Oh, DC - I’m starting to think we should split up and see other people.
It’s gotten to a point now that DC can fudge up their characters as much as they want to and I no longer care. Justice League - one of the worst incarnations ever. Justice League of America - staggeringly, even worse. Trinity War - easily the worst Event comic I’ve ever read. Most of the New 52 - absolute garbage.
So when I read Injustice: Gods Among Us and discovered that it too was a terrible comic - among the worst published in 2013 - I was spent on outrage. I no longer want to write long reviews on how badly handled this latest offering from DC was, how bungled were the characters, the plot, near every detail in the comic, adding up to an underwhelming and utterly superficial book - no. No, I’ll keep this brief (by my standards) because, besides a few titles by writers I know can produce great work at DC, I’ve all but given up on the prospect of reading a good comic from DC.
The “story” of Injustice is that Superman, under the effects of Joker’s kryptonite-laced Scarecrow fear gas, believes a pregnant Lois is Doomsday and punches her into space, killing her - and their unborn child. When the effects of the gas wear off, Superman realises what he’s done and loses his mind, kills Joker, and becomes dictator of Earth. The rest of the characters all have sudden major behavioural problems, nobody gets along with anybody, and they all decide to fight one another.
I mean, Joker and Harley steal a nuclear submarine - a NUCLEAR SUBMARINE - from the US Navy, somehow place a nuclear warhead in the middle of Metropolis, then somehow wire it up to Lois Lane’s heart - yes, Joker can now perform heart surgery - so that when it stops beating, the bomb will go off? What part of that setup even begins to make a lick of sense? But then hack writing is as hack writing does - and things don’t get hackier than Injustice.
I am aware that this is a computer game tie-in comic and therefore the plot was probably concocted by some halfwit at NetherRealm Studios, the creators of the Injustice: Gods Among Us game, and so I won’t blame Tom Taylor, the writer of this disaster, who had to make the best of the nothing he was handed. And of course it’s got nothing to do with continuity, it’s just some big what-if? story designed to set up a fighting game that really shouldn’t have any story in the first place. But at the end of the day, trying to explain why every character in the DCU is fighting one another all of a sudden, seems futile - why not just accept that this is a fighting game where the characters are doing just that because that’s the reason for the game’s existence? But no, DC had to cash in and we get this trash.
If all you want to see is superheroes yelling at one another in an angsty fugue state, fighting one another pointlessly – all the while completely out of character - then by all means pick up this nasty, unpleasant comic. I’m sure there are enough DC fans who loved Man of Steel, JMS’s Superman: Earth One rubbish, and will no doubt see in this a commendable work of art. But for everyone else, I’d suggest ignoring it entirely - chalk it up as yet another misstep from DC. How many more will they need to make before they start making good comics again?
Injustice: Gods Among Us Volume 1
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