A most sudden conclusion.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Bruno Redondo, Juan Albarran
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
The series concludes with Batman facing an uncertain future at the same time his most trusted ally makes a fateful decision.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the downsides of not paying too much close attention to the fates and changes of series is that you can get pretty well blindsided by things. With this installment of the series, where so much is set up and ready to go, we reach the end of the run. Tom Taylor has definitely had a whole lot of fun with this series and it’s had the right balance to it that it needed to keep moving forward and do new things, especially it’s space sidestory that took up a nice little chunk recently. For the finale, we get Bruno Redondo and Juan Albarran on the art duties together again in a great way with some solid material that Rex Lokus delivers his coloring magic on. This team, and a few other art team combinations, have really elevated this series over time so that it looked great and really delivered something thoroughly enjoyable.
The two track approach continues well here and brings us very different things. Gorilla City takes up a nice chunk after recent events and seeing Grodd further cement his power is definitely fun. His control over Solovar’s son definitely makes an impact but we also see how he’s ensuring that the humans there are kept in line as well. For Grodd, he wants complete control and his working with Brainiac is going to ensure that at this stage – though some are starting to figure it all out. We don’t get a huge body count here but Solovar’s story looks like it comes to a firm close and I’m glad to see how Grodd deals with Ra’s, who does his best to try and warn Bruce before he loses complete control of himself. Ra’s wasn’t wrong in some ways to align with Gorilla City but the changing nature of rulership there compared to his own stable base is what turned things upside down for him.
The other story focuses on Bruce to a minor degree as he gets the call but has to deal with something far more problematic. And that’s Alfred’s story. Alfred has not come back right from the Lazarus Pit and we’ve known that from the start. Here, he’s realized he can no longer be a part of all of this and has a really beautiful moment where he basically hands off Bruce to the Kents to keep an eye on him. While Bruce has come back from a certain kind of darkness in this series after events spiraled out of control, the position that Alfred is in and the bond he shares with Bruce has put him into this position where he simply can’t anymore. It’s not easy to understand in some ways but it also tracks very well with what Alfred’s story has been for a while now.
In Summary:
While serving as an ending to Alfred’s storyline, Injustice 2 does a pretty good job here with what it wants to do, explaining out the reasons, and providing the right kind of emotional weight to it after all that has happened. The rest of the book sets up what’s to come and I’m sort of guessing/presuming that it’s related to the game itself, maybe? Having not played any of them it’s just a big vortex of “magic happens” flowchart box for me. The real magic has been this series though and while I’m left unfulfilled in terms of an ending I’m very fulfilled with what Tom Taylor and this group of artists have produced over the last two or so years on top of all the other projects. Hopefully, this isn’t the end of the Injustice storyline overall as there’s so much continued potential here, but if it is, it was a good run.
And yes, there’s an annual coming in November to give us just a bit more.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: August 21st, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
