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Mild Mannered Reviews - "Injustice: Gods Among Us" Comics

Injustice: Year Three - Chapter #16

Injustice: Year Three - Chapter #16

Released Digitally: January 13, 2015

"Awakenings" - Part 2

Writer: Brian Buccellato
Penciller: Sergio Davila
Inker: Juan Albarran
Cover: Neil Gouge with J. Nanjan

Reviewed by: T.A. Ewart (aka liheibao)

Click to enlarge



Wonder Woman is throttling Sinestro into the next life, and Hal Jordan seeks to intervene. Ares knocks him aside, declaring that Hal should stay out of it. Sinestro regains himself, and takes the fight to Diana, but Wonder Woman is too much for Sinestro to handle. The timely intervention of Regime Superman is all that saves Sinestro from the next life. Wonder Woman demands that Regime Superman relinquish the Yellow Lantern ring that he obtained. Regime complies and Wonder Woman crushes it so that the ring is powerless. The Spectre appears and notifies the League that he's located their missing members. They're being held in the Tower of Fate, and while the Spectre cannot go there, he is able to send the League there to do battle. They arrive with a bang, as the Batman and Constantine look incredulously at the League, and the new aperture they've added to the Tower of Fate.

2Story - 2: Who are the villains in this story? Is it Regime Superman and his lot? The Batman and his Insurgency? Does it matter any longer? None of it makes sense. Regime Superman is supposed to be a power-hungry despot, bent on ruling the world. Batman is supposed to be the counter to Regime's tyranny. However, Batman is abducting people, putting them in trances and such, while Wonder Woman says that the League's way is not to promote fear and destroys Regime's Yellow Lantern ring. Batman's kidnapping people? Regime giving up the most powerful weapon in the universe? One might think that this shows complexity in terms of characterisation, but that would be generous on the part of the reader... and foolish. Injustice has become a fractured story, and one that is all ready schizophrenic. Regime is still shown to harbour some glimmer of his former self, but is, of course, throughly irredeemable (a much better story, BTW) and evil... only we're consistently reminded that he isn't irredeemable and evil. Batman has the moral high ground, which is the equivalent of a budding termite hill, as he takes actions that are borderline or just as bad as Regime. Wonder Woman's portrayal is still the worst, as it truly appears that left unchecked, Diana would have killed Sinestro, with no knowledge that he committed any error at all. It was simply enough that he was Sinestro. That fact is very, very unsettling.

Perhaps it's the change in writers, but Injustice seems to have lost its narrative in conjunction with its change of captains. There has to be a commitment on the part of Regime. He has to do whatever he feels necessary to get the job done, which makes his relinquishing of the Yellow Lantern ring laughable. Despots don't release power, they horde it. If Batman wants others from the captured League to join him, he cannot do it by coercion and duplicity. This issue has me at a great loss for what is the driving force of this series at this point, and, hard as it is for me to say it, to the desire for quality on the part of its readership. The sequencing and characterisation are extremely poor, and without strong shows on the part of both, what is the point of this series? Ostensibly, Injustice masquerades as an examination of events occurring that lead to the world's greatest hero's tragic downfall. However, it's become a transparent cash-grab, inasmuch that the creators know they have a readership regardless of quality, creativity, or basic common sense. Part of the problem is the elongation of a story that should have ended in its first year, the other is turning mythological characters into something that isn't sustainable. The seams are showing, but do readers care?

3Art - 3: The art is new for me here, therefore given the benefit of the doubt in terms of improvement.

4Cover Art - 4: A bright, boosting bounty of Wonder Woman thrashing Sinestro.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2015

Note: Except for digital first releases, the month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

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