Saturday, January 2, 2016

Injustice: Gods Among Us Volume 2 (A Graphic Novel x2)


Pro: A very good companion to the video game; well done!
Con: It bugs me when artist styles change mid-way through something.

The Bottom Line: If you need a new graphic novel series to get in on, or if you liked the video game and want to see the starting points, here you go.

Obviously this is the second volume to the Injustice series. Based upon the Injustice: Gods Among Us video game in which Superman is a totalitarian ruler and the goal is to knock him back to earth (so to speak), these graphic novels give you all the back story in great detail on how all that came to be. Made by the people who brought you Mortal Kombat, it was bound to be good.

At this point, Superman and his team are slowly but surely weeding out bad guys who are still (for some reason – stupidity I guess) are being themselves, such as warlords attacking their own people and generally being terrible as they are in the real world. Batman keeps trying to work on contingency plans in the hopes of stopping Superman in his descent into total domination. Personally, I was all for Superman’s design, although I know it will turn out poorly. Superman’s father said it best when he pointed out that Superman was trying not to lose anyone else, and by doing so, would essentially stow away the world into a box to keep it safe.

And we all know how much we humans like being tucked away into boxes without a say in things.

At one point Kaliback decides to make an appearance and attacks all over the world, thinking that because Superman is fighting so hard to bring peace everywhere that he’s not going to fight back properly. Not sure what flawed logic Kaliback is using, but it backfired in every way possible. In fact, it put Superman on a killing spree, which again I supported. Let’s be honest, I don’t know how you’re going to defeat Darkseid’s forces without straight up killing them. I guess I’ve just never been the one to be merciful to enemies who show absolutely zero mercy at any time ever. Guess that’s why I wouldn’t make a good hero. But constant killing probably didn’t do Superman’s psyche any favors. I was with him up until he started killing other heroes.

Now it’s not cool.

I’m interested to see how this story progresses (seeing as I haven’t played the game), although unfortunately my library doesn’t have the Year 2 volumes yet, so I guess I’ll have to wait. Or cheat and find all the cutscenes on YouTube, but even then I’d still probably end up reading the graphic novel. I wonder how many there will be in the end.

My only small peeve is when the artist gets switched up right in the middle and their style is completely different than the people before them. It’s kind of jarring and it took me a moment to realize I hadn’t actually skipped anything – the art style was just different. I realize that when working on graphic novels with a base as huge as DC, this sort of thing is going to happen, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So really I’ll just have to suck it up and move on. It wasn’t really that it annoyed me a great deal, it just took me aback for a bit.

Otherwise, it’s been fun to read, and a nice change for me since I typically don’t hop into graphic novels very often…or ever.

NT

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