Review: Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Zero: The Complete Collection hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

I acknowledge I may be coming to Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Zero: The Complete Collection in something of the wrong way. As I understand it, there’s references to Year Zero among writer Tom Taylor’s Injustice 2 comic, such that the answer to “Why Year Zero at all?” is to give backstory to what’s being referenced in that sequel series. But DC surely confuses this for the casual reader (which I become, in this case) in releasing Year Zero as a “Complete Collection” (which they’ve done for all of Injustice but not Injustice 2), and for pitching Year Zero as a prequel to Injustice proper, which it is … and isn’t.

An Injustice prequel, as a concept, will have a heavy lift not to be cynical or reductive, and I don’t think Taylor quite avoided that. Given that this all must lead to “Superman murders the Joker,” the choices are either to lean away or lean in — Superman fully disavows killing here, so his eventual fall is blithely ironic, or Superman begins to “go bad,” such that his eventual fall gains basis. Either way, the book only ends up drawing more attention to what was the weakest part of Injustice overall, that neither Taylor not writer Brian Buccellato could ever make Superman’s unrelenting totalitarianism convincing even in light of all his tragedies.

It might be one thing if Taylor could indeed make Year Zero function as a prequel — Superman aside, bridging plenty other differences between “our” DCU and Injustice, especially in view of the Justice Society’s presence. But I left Year Zero feeling like I still needed a “Year Half” to fully “prequel-ize” Injustice: Year One; I was honestly shocked what Taylor didn’t explain and just left inconsistent.

[Review contains spoilers]

So, fortunately, Year Zero can be read outside the context of Injustice as simply a violent, Black Label-esque Justice League/Justice Society team-up. I might have wondered at times whether it was in good taste to flog the Justice Society to this extent, but I recognize there’s an audience for this and it inhabits a genre (in which Taylor indeed is adept). That helps to balance the shortcomings related to Injustice specifically; as specifically a Year One prequel, I’m not so sure, but in the Tom Taylor canon I see where this has a place.

Again, I’m not sure Taylor does this entire series any favors with a Superman who emerges from a battle with a Lord of Chaos as “incorruptible” and who himself chastises Wonder Woman for her impulse to kill the Joker. I don’t need my comics to be blindly uplifting, but it hardly speaks well of a Superman already besmirched in Injustice that after all the death in Year Zero, Superman is unfazed, but when his own wife and unborn child and city are destroyed, everything Superman has said before goes out the window. It further sullies the very idea of heroism — even the world’s greatest superhero was all talk — and also makes it more confounding, not less, that Superman’s villain turn in Injustice should even happen.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

At the same time, I don’t disagree that Injustice’s aesthetic, perhaps what’s made it so attractive, is the notion that what’s bad can always get worse. So a bit more salt in the wound is not off brand, nor even not the way Taylor should go. Ditto too the unremarkable death of Sandman Wesley Dodds. If you’ve ever wanted to see the kindliest of Flashes, Jay Garrick, slit throats at the speed of light and then smush himself against a building, then this is the book for you. It may sound like I’m criticizing, but I’m six Injustice books in, so clearly Taylor venturing where others might fear to tread holds some appeal for me, too.

And it has always been, starting with Taylor bringing back (in the thick of the New 52) Barbara Gordon as Oracle in Year One, that Taylor’s Injustice often gives as much as it takes away. In Taylor’s Injustice continuity, we have Amazing Man Will Everett and Liberty Belle as original Justice Society members (a nod to their retroactive inclusion in the mainstream DCU). Inza Cramer is introduced as Dr. Fate, suggesting perhaps in this continuity she wore the helm before Kent Nelson or others. And years before the DC mainstream would make it canon, Alan Scott’s married to whom I presume is Jimmy Henton, both fortunately spared from Injustice’s fickle blade.

What surprised me is that insofar as Taylor does set up Lois and Clark’s family planning and answers the question of how the Joker knew about Lois (which I never thought was all that confusing), there’s plenty more that doesn’t match up. Dr. Fate is prominently in Injustice: Year Two, but it’s clearly Kent Nelson (if not Hector Hall); in choosing to spotlight Inza, I might have thought Taylor would also explain why Inza’s not around later. The “Justice Society went off on an adventure” explanation doesn’t quite cut it, because equally surprising is that Taylor sends Green Arrow and Black Canary with them, though Oliver and Dinah are back as of Year One — thus, there seems like a “Year Half” story untold here.

Most importantly, the heroes end Year Zero in their original cloth costumes! Injustice prequel, Year Zero, dovetailing into Year One, and there’s no explanation how they ended up in the atrocious bulky Injustice video game armors? Going by Year One, I assumed the heroes on this world were just naturally tragically overdressed. Here, Taylor suggests an actual conscious sartorial choice, but fails to reveal the malevolent force behind it.

We know Tom Taylor to be a creator of worlds, and an adept one at that. All of this Injustice reading tells me it’s probably time to do my grand DCeased re-read and finally finish that series off. As a prequel to Injustice, and therefore not really “of” Injustice so much as “suggesting” Injustice, Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Zero: The Complete Collection might as easily be thought of as taking place in another one of Taylor’s worlds, a Justice League/Justice Society team-up slightly off-center from our mainstream and with a few more severed phalanges. Or read it as an Injustice prequel. Up to you.

[Includes cover gallery, cover sketches]

Rating 2.5