A look to the past and how it set events into motion.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Roge Antonio
Colors: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
The Justice League throws a celebration honoring the heroes who came before them—the JSA! Batman finds himself in an unexpected spar with Wild Cat for old time’s sake while Wonder Woman, Alan Scott, and the Spectre contemplate their actions in WWII. Meanwhile, Joker finds exactly who he’s looking for that will come back to haunt the JSA.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I always knew that Injustice would be back some day, in some form. I figured a few more years, a new game, a new creative team to launch something different. But here we are, amid the chaos of 2020, and one of the best things reappears on my radar. Tom Taylor handled a large chunk of the original run of this and on a weekly basis for several years I thrilled at one of the best ongoing yet weirdly self-contained alternate DC timelines that’s out there. Taylor had the time and space to show not only did he “get” nearly every character but he understood how they’d react when pushed past the edge, and how that would allow for all the norms to unravel. Sound familiar? Taylor’s dialogue and pacing was ideal so having him back here guiding us again is starting off at the best point. The prior series featured an array of artists, some of who have gone on to be bigger names, and those books worked well to cultivate their style and familiarity with a lot of characters and situations. Here, we get Roge Antonio stepping up to the plate and working the JLA and JSA together with his distinctive style that already has me eager to see how this work will mold him as time goes on.
Taking place before the events of the main Injustice series, what this issue does is bring together the JLA and JSA to celebrate what the JSA did over the years. As Superman says while aboard the Watchtower with both groups, they saved the world 17 times over before the JLA members were even born and they owe them a real debt. It’s always fun watching two teams like this together and to see what kind of character quirks pop up. Superman had to almost forcefully bring Batman to this as he hates leaving Gotham in general, oh is his life going to change, but it becomes worth it when Wildcat eggs him into a fistfight. Just having the great Wildcat comment how he’s from the 1920s yet Batman sounds like an old man is priceless. But that’s balanced out with material where we see that the Spectre came for this celebration and even photo moment, something he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome to. It touches on neat little aspects of them so nicely, as does both generation of Flashes getting popcorn to watch the Batman/Wildcat fight.
But what is setting the larger story in motion? We’ll see what draws us into the past to see the JSA years, but here we have a man named Andre Chavard in a Gotham prison being told that he has a terminal illness and less than a month to live. Chavard wants a compassionate release in order to see his grandson but the board denies him, noting that his grandson knows where he is and never came to visit. To make it worse, he’s told he hasn’t paid his debt for his past. With a month left to live, it makes clear that cruelty is in the system more than anything else. This sets Chavard to use prison connections to get out which is what the last few pages sets up for us. What I love is this is where Taylor goes for some unexpected deep cuts from a publisher with decades and decades of no longer remembered characters. Chavard, first appearing in Detective Comics back in 1942, was a member of the Boy Commandos and was last seen in DCU Legacies in 2010. I’m definitely curious to see how this Chavard went from fighting with the Americans in the 40s to end up in this situation and what Taylor has in store for him.
In Summary:
The launch of this series came with the first three issues being released at the same time, but I really want to savor this book like I did prior incarnations so I’ll be doing each issue individually. Tom Taylor always puts a ton of little things to talk about in each issue and I don’t want to race through and miss these things and to share my excitement over it. The opening issue does a lot of tone setting and it’s fun getting back to a more innocent time with these characters knowing what their future is. Roge Antonio puts in a solid opening installment with some really neat designs for the characters, a good sense of flow for the action, and nailing the pacing just right to handle all that’s being thrown at the reader so that it’s smooth. I’m excited to see more of their work and whoever else ends up working on this series.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology | Amazon
Release Date: August 4th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
