Review: Injustice: Gods Among Us Vol. 2 hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

It feels like writer Tom Taylor has less set-up to do in the second volume of Injustice: Gods Among Us, especially in terms of the tragic deaths that catalyze the piece, and this allows for more of your standard superhero fare for the reader to get behind. Injustice is the pro wrestling of the DC Comics set right now (appropriate for a comic based on a fighting video game), a book enjoyable largely in how over-the-top and "wrong" it often is. Taylor writes a convincing Superman vs. Batman story here; this is not "our" Superman and Batman, nor would we ever want them to be, but I found this a credible take on what a conflict between these two heroes might be like.

[Review contains spoilers]

There's a few sequences in Injustice Vol. 2 where Superman and Batman work to one-up one another. Batman kidnaps one of Superman's allies and replaces them with a spy; Superman attempts to reveal to the world Batman's identity; Batman brings the Justice League watchtower crashing to Earth. If we turn our heads and squint a little bit, and tell ourselves this is not the shining Man of Tomorrow and the noble Dark Knight, there's something engaging about this conflict of brawn versus brains, each of them convinced of their role as the hero of the story.

Taylor nicely complicates the conflict, as when Batman and his team break into the Fortress of Solitude wanting to steal Superman's secret weapon, but their efforts are misconstrued as trying to harm Superman's parents. At the (cold, cold) heart of the book, each hero wants desperately for the other to understand their point of view; this could be written as just a story of Bright Hero A versus Dark Hero B, but the layers of past friendship that the reader brings to a tale of Superman and Batman give their conflict extra depth.

Much of the plot of Injustice Vol. 2 turns on that secret weapon, a "magic pill" created by Lex Luthor (Superman's buddy, apparently) to give normal people super-powers to help Superman fight his war on crime. I don't know to what extent the magic pill corresponds to the Injustice video game, but I can extrapolate a certain logic here -- Black Canary can't reasonably go up against Superman in the game, but by fiat of a magic pill (no less ridiculous than any other solution), those match-ups become feasible. I haven't played Injustice, but I sense Taylor gets closest to a real approximation of the gameplay in the annual collected here in which a powered-up Harley Quinn fights Lobo. That's a ridiculous match, but then again putting Harley and Lobo together in a story makes a certain amount of sense, and herein one begins to see Injustice's appeal -- no rules also means no limits to the storytelling.

What's to the benefit to the story, of course, can also be its drawback. That Taylor portrays, in another instance, Ma Kent, Pa Kent, and a hologram of Jor-El all hugging over their concern about Superman is a wildly imaginative scene, and exactly the kind of thing you might never see anywhere else that Injustice should strive for. On the flip side, however, is one of the concluding scenes where Superman breaks Batman's back over his knee Bane-style, simultaneously horrifying and ridiculous, which might be pegged as appropriately over-the-top or gruesomely irreverent, depending on your point of view. And not to be outdone, Taylor finishes the book with a sequence where a super-powered Alfred (yes, Alfred) punches and kicks and head-butts Superman to a pulp. Again, there's something fantastically outrageous and also very, very wrong with the story here.

What generally sells me on a "wrong" story of this type (Judd Winick's Catwoman Vol. 1: The Game is another that comes to mind) is whether it's apparent to me that the authors understand the kind of story they're telling. It's fitting that the book starts with a Shazam (nee Captain Marvel) story in which Billy Batson interviews people about their perspectives on Superman's dictatorial ways, ending with a pseudo-conversation between Billy and Shazam/Marvel himself. Billy remarks, "I don't think someone as young as me is supposed to see this stuff ... I think it's affecting me." Taylor, in essence, gives the book a warning label; this is rough stuff, by design, but it's not blithe about it (Alfred bashing in Superman's face notwithstanding).

