It’s time to start upping the body count.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Roge Antonio
Colors: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Someone in the JSA has been murdered, and it’s up to Batman and the Justice League to investigate who did it. Meanwhile, Joker uses his amulet on his first victim to break into the JSA retrieving important information…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Injustice: Year Zero has had some very fun installments so far with what it’s doing but there is always that moment where things click and it feels like the pivot has happened. Tom Taylor does just that here now that the Joker has a different kind of real power and it goes about as you’d expect. There’s a lot to like here in his take on the JSA and watching him move through it is fascinating. Roge Antonio really steps up well here to create some fantastic pages with a full spread piece that connects with all of its brutality in just the exact right way. With Beredo’s color design taking it up a notch, especially the scenes with Dodds, it’s just striking and engaging in how it makes you feel the full impact of it.
With Joker having taken control of the power at this point and taken over the original Green Lantern, we see him doing his best to handle operating a second body. It’s not easy and he has to concentrate, which isn’t easy with Harley around asking lots of questions, but making it so that there’s a challenge definitely helps. And flying when you’re not used to it is unnerving, especially through someone else’s body. Joker getting a handle on all of this and feeling the power that he has with it is great but it’s the cunning side that drives him in this series and he’s intent on using it to be subtle and get a lot of what he needs in order to create some real damage. He wants there to be true emotional pain coming from all of this.
Having him skulking around the JSA headquarters with his commentary is certainly colorful and having him unsure of how easy it is definitely tracks well all things considered. The idea of him getting home addresses of heroes in order to really create problems is pure Joker, especially in how he sees through a photo that Batman has some true admiration for Wildcat. The only problem is that Wesley Dodds, aka Sandman, shows up and is surprised to see him there. That leads to its own confrontation and dark end because the Joker wants there to be dead bodies and confusion over the who and why, especially since he’s doing it all from Alan’s body as the original Green Lantern.
In Summary:
The pivot point here with a fresh body falling and Joker having what he needs for more is a delight. There’s more to this part of the story as the opening takes place after it and we have to see how Joker handles the other body that drops here. I’m not, like, rooting for death of characters but that’s a key piece of what makes this particular series work and why we read it. The teases of what we’ve had before have been good but here Joker just makes it real and trie to figure out the consequences along the way and I cannot wait to see more.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology | Amazon
Release Date: September 15th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
