Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Bruno Redondo, Juan Albarran
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Batman finds two of the people he cares about most in the world placed in grave danger in his own home. The intruder is the last person he’d expect.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Injustice 2 looks like it’s about to move into a different direction for a bit, though it’s clear that it’ll circle back at some point to what’s laid down here. Tom Taylor has been nailing it on all fronts with this series once it got its groove going early on and there’s plenty of payoff here as a decent chunk of things feels wrapped up a bit. While there’s not a lot of emotional payoff to be had, Redondo and Albarran bring it to the surface with some really nicely laid out scenes to heighten the tension and to show Batman and his stoic ways with some moments of emotion along the way. That kind of reserved and almost cold attitude is what defines him but through it you can see just what kinds of things have a real impact on him.
This issue largely avoids a two-track story approach outside of Selina stumbling around looking for medical supplies before calling in for some help – and apparently getting out of town for a while. It’s just not easy living with Bruce even in the best of times, never mind when his unknown daughter has come to kill him. Athanasia has been an interesting creation for this series to provide a contrast to Damien and his working for Ra’s al Ghul to achieve similar goals. But whereas Damien realized the route taken was wrong and orchestrated ways to try and stave it off, Athanasia was a true believer that didn’t have the shades of gray that Damien had when it came to dealing with their father. Athanasia places so much of the results externally from her actions that even when she does something brutal, like killing the puppy, she still places all the blame on Batman.
The way events unfold with her this time around is nicely done as we get both Bruce and Alfred trying to talk her down some, even after she knocks them both out and ties them to chairs. But she’s just too far gone as she doesn’t believe he didn’t know about her combined with her blind faith in Ra’s, a dream that has now died and will cause the end of the world because of it. Ra’s plan certainly made a certain kind of sense when you had no morals or emotional attachment to anything else in the world and she just sees what her father did as committing the world to a slow death and nothing he says can change that. Naturally, a little outside help saves the day and there’s some cute moments in how Dinah handles Bruce for a lot of this, but it puts one piece of the puzzle out of play for a while after all that’s been done and can let the team focus on moving forward.
In Summary:
While the last panel has the ominous word “End” at the bottom of it, it’s just the end of this expanded arc that ran longer than I expected it to. A new storyline with different characters and situations is about to get underway and I’m excited by this shift in looking elsewhere that can let events on Earth grow in the background for a bit. Tom Taylor clearly has fun being able to play with the DC Universe as a whole but hasn’t really been able to go too far and wide just yet so I’m excited to see what he does there. Bruno Redondo and Juan Albarran have been turning in great pages for dozens of issues now and just refining even more and this issue is no exception. I’m very much looking forward to what comes next and hopefully some kind of new energy to playing with some different folks.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: April 3rd,, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