Injustice ought end the debate (though it probably won't) as to whether superheroes should kill. Taylor brings Apokoliptian blowhard Kalibak to Earth, raining down destruction with his Parademons, even as he chides Superman that he knows Superman won't kill to stop them (setting aside that, at least in the New 52, Parademons are robots). We see here quite clearly the slippery slope; Superman does not want to kill, but having already killed the Joker, murder as a viable solution becomes easier and easier, and Superman indeed kills the Parademons. A little while later, Taylor offers a scene in which Superman and the Flash play chess, and Superman proposes destroying all guns; here, Flash demonstrates the slipper slope himself by asking Superman if they'd next outlaw cigarettes, or lock up people who speed in cars, or leave dangerous dogs unchained, or who don't recycle.

Taylor at times makes Superman's hard-line approach in the book very attractive, but he also demonstrates its complete unworkability; there's no scenario in which Superman trying to protect people from themselves doesn't end up in a totalitarianism regime. Taylor populates the story with characters that know this, even on Superman's side, including the Kents, Jor-El, Lex Luthor, and the Flash. What I hope is that Taylor is moving us toward a place where Superman recognizes the contradictions as well; the Injustice game dictates Superman can't change his position, but I would be curious to see Taylor write Superman's dawning insight at the same time.

As with many of DC Comics's digital first books, Injustice straddles the line of being kind-of, sort-of an old DC Universe book. Taylor side-steps much of that with this being an alternate universe, but in flashbacks we see that Superman used to wear his classic underwear-on-the-outside costume and Harley Quinn once wore her clown suit (I'd be pleased to see a Year Zero Injustice story at some point that depicts how the characters went from their previous appearances to these). The Fortress of Solitude here has the classic big key, and Taylor's Jor-El is the old John Byrne version; all of these are nice remembrances of times past, even in a book that for many might sully those memories.

At the same time, Taylor plays fast and loose with established continuity at other times, making that call for a prequel to the prequel even stronger. Most notably, in Injustice Superman and Lex Luthor have always been friends, and Taylor treats it so matter-of-factly that the reader does a double-take; surely that's a story waiting to be told. Also, there's an amusing scene in which we find Huntress and Black Canary, but not Green Arrow, know Batman's identity. It is amusing, but it's hard to imagine the series of events through which Taylor thinks that logically would be the case.

The first volume of Injustice began and ended with some really appalling deaths -- Superman murdering Lois and his child on one end, and Robin Damian Wayne killing Nightwing with an absurd trip-and-fall on the other. In that Injustice: Gods Among Us Vol. 2 skews less tragic, more loony, and with greater emphasis on freedom fighter Batman, I was able to enjoy the story more and feel the "wrongness" less. Injustice will not appeal to everyone, but Tom Taylor piqued my interest this time, and I'd be curious to read the first Year Two volume.

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Review: Injustice: Gods Among Us Vol. 1 hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

The first volume of Injustice: Gods Among Us is not a poorly told tale, especially as a digital comic translated to print and then newly collected in trade form. It's a story, however, that likely won't be palatable to most outside of ardent fans of the Injustice video game, given how dark and joyless the subject matter is.

The greatest importance of Injustice to those outside the video game realm may instead be that it's written by Tom Taylor, who follows James Robinson's much-acclaimed run on the Earth 2 title. I liked the first Earth 2 collection a lot, and so I take very seriously the question of whether Robinson's replacement will be able to do justice to the title or not. Injustice, as a book about an "alternate" DC Universe with an expansive cast, will be many readers' first indication of how Taylor will handle the other title.

The difficulty is in separating Injustice's storytelling from its subject matter. Injustice is a story that, devoid of its video game, would likely cause readers to wonder why DC would deign to publish it. Stories of dystopian futures where Superman wars with Batman are not foreign to the DC Universe and can be quite substantial, but Injustice knocks the heroes down a lot and doesn't do much to pick them back up. Perhaps that changes as the story continues, but it makes this first volume difficult reading.

