Review: Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Three: The Complete Collection trade paperback (DC Comics)

A focus on DC Comics' magic characters gives Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Three: The Complete Collection a nice boost, and there are some impressive crowd scenes here. As before, Injustice proves its worth largely in just the variety of characters it can bring together on the page.

It’s likely too easy to say that where Year Three falters is in the transition between writers Tom Taylor and Brian Buccellato, but that nevertheless seems to be the case. It’s no question of writing prowess, but rather I’m not sure how much Buccellato had available other than what Taylor left him, and so there’s a repetitiveness to the conclusion mostly filled up with fight scenes. I was satisfied that Buccellato tied up all of Taylor’s loose ends for this “year,” but at the same time I’m suspicious on at least one point whether Taylor might not have handled at least one revelation better.

As I’ve written before, as template for DC’s successful “dystopic Elseworlds” that followed, Injustice is a perfectly serviceable alt-world tale. Both Taylor and Buccellato still struggle to make the core premise believable, but that’s made up for in other ways.

[Review contains spoilers]

Skipping all the way to the end, the Year Three annual collected here includes a revealing Teen Titans tale. Superboy Conner Kent witnesses the destruction of Metropolis and hears of Superman’s actions, and goes to confront him in the Fortress of Solitude, as written by Buccellato. Over two pages, Conner questions Superman as to what he did and how he could betray his heroic principles, while Superman remains silent the whole time. This was not so much moving to me as it was an indication of authorial impotence. Like Taylor before him, Buccellato can’t have Superman explain himself in even a semi-sensible way, as good villains sometimes do. While “Superman goes crazy and takes over the world” works fine in the summary for a video game, it’s a lot harder to do anything with in now the third series of 12-issue tie-in comics.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

What made Injustice appealing for the time in which it was written was that it dealt with a somewhat absent post-Crisis cast when the DC mainstream was well into the New 52. Clark and Lois' marriage, the return of Barbara Gordon as Oracle, the Conner Kent version of Superboy — these worked because insofar as Injustice’s present might be splintering in all different directions, its past aligns with a familiar (and beloved) timeline.

That’s why Taylor’s Lex Luthor having been perpetual friends with Superman was confusing, because it didn’t jibe with the shared past. Here, Buccellato posits an odd liminal space where Tim Drake is a nascent superhero, has just become Red Robin, and is new to the Teen Titans, seemingly out of sequence with the progression of Nightwing Dick Grayson to Robin Damian Wayne. It’s a strange choice, particularly given that Tim’s presence doesn’t otherwise affect the plot all that much.

Buccellato has a couple other errors — Superman remarks on killing someone I can’t recall, and Dr. Fate professes to a faculty with lightning — such to bear watching for the same in the future. But it was his revelation that the Spectre was being controlled by none other than Mr. Mxyzptlk that raised my suspicions the most. It’s as good a solution for the Spectre’s secret identity as any other — and I appreciate that Buccellato didn’t abandon this nor any other ongoing storyline — though it’s not clear why Mxy chooses to drop the charade at the moment he does and never pick it up again. Given that, and that at the point of revelation Mxy essentially all but exits the story, I tend to wonder if this was the plan all along or if Buccellato simply picked the closest port possible to dock this particular thread.

As mentioned above, no one quite seems to know what to do with the mad Superman here, and similarly Taylor’s Wonder Woman was warlike to the point of almost unrecognizable in Injustice’s beginning. Buccellato returns Wonder Woman after an absence, and while still she’s far different than the mainstream Diana, I felt Buccellato tempered her a little. She (or the author) immediately severs Superman’s membership in the Sinestro Corps, and indeed despite the Super-group’s bloodletting, the presence of actual super-villain Sinestro sits particularly poorly with her. Later, shockingly, Wonder Woman kills Huntress, but seems believably sorry to have done so. Not a fully recognizable Diana, but more so.

I think — and maybe this is just my bent for comics — that the sci-fi Green Lantern Corps material of Year Two was stronger than the magic of Year Three, but indeed there’s a lot to like in this “year.” Detective Chimp and Harvey Bullock (and the Chimp and Harley Quinn), Batman bursting forth from Etrigan, Ragman’s shocking demise, Nightwing as Deadman, and pages upon pages upon pages of John Constantine, it’s nothing to sneeze at (see the varied legion of collected heroes in Part Six). Taylor seems to stumble over a PG-rated Constantine in the beginning, with a lot of awkward “mother-lover”s and such; in this, Buccellato takes the win, peppering Constantine’s speech with more apropos “bollocks” and the like.

I have said artist Mike S. Miller isn’t my favorite, though I can’t deny that three “years” in, his wide angular figures are rather the “face” of Injustice. I thought he did a particularly good job in a Part Three scene with Harley Quinn, Detective Chimp, and Dr. Fate (that sounds like the start of a joke), though my estimation faded in the next pages with a maybe over-expressive Superman and Sinestro. Still I appreciate moments, as in Part Five, where Miller’s Batman looks positively Michael Keaton-esque.

Following Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Three: The Complete Collection, I’m curious now to see what comes in Year Four. We’ve done cosmic, we’ve done supernatural — I don’t know, there’s still the Greek gods or the Fourth World or time travel or, like, Skartaris among genres that DC stories could be set. The fourth year is no longer setup, not yet total denouement, so I’m interested to see what Brian Buccellato does, especially in his first solo Injustice outing.

[Includes original covers, sketchbook]

Rating 2.25