Injustice 2 #9 Storytime

HA HA TIME FOR TED TO BECOME DEAD

It sucks knowing that everytime your favourite character shows up in a new universe its his destiny to die :(

...

M A X

A

X

ROT IN HELL

>Weekly "Every NAARGH Defines You" Storytime.
Bless you, user.

...

If a character shows up in injustice and isn't payable, he/she has a large chance of death.

...

...

...

...

...

That's not suspicious at all!

...

>Skeets

Now where is Booster?

Ted really should have seen it coming based on this moment.

...

>again
why DC loves kill him?

Oooft, that's a Wally-tier low blow Ted

Ted's not wrong.

This comic sucks

I am forever convinced that Batman does his lil' appearing and disappearing acts to feel powerful and in charge.

Redondo is actually pretty good at faces so this is giving my some Kevin Maguire JLI flashbacks

Hey fuck you Leatherman!

...

...

>batman standing an the perfect spot

There he is.

He's here to say goodbye...

>Booster
Oh no
I'm gonna tear up aren't I?

I honestly thought this wasn't coming out today, with how late it is.
Also, my condolences for Ted

Fuck you Batman, what would you know about making a better world? Your view of the world started this mess!

Blue and Gold ride again!
For the last time

Also compare stomachs

I didn't want these feels. Goddamm!!

>One punch
>JLI
>Booster just straight up telling Ted its his time
Oh no here it comes ;_;

>they're not going to try to change the future
:-;

>I tried to stop this
>I'm a couple of years older
Oh come on no ;-;

>dat "One Punch" picture in the background

So far it's been looking like Damian is going to become a good guy. That's going to be hard to swallow if he kills Ted.

...

...

...

I finally realized who Damian reminds me of.

Good luck Ted ;_;
Hopefully you go out with a bang

C'yall next week!

I hope one day we get to see Ted not have a hard life

not "YAAAAAAARG!!"?

Is Ted never allowed to live a good life?

>his mask actually has lenses
Huh. I always thought the glowing lines above the lenses were his eyes.

Well I guess Katana doesn't have Ted's back.

>Hopefully you go out with a bang
What are the odds he takes Katana with him?

Ughhhh.

did they ever explain how damian went through reverse puberty?

oh you think just because he's asian the tiny little slants must be his eyes huh????

Probable given she ain't in the game and been written as fodder.

Is Booster going to be giving him pep talks throughout his kidnapping?

Well, yeah. It's not racist though, cuz I have an asian friend.

If I remember correctly in the game story mode he's only seen in a flashback, so it's Damien when he was still Robin.

He's handling losing his hand surprisingly well.

Explain the good universe that still shares Batman's view on the world.

Did you not play the game? He's an unrepentant Superman toadie.

No, Damian shows up as Nightwing after the first chapter of the story

He's focusing on all the harpoon hand jokes he can make around Aquaman.

Why the fuck would I play Injustice 2? It's just going to get a re-release with all the DLC.

>"You think I became a billionaire by saying no to free money?"

Words to live by, from Ted Kord...of all characters...

>Working for Ra's
>good guy

>not watching the injustice 2 cutscenes full movie youtube video

My nigga!!

That's...kind of the idea, I'd reckon. Batman has to look in control or it hurts his aura

Ted can never catch a break.

...

Ted and Mike are written well here, but it still bugs me that Taylor keeps killing people off.

...why is Katana a villain?

THAT'S
THE
POINT!!!!!

Like, how is it that people don't get that the Injustice universe solely exists to kill as many characters as possible?!

The Suicide Squad was hijacked by Ra's Al Ghul.

>This is so much bigger than you.
With a belly like that, it must be fucking huge.

might just be the haircut

which if were gonna add stuff in like freeze's helmet

should be added in

boon

R O T

I N

H E L L

KATANA!!!!

