Reviews ComicBook / Injustice Gods Among Us

Wow, you almost hate Injustice as much as I do. I didn\'t watch the animated version, I only played the game and read the first season. I gave up after I realized that it switched from being a story about how someone as pure as superman could slip into being a villain to \"Oh shit, we have heroes who could easily beat the crap out of superman... how do we justify them not stopping him so the game can happen?\" and kill them in the stupidest ways possible. For example, Kyle Rayner, one of the strongest lanterns of all time is killed... by a simple ambush by two yellow lanterns. Nightwing dies because he hit his head on a rock, in the same room with three people with enough superspeed to stop bullets midair, but no one saves him. Or Constantine fails to kill superman because he forgot superman had an earpiece, and didn\'t bother to check.

And what\'s worse about all this is that the riddle to \'how could injustice happen?\' is even more awfully simple to answer: Just place it in an universe where said heroes that could stop superman don\'t exist, and reinforce on how Superman wouldn\'t stoop so low if there were people to help him process his grief. But that would mean actually using brains to write the story and having to acknowledge that Batman acting like a paranoid holier-than-thou jackass was bad.

Do you recommend checking the animated movie?

This line made me laugh (literally) harder than it should've. There goes his solo comic gig and the Arkham trilogy. That said:

I've never bought into the whole, 'OMG, if Supes ever kills anybody (regardless of justification), he'll become an irredeemable killer'. I refuse to believe he's nearly that fragile, given other heroes have done it out of necessity without going down some dark path from which there was 'no return'. Had Batman simply killed the Joker himself, instead of constantly handing him over to Arkham, he would've prevented him from killing those several million people.

Cloud literally saved the entire planet by killing Sephiroth at the end of Advent Children Complete. Seems pretty logical and reasonable, if you ask me. And the people of Edge felt the same way, because they welcomed him back as a hero, not a murderer. But I suppose Batman would consider Cloud a villain and try to imprison him.

One VERY important flaw with Injustice that I think you forgot to mention: Wonder Woman was FAR more thoroughly character assassinated than pretty much any of the other Justice League members. They were all pretty heavily assassinated except for Green Arrow, who was against Superman from the Word Go and was killed for it, and Shazam, who was a literal 10-year old who\'s looked up to Superman his whole life so it\'s understandable why he\'d blindly follow Superman, and even HE backs out once Superman REALLY goes off the deep end. But whenever Superman had any inkling that he might be going too far, it was always WONDER WOMAN who was there to convince him that \"No. You haven\'t gone far ENOUGH. You need to be even MORE of a fascist tyrant.\"

@Miin U

In the case of Superman, it makes more sense. Batman on the other hand, because of his more psychological solo universe, it\'s a mentally unstable man constantly on the blink of becoming the Punisher.

@marcellX

Yeah. Batman has a perfectly solid justification for not killing The Joker, which he explains beautifully in his iconic speech in Batman: Under the Red Hood. It\'s not that he doesn\'t think the Joker deserves to die and that he keeps getting sent to Arkham instead of receiving the death penalty is justice being done. It\'s that he knows if he kills the Joker, he won\'t be able to stop himself from Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. If he were in character, he probably wouldn\'t have objected to Superman killing the Joker because he knows Superman\'s sense of morality is a lot less mutable than his.

Oh my goodness, I had not remembered that; that actually makes the way Injustice portrays it so, so much worse.

Batman: Under The Red Hood. Batman knows that the Joker probably deserves to die, but he recognizes that his own moral failings and mental instability would make it a very slippery slope - for him! - and that is why he cannot take the risk of crossing that line. And that makes sense; you kill the Joker because he killed thousands, well, Killer Croc has probably killed hundreds so he has to die too. Penguin has easily killed that many too, so you kill him next. All of a sudden, Batman is a serial-killer. He recognizes that his no-kill rule is not perfect, but it makes sense.

Injustice. Killing the Joker is obviously wrong no matter what, because Batman says so and refuses to elaborate why beyond his Makoto Naegi impression - NO THATS WRONG - and the rest of the Justice League are either spineless cowards (Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern) too weak to stand up to Superman, who is obviously wrong because he just is, or they were murder-hungry this whole time (Cyborg, Damian Wayne) or they were just outright fascists from the start (Wonder Woman). But the most important thing is that all of them are wrong and Batman is right.

@Elmo 3000: I'd still find that argument hard to buy into. If Batman is truly that mentally unstable, then why did he take up the mantle in the first place?

I used Cloud for comparison for exactly that reason, because he's suffered his own trauma and psychological issues, but he still recognizes when someone needs to be put down permanently for the sake of the greater good. He's killed Sephiroth twice and was willing to do the same to the Remnants in order to protect the planet. If he hadn't, everyone would have died and it didn't send Cloud spiraling off the deep end. He kills only when he deems it necessary.

Yet somehow, Batman reasons that it's better to continue to turn Joker over to Arkham (which may as well have a revolving door on it), knowing full well that Joker will escape and continue to kill countless others. Or to put that another way: Batman is basically saying that it's better to repeatedly jeopardize/sacrifice the lives of Gotham's citizens just so he won't have to kill the Joker. Really?

^ Batman took up the mantle because he had no choice. It was the only way he could stay sane after the loss of his parents. In his own words, Bruce Wayne died along with his parents that night, leaving only Batman. One of the main differences between Superman and Batman is that Superman is the mask Clark Kent wears out of necessity, where as Bruce Wayne is the mask Batman wears out of necessity. The DCAU even makes it a canon fact about Bruce that in his own mind, his name is Batman, not Bruce Wayne.

^I know his origin story. I'm just saying other heroes have suffered similar losses, yet handled it better. Batman lost his parents, as a kid. Cloud lost his entire village (including his parents) at the same age.

Have you actually PLAYED Final Fantasy VII? Because I have. Cloud was already an adult who was a foot soldier working for SHINRA when Sephiroth destroyed his village and slaughtered his loved ones. You can\'t really compare his origin story to Batman\'s. I mean, you can\'t compare it regardless because people are people and everyone\'s going to cope with trauma of that magnitude differently. But Cloud in particular is very much an apples to oranges comparison.

^Yes, I've replayed FF VII multiple times and Cloud was not an adult, he was only 16 at the time of the Neblheim Incident, as shown by Crisis Core.

Alright, fair enough. Still not entirely comparable. There\'s a massive difference in emotional maturity between a 16-year old and an 8-year old, even more massive than the difference between a 16-year old and an adult.

And again, this whole argument is a moot point because everyone copes with trauma differently. You can\'t expect that just because Cloud responded to trauma in one way that Batman would respond in a remotely similar fashion.

I think the Batman and Cloud comparison is interesting but nothing worth disagreeing over. It\'s interesting to imagine all of the fictional heroes who Batman - at least, Injustice Batman - would consider criminal scum because they killed someone. Cloud, Goku, Captain America, Saitama... himself from that one story where he shot Darkseid.

Wait — Batman shot Darkseid?? How is that even possible? I thought Darkseid was nigh invulnerable.

It was a special bullet. Not that I’m particularly fond of that story anyway.