EARTH 2 #1) and the introduction of Fury!

“Issue #8 is all about Steppenwolf, and Steppenwolf realizing there's one country in Earth-2 that he needs to be in for political reasons that make sense for him in terms of the big storyline,” series writer James Robinson told NEWSARAMA. “It's a solo story between Steppenwolf and Fury. So it will show them, it will introduce Fury for the first time, and it will reveal aspects of the past and who Fury is. It's an interesting world, with a science fiction feel, but in the midst of it you have this eloquent alien barbarian and Fury, his sort of his aide de camp, just tearing through it and being savage and violent.”

“So issue #8 has a very different feel, but it's an interesting feel compared to the intrigue of issue #7,” Robinson continued. “So I definitely urge people to check out issue #8 as well, and see the first pieces of the mystery of the last Amazon and also Steppenwolf as one of the big villains of Earth-2. Nicola did an amazing job on designing Fury. She didn't draw this issue, but you see on the alternate cover how she interpreted Fury.”

For more from Robinson about EARTH 2 #8 and sneak peeks at guest artist Yildiray Cinar’s interior work for the issue, check out the interviews with the writer that ran this morning on MTV GEEK, COMIC BOOK RESOURCES, COMIC VINE and NEWSARAMA. And below, take a look at regular series artist Nicola Scott’s Fury-centric variant cover for EARTH 2 #8, which hits shelves on January 9.