Injustice Gods Among Us has been a digital comics juggernaut since it launched followed the release of the video game back in April of 2013. Since then the series has been a shinning example of a digital comic done right with many fans and critics praising the book for its quality and characterization. It’s also been one of the most successful digital books, selling almost 2 million units since its release.
Thankfully the first issue of Year Two serves as a showcase of what made Year One liked by many people, myself included. It mostly focuses on the relationship and interaction between Black Canary, Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan before Joker destroyed Metropolis and made Superman murder his wife and child. While it doesn’t push the plot forward in any way, its nice to see these people act like they used to before everything changed.
It’s tragic to see these people be as happy as they are in this flashback when you consider just how terrible things are, and will get for them moving forward. Dinah gets the worst of it as she lost the love of her life to a man she genuinely thought was here to help them and his best friend is openly supporting his killer despite this.
It wouldn’t be nearly as powerful if Tom Taylor didn’t have a great handle on the many heroes, anti-heroes and villains he has to juggle in this series but thankfully he does. The way Dinah, Oliver and Hal banter and interact with one another is 100% spot on and from this short flashback you genuinely get the sense these people were genuinely friends and cared about one another.
Oliver’s funeral also gives Taylor a chance to show us Superman’s evolution into the tyrant he will soon become. A fear many people had with this series was Superman would suffer a terrible tragedy and over night decide to become a dictator and enslave everyone. What we get instead is a Walter White like downfall of a genuinely good man who just had a bad day and let himself compromise his principles to achieve his goals.
Superman here tried to make amends for what he did to Oliver by trying to explain himself to Dinah but when she attacks him with a sonic scream. He grabs her mouth and is about to kill her with his heat vision but decides in the last-minute to get a hold of himself. It’s a short scene, but it proves just how far Superman has fallen and how much he’s tricking himself into believing he’s doing the right thing.
While the character stuff was all perfect and the issue was surprisingly fun and tragic at the same time. It also didn’t advance the plot beyond a small mention of Dinah working for Batman which we already know from the previous story lines. After the way Year One ended and left things off, I really wanted to see where Taylor would go with it but sadly we get none of that here and its admittedly disappointing.
Bruno Redondo is my favorite artist working on this book, and he doesn’t disappoint here. There’s no shot or page which will make you go WOW, but everyone looks better here than they are in many of the main New 52 books. Superman does have some iffy looking facial expressions, but the rest of the art doesn’t suffer from any such problems.
Year Two #1 is an issue you’ll get the most out of if you’ve read the Injustice comic since it launched. But fans of regular DC will still get a kick out of the character based stuff and hopefully this issue will compel them to find the back issues and starting reading this series regularly.
THE GOOD
+ Character Interaction and banter
+ Fun and tragic at the same time
+ Very good art by Bruno Redondo
+ Seeing Superman slipping more and more
THE BAD
– Iffy facial expressions on Superman
– Does little in the way of advancing the plot
FINAL VERDICT: A-
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