Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Buccellato
Art: Mike S. Miller
Colors: J. Nanjan
What They Say:
The Trickster bonds with Bizarro, Superman confronts Lex, and a deadly criminal busts loose.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With Injustice taking the turn of bringing in Bizarro, there’s a kind of odd sense about things that happens with certain villains. While I certainly like Bizarro, I’ve been drawn to some of the more complex stories for the character that have been done sparingly over the years. With this series, that’s not something I expect to get sa the character’s use here is to provide a tough foil for Superman to go up against that surprises the hell out of him. Since Bizarro hasn’t been a big character for quite a few years, I’ll admit to enjoying the minor resurgence of him here as well as the use of the concept on the Supergirl TV series recently. It’s a quirky as hell concept that can be hard to work with but it represents one of the weirder sides of the old Superman comics that I have an affection for.
While Trickster is not one of my favorite characters, his being paired with Bizarro makes for some fun here as he’s kind of along for the ride but also setting things in motion to get Bizarro to go up against Superman. Painting the real Superman as the bad guy and villain while talking him up at the same time, resulting in Bizarro thinking he’s the one in charge and the good guy, you get a pretty solid push towards confrontation here. Bizarro is someone whose personality can be done in a really bad way so I definitely appreciate that Buccellato manages some solid dialogue for him in how he’s presented and Miller definitely captures the right look for him in this incarnation. You can feel the pride coming out of him with what Trickster is telling him and his desire to really be that Superman.
Naturally, the regime is not doing well because of all of this, though they have no clue who or what it is that’s causing all the problems beyond a red and blue blur. There’s almost a wink from Cyborg about how it may really be Superman, but Superman shuts that down hard. The search for clues provides for some fun in itself as the regime members get to work, but it all turns focus towards a border event at Mexico where Solomon Grundy gets out. Similar to Bizarro, this is a tough character to work with in regards to his style and approach, but it’s a good bit of a brickhouse sequence as Grundy breaks loose and really throws down with a few regime members. It’s all setup for the encounter between Bizarro and Superman of course, but it has the right play here and conveys a good sense of fun.
In Summary:
Injustice doesn’t delve much into what Batman and his group is doing at the moment, but I love that Trickster is doing his best to work Bizarro as he can. There’s a lot of things in motion in this series and I’m not going to complain about a fun side adventure involving some of my favorite oddball characters from the Superman lore. Buccellato and Miller definitely bring both Bizarro and Solomon Grundy to the page well and there’s a simplicity to it that just connects well, making it accessible to new readers while also hopefully delighting longtime readers like myself that enjoy the characters from a bygone day. The next issue hopefully has an epic level throwdown coming.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: March 1st, 2016
MSRP: $0.99