A sudden end!
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Bruno Redondo, Juan Albarran
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Batman’s desperate gambit to take down Zod gets some unwelcome support from an even deadlier foe.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Injustice 2 series took a very fun turn with the arrival of Zod out of the Phantom Zone as it had the potential to shake up the dynamic a lot. Which is easy to do in a series like this and Tom Taylor has managed that pretty well so that readers could be off balance fairly easily. This issue brings back what I think of as the main top team on the book with Bruno Redondo and Juan Albarran and it works out very well. There’s a good sense to the power of the fight going on here but it also balances out with some detailed human scenes toward the end when it shifts back to Gotham. The bleakness transitions well to the grime of the city and the team with Rex Lokus on the color work makes it work better than it should.
The first half of the book is what works the best for me as we get Batman in his mechanized suit going up against Zod, who is under the influence of the Scarecrow fear toxins. That has him seeing Batman as Superman and combined with the Kryptonite has him taking quite the beating. That lasts only so long and we get ready for the scales to tip back a bit but it’s rudely interrupted. With Ra’s al Ghul watching from afar, and knowing what kind of threat Zod represents to his plan, the use of Amazo to defeat him is almost comical as it’s just a quick and brutal takedown that truly ends the threat. While Batman was looking to send him back to the Phantom Zone as justice had already delivered its verdict on him back on Krypton, seeing what Amazo does here is shocking even to him, as it should be.
His return to Gotham after that to check in on Ted Grant, which feels like an odd turn of events, unless this is the Faux Batman at play here. While we don’t know who he is yet there’s definitely some connections at play as he talks in a familiar way with the unconscious Ted about the past and what the Justice Society was like and what they intended. His ending of Ted’s life here isn’t as brutal as what happened to Zod but it gives us a little more clue as to who this Faux Batman may be, though not enough to really run with anything in a concrete way, at least for me. What it does do is setup some more problems for the real Batman that’s close to arriving here as well and will end up taking a lot of the heat for this. The conversation is mixed enough that I can’t tell if it really is Bruce or the Faux but it’s something that just complicates everything here.
In Summary:
The back half of the book offers up enough confusing material that it leaves you uncertain as to what’s going on and who is who. We’ve had enough twists like this in the past so it’s definitely something to believe only so far until things get cleared up a bit more as it can be read a couple of different ways. The first half of the book works better for me as it’s a bit more linear and clear with what it’s trying to accomplish and it’s fun getting to see Redondo and Albarran going with such a big action sequence using the big characters and having them cut loose amid it. There’s a lot to like here as part of the overall and the team continues to do some great work.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 2nd, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