[Review contains spoilers]

It is to Taylor's credit that he makes us care about these characters from the outset. The "two heartbeats" bit on the second page is rather ingenious, and equally good is his banter between Clark and Lois and then Superman and Batman in about the book's first eight pages. Indeed, were Taylor writing a "regular" DC Universe title like the Superman series, where periods of peril and levity are more even, this might be a good sign that Taylor can write these characters creatively and likably.

Unfortunately, the conceit that Superman ends up killing Lois and his unborn child is so grotesque as to mar much of the rest of the story. I sense this is not Taylor's doing but rather something stemming from the video game itself, so we can't take this as a knock against Taylor; in fact, the second use of "two heartbeats" is a good callback that shows Taylor's control over the situation. However, when we combine Lois's death with Superman and Wonder Woman crippling a protestor, and then the death of Robin Damian Wayne essentially due to Superman's negligence, Injustice tortures the characters to an extent that Taylor can't make "fun," and that may be his largest failing in this volume.

In contrast, Taylor's biggest win here is his inspired pairing of Green Arrow and Harley Quinn. This Green Arrow is the gruff-but-grandfatherly everyman take from the Kevin Smith and Judd Winick eras, and this makes him a good straight-man to Harley who, despite her role in Lois Lane's murder, comes off as sympathetic after the death of her "puddin'," the Joker. There's great humor in these pages, and Taylor carries the "mustache bit" to score again later; unfortunately, it still comes off as gallows humor -- funny, but not "light" per se -- given what else is happening in the book. Here again, a reader has to distinguish between the story Taylor is telling and how he tells it; the story is depressing, but Taylor demonstrates that he can write good interplay between the characters, which is auspicious for Earth 2.

At the same time, Taylor's Wonder Woman gives one pause for concern. We have seen militaristic depictions of Wonder Woman in Flashpoint and New Frontier, even in Kingdom Come, but it's hard to find anything sympathetic or likable in Taylor's version. At each step, Wonder Woman encourages Superman to become more dictatorial, admitting that she's been "waiting" for Superman to take such actions. What's worse, no sooner has Lois died than Taylor's Wonder Woman begins to think of replacing her as Superman's paramour; Diana even withholds Aquaman's condolences from Superman, seeming to actively scheme to "erase" Lois.

In a story without many female protagonists, and where the impetus of the story is the brutal murder of one of those female protagonists, it's especially disturbing to see Wonder Woman presented as the "succubus" character, perverting Superman's male will with her feminine wiles. A reader could subsequently wonder how Hawkgirl or other female characters might read in Taylor's Earth 2 based on the short shrift they seem to get in Injustice.

Earlier I reviewed the first print collection of DC's digital Arrow comic and I found that book stilted and repetitive, owing to the brief nature of the digital chapters. I'm pleased to see that Injustice reads much better in its translation from digital to a print comic; it's mostly tough to tell where the digital comic breaks between issues (or the breaks come between scenes) such that the story feels more natural than Arrow's done-in-ones. The panel layouts are an obvious grid pattern from stacking digital "frames" atop one another, but some work has been done to bleed the backgrounds together such that the uniformity isn't always so obvious. I had many qualms while reading this book in print, but the digital translation wasn't one of them.

In its setup, Injustice: Gods Among Us isn't largely different from Mark Waid and Alex Ross's Kingdom Come. But whereas Kingdom Come showed the characters trying to set a heroic example in a darker world, Injustice is largely about the heroes behaving badly; it's the effective difference between Superman killing the Joker in Injustice and prosecuting the Joker's killer in Kingdom Come. Injustice, the game, involves the heroes of "our" universe encountering those of this world; granted the game itself relates this, but I rather wish this was the story Tom Taylor was given to tell, such that there'd really be some "good guys" here for the reader to get behind. There's plenty indications here that Taylor knows his craft, which bodes well for Earth 2, but it remains to be seen how much of Injustice's sullenness is inherit and how much of it Taylor may bring with him to the other title.

For an alternate (and more positive) take on Injustice: Gods Among Us Vol. 1, see Todd Allen's review at The Beat.

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