>tfw Max Lord won't kill Ted this time around
>tfw Ted's gonna go down fighting as hard as he possibly can
I'm gonna cry like a bitch next issue, but god it's gonna be a helluva ride.

Is this going to end with Booster going back in time and saving Lois at the cost of his own life, thus preventing the Injustice tangent?

So how far did you think batman got before the whole explosion happened?

I can MAYBE see people being upset because it means a character they want won't be in game, but I think that's moot because there's no way NRS is going to let one comic writer dictate what happens in their game. He's either killing off people they're specifically not gonna use or they'll just ignore deaths they find inconvenient.

I believe that if he could he would, but Injustice is something beyond Booster meddling, he can't change what happened, it's like that story of him trying to change Babs history

And besides, there are times where the game outright ignores the comic.

Nah the point is Batman vs Superman. The deaths are just a side bonus.

When we first see her she was part of Waller's Squad, so it's safe to assume she has a bomb in her neck

Like what happened with Arkham. They'll ignore it if they feel like it, it's a fucking fighting game.

Ted and Hank Pym are 2 of the comic characters who are never allowed to have life not suck

Glixel: Games based on comic books are often dismissed by hardcore gamers who have been burned by bad superhero games in the past. But at the same time, comics based on superhero videogames are even easier to dismiss. Injustice is popular both as a game and as a comic – how did that happen?

>Taylor: This was the first time I was given a chance to write the characters that I’ve loved my whole life, and regardless of the format or the game tie-in element of it, I wanted to show the world what I could do with these characters. I feel that I really knew the voices, and in a way – particularly due to my love of Superman – I felt I knew how to torture him pretty well, even if I didn’t want to.

Glixel: A big part of the whole story is making it convincing that Superman could fall to the dark side, so to speak. What was your process in pulling that off?

>Taylor: My process was a whole lot of pain. [Laughs] I remember calling my mum and saying, “Mum, I’m finally getting to write Superman and Lois, and they want me to do this…” Which was horrific, really…. Bringing the reader in from [an] early stage and having them love Lois and Clark from page two – I think it sold people on what we were trying to do, and they recognized these characters and recognized the love between them. So when we tore that apart, it really hurt. And I received a lot of horrible stuff from the internet. If you’re not familiar with the internet, people live there who get outraged easily.

Glixel: I think I’ve heard of it…

>Taylor: Yeah, so there was a lot of anger and a lot of nasty messages just showing up on my phone. And honestly, it’s not something I wanted to do, but I think for this to be believable – for Superman to turn evil… You know, Ma and Pa Kent gave this guy values that aren’t easily broken – that aren’t easily tainted. It wasn’t just Lois’ death that drove him here; it was a gradual decline. I never wanted to have that one moment where suddenly he snaps, and suddenly he’s a bad guy. It just didn’t fit. And the other thing is, we had to make sense of the fact that he wanted to take control of the world, and really, it’s just a perversion of who he is – he wants to keep everybody safe. There are still readers who believe he’s absolutely right [laughs]. But it’s really just about him wanting to keep humanity safe and protect it from itself. It’s his values, then stepped up a notch. And similar with Batman.

Glixel: Do you ever yourself think for a second, “Hey, maybe Superman is onto something here”? That maybe Batman is in the wrong?

>Taylor: Look, maybe, you know, statistically under Superman’s rule there are probably a whole lot less wars and a whole lot less death – he even had an environmental bit. But the thing is, freedom was gone. Regardless of any of that, it was a dictatorship, and it was a person in power who can implement that power and take out the small guy at any point in time. So, yes – much like most dictators; much like most people who speak well and occasionally mean well or are just very loud and entertaining – there are people who will buy that vision. There are people in the world who are sad to see him gone – sad to see Batman’s group take him down – who feel that they were safer under Superman’s rule.

>Taylor: And I think that’s one of the things that resonated with people – nobody is exactly right in this. Not one side is the right side. There are shades of gray throughout Injustice, and people can see points of view regardless of who they’re backing. Sometimes you go, “Yeah, Batman, he was an absolute dick there!”

