The plan starts to come together.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Buccellato
Art: Mike S. Miller
What They Say:
Lex Luthor plays a dangerous game, while Batman walks among the gods and picks a surprise champion for a trial by combat.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the Amazons showing up at the Hall of Justice to deal with Superman, who himself is dealing with what happened to Montoya in a surprisingly strong way, there’s a sense of an opportunity and opening there to be dealt with. Superman suffered some real losses in the recent arc and compounding that has started to draw him back along the line a bit from the extreme to the center as his rage diminishes a touch. It’s not a full swing back on the pendulum, but you can see pieces of it starting to make sense. So seeing his attempts last time around to try and ease down the tensions was welcome, but it’s also coming at a time when his opposition through Batman is looking at an increasingly grim selection of options to work with.
So it’s welcome that a decent chunk of this book deals with the days prior to the arrival of the Amazons and shows some of how it came together, expanding on what we got before. The time with Luthor does feel a bit alien to me, having not read the first or second year books, but it covers it well enough to grasp the concepts of how his relationship with Superman had changed over the years, but also the way he viewed him as a threat. So with everything gone as it has, it’s no surprise that there is still some conflict in him about going through with everything here, which we saw kickoff with him helping Batgirl get her legs back. With Bruce dialing in and letting him know he’s taking the next option available to him by working with Ares, that just opens the doors even wider. And it’s good to see that unfold, both with Bruce talking with Ares himself and getting a further look at what happened with Hippolyta recently, since that made a radical change to the way that Paradise Island works.
Bringing everything into the present works decently enough here since the face off at the Hall of Justice is made more complicated by the fact that Batman and his group are there to egg it all on. There’s some decent banter about it, and I liked Hal’s reticence about the whole thing considering his own losses, but it all turns in the direction that it must go of a fight having to happen. Shifting it to a trial by combat between designated champions isn’t a surprise as it feels for Amazonian, and that Diana would call for it makes sense as she believes she can do what needs doing. But that we instead get the script flipped is a lot of fun and it’ll be interesting to see how they pull it off from here and what changes might shake out, since choosing two from the same side just feels like it’s something they won’t get away with .Harley as tribute though? Perfection.
In Summary:
Injustice has been doing the forward/backward thing a bunch in this particular year by showing us events and then backing up to show us how it got there. That works well enough in some ways, but if you do it too often it starts to feel forced and gimmicky. That said, I liked the background we get from both Bruce and Luthor over the plans and the entire Pandora’s Box that’s being opened, but it’s also a truth that the stakes are high and it can go on for only so long before things fall apart in a cataclysmic way. You have to believe that Batman has a whole other second level plan in the works here, because that’s who he is, so it’s a matter of enjoying the ride and the chaos of it all, and then whether the trick of it all is met. It’s a fun issue overall that further nudges the fight to come into the center stage.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 16th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
