A new and darker beginning.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Daniel Sampere, Juan Albarran
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Batman faces a committee that’s determined to find out whether or not he colluded in the assassination of the President in order to put a more compliant ally in the White House. An old ally returns to make the Dark Knight’s life more complicated and Batman reveals an ominous bit of new technology.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When it comes to politics in comics there’s often plenty of complaints but mine always tends to focus more on how superficial and, well, comic-booky it gets in how events are handled. You have to give on that a bit because we’re talking about a world where such crazy things happen that you can’t really do it legitimately and all because when you do the whole thing just falls apart. Tom Taylor knows that and that means we get a really simple and streamlined piece after the cataclysmic events that happened to the nation in the last couple of issues. It’s not something that would be swept up cleanly or easily and the kind of national fracturing that would occur, even after the Regime’s rule, would just lead to a state of national psychosis I think.
This book works the two-track approach pretty well all things considered. The subplot is the one that kicks it off as we see Bruce dealing with Congress in a small mostly private session that questions his motivations and involvement with what happened. Since he’d threatened the previous president and had issues with the president-elect, his death casts a wide shadow and part of it hits Bruce easily. This even more so because his recent meeting had Pierce there and now Pierce as the designated survivor is now president and that certainly reads like a whole lot of collusion. There are some sharp barbs tossed into this and it doesn’t look good for Bruce but it’s also hard to really pin him down for anything. But the knowledge of his alter ego and making it clear that he’s not had any real success there either definitely eats deeply with him.
The main plot of this issue is fed by that as hours later we see Bruce caring for Alfred before heading out into the night to deal with crime and vent a little frustration. It’s nicely illustrated with some great scene layouts from Sampere, which I definitely enjoy, and a good sense of power and violence that this book doesn’t always dig into as often as you might think it does. But it’s his encounter with Selina that changes things as he takes her to the Batcave under the Batcave (because, of course) where his next project is underway to deal with the growing threats out there. Is this how we get Batman from resistor to the Regime to forming his own version of it? It’s certainly possible and probable, especially with the mindset that we become what we hate and fight against more often than not.
In Summary:
Injustice 2 is moving along swimmingly and the new twist brought into play has the potential to shake things up (keeping in mind that I don’t play any of the games and know the path they track). Tom Taylor works some solid material here within the context to how this series and world operates to move us toward a new big picture problem alongside Ra’s and his world ending intent and it’s all put together wonderfully with what Sampere and Albarran do as they definitely click well. I love the look that Batman has during this, especially the night scenes with the color choices Lokus comes up with, and the work has a really good smooth and engaging feeling to it once again. Why isn’t this book daily already?!
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 17th, 2017
MSRP: $0.99
