A dangerous and ill-defined plan.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Mike S. Miller
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
In this special Flash solo story, a de-powered Barry Allen visits Australia to come to terms with a terrible incident that happened in the very first year of Superman’s reign.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After being introduced a fair bit ago in a standalone issue that got blended into the series proper, Injustice 2 began working its Kara storyline recently to good effect. Tom Taylor made it click because it dealt with what Black Adam is up to and how he can see her as a useful tool while Damien largely does the same thing, though with a bit more humanity to him than Adam. The shift to Themyscira has been fun overall as seeing her in this environment is great and Mike S. Miller is ideally suited to it as I love his take on the backgrounds but also the armor design, making for some busy scenes that feels like it’s stepping out of something older but with the modern sensibility about it.
Everything’s essentially gone all chaotic with Antiope starting a bit of a revolution in order to set things on a better path than what Hippolyta has been doing. The whole jailing of Diana is certainly divisive just as it was in discovering what Diana lead the Amazons into previously, resulting in this situation. Factionalism on a small island could and should make for an engaging series on its own and with Kara now being aligned with Antiope, it’s fun to watch as it unfolds, especially as Kara is such a surprise to most of them. When Nubia tries to take her out she’s caught completely unprepared for what Kara can do, though she intends to right that when they go for a second round later. But the expressions on everyone’s faces is priceless and it gives Kara a good sense of where she stands in all of this, though aware that she’s vastly outnumbered should it come down to just her.
The small moments work well here as well, such as when Kara gets down to where Diana is and Diana realizes that this is who Ares was talking about. The piece where she breaks the chains formed by Zeus is something that I’ll leave to the hardcore to go on as to whether it fits or not but it left me unsettled as it felt out of place. It does make clear the scope of what power level Kara is and that makes it something that Diana aligns with easily, which include a great wall breaking sequence where they’re like two kids that are just loving what they can do afterward. The action moves swiftly here and Taylor keeps the pace smooth so that we get plenty of solid dialogue and plot movement as needed but it’s Miller that delivers the most here in just giving it such a great look with so much expressiveness.
In Summary:
Injustice 2 delivers another solid piece in this arc and shifts the balance of power while splitting another bloc. The Amazon side could make for some neat things down the line in how they interact in the greater war being setup and I like it as it figures into their long history and the way so many shift allegiances over the decades, sometimes simply because. Tom Taylor captures their voices well and sets up some great set pieces with the action which Mike S. Miller delivers on beautifully. I always struggled with a lot of his work in the earlier pages of the original Injustice year series but he’s killing it in this one as it feels like he’s got the room to breathe to really put it all out there.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: November 7th, 2017
MSRP: $0.99
