Leave it to Deathstroke to do what needs doing.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Buccellato, Christopher Sebela
Art: Pop Mhan
Colors: Mark Roberts
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Batman’s team prepares the assault on Stryker’s Island to save his parallel Earth duplicate. Meanwhile, Harley’s off to storm the Watchtower.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Injustice has been doing some fun for the last couple of issues as it moves around the various parts in play. Buccellato and Sebela definitely have things firing well when away from Harley, at least in terms of the bigger story, but it slows down in problematic ways when we do focus on her. This issue does just that once again but it at least looks great as Pop Mhan returns for the art duties. I continue to love the way he brings the pages to life with the layouts and blending but also just the dynamic elements of the action, particularly with Harley, as it showcases the movement well. Giving him a little more time to give us some classic Joker facial expressions? Even better.
This installment works better for me with what Batman and the rest are up to as the focus is on saving Pancake Batman since he’s in Superman’s clutches and his time is running out. That has the team working a fast mission in a classic sense to deal with it, splitting up and handling the assignments with the kind of experience that you’d expect. What’s welcome is that amid this we have Cyborg and Deathstroke doing their mission and Deathstroke going a step further to ensure that what’s being done will lead to Superman’s death. His straightforward approach and treating this as a war, and ensuring that Batman lives as the symbol of the resistance, paints a great picture for him all while setting some big destruction in motion with the Watchtower.
Far more frustrating is Harley’s piece in all of this as she heads into the Hall of Justice in order to get access to where the Joker is being held as she’s intent on killing him. You know it won’t happen and it’ll be a mess and it’s just that. She ends up being sweet talked by him, again, and ends up freeing him while being amid all the other chaos going on and even Batman calling in for her help along the way. She’s simply unable to break free of him, which is something this series has been pushing hard to a problematic degree. Everything for Harley keeps circling back to the Joker and her slavish devotion to him and while I won’t say it undercuts what’s been done in the mainline books – as it doesn’t – it is proving to be a big drag on this book even if they’re hitting it a few times just to show that she can break free from it eventually.
In Summary:
For every step forward it seems like this book takes a step back. I really like what’s going on with the main group as a whole in seeing actions put into play to stop what’s going on and had hoped for more of that in the book, even if it was through Harley’s point of view. The Gods Among Us series worked a pretty good balance across different viewpoints with the yearly arcs to capture the flavor and tone of a lot of things. We get some of that here but the Harley sequences, as well illustrated as they are, just slow everything down and simply feel repetitive at this point, making me cringe seeing her going through the same terrible motions and emotions again and again.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 3rd, 2017
MSRP: $0.99