Glixel: What would you say are some of Batman’s dick-est moves that he’s made?

>Taylor: When we first showed up at Arkham Asylum, and he took down Cyborg with a button press because he infected him with a virus the day he met him – things like that. Already having something in place to take down the [Justice League’s] Watchtower. Of course, then Superman tweeted his secret identity. It was dickish for dickish.

Glixel: That was a great moment in the comic. How much did your own use of social media affect that particular beat of the story?

>Taylor: I just think the whole thing’s ridiculous, and one of the beautiful things we can do with Injustice is, sometimes we take the ridiculous and we run with it. One person’s great moment is another person’s “this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” We straddle that line sometimes, but I feel free to do so.

Glixel: What’s the most ridiculous thing that you’ve taken and run with?

>Taylor: There’s a beautiful moment where Detective Chimp and Batman are sitting in the back of Chaz’s car, who drives for John Constantine. It was a moment where John turns to Chaz and says, “Take a look at the backseat there, mate.” And the two of them just burst out laughing.

Glixel: I did too.

>Taylor: Batman tries to say, essentially, “The world’s in peril – you really gonna laugh at this?” And Chimp’s like, “You know what, I’m a monkey in a suit, and you’re a grown man dressed as a bat. Let them have this.”

>Taylor: It is pointing at the ridiculousness of a lot of this, and when you’ve got great characters – like Harley Quinn, like John Constantine; people who can talk truth and get away with it with a glint in their eye and a smirk on their face – these are the characters I love writing. The court jesters.

Glixel: What are your absolute favorite characters to write?

>Taylor: Without a doubt, Harley. Harley is really interesting. I had never really gone out and gone, “Oh, man, I really wanna write Harley Quinn.” But from the first page I wrote her – this sounds pretty cliché, but – I wasn’t writing her; she was just telling me what to write.

>And there’s this beautiful thing that happens whenever I write Harley Quinn: My outline just disappears, and I’m like, “OK, I don’t know what she’s gonna say on the next page, so we’ll see where this goes” [laughs]. We just recently had her headbutt Ra’s al Ghul and knock out his teeth, and she says, “I hope you’ve got a little bit of Lazarus Pit mouthwash just to rebirth those teeth.” And you just go, “Where did that come from?!” At no point in time was this in my outline or anything; it’s just, Harley’s on the page and I’m typing, and suddenly she comes up with that stuff. And I just love that.

>And John Constantine’s exactly the same. He’s a guy who isn’t overruled by these people in capes – he can just give them crap the whole time.

Glixel: There’s some really dark stuff in this book – but also some really fun stuff. How do you strike the right balance there as a writer?

>Taylor: I’m not sure if it’s me as a writer there or me as a consumer. I wanna be entertained, constantly. You may know that I used to be a professional juggler – I was a street performer. I used to juggle knives and eat fire on the streets for money. I tend to write the same way – I desperately want to entertain people, and I never want to get bored. I don’t want to have a payoff in six pages – I want a payoff at the end of every page. I want every page turn to be good. I want everything that’s there to be interesting, and not just exposition for exposition’s sake. There needs to be a joke there or a character moment. There needs to be heart or humor or shock at every stage. You can go down that dark path, and you get all grim and gritty – but if you don’t tell a joke at the end, then I’m bored. So as a writer, I need to put in the humor. Otherwise, I’m not on board either. The first person you write for is yourself, obviously – so if I’m like, “hey, that’s kinda funny,” I’m happy.

Glixel: How did this all come about in the first place?

>Taylor: I had written The Authority before WildStorm closed [in 2011] – I was the last writer of The Authority. It was kind of interesting days because the studio was closing, but I just sort of had gotten my foot in the door and was feeling great about it, with [editors] Ben Abernathy and Jim Chadwick. Then I did a little DC Universe Online: Legends [tie-in comic] two-issue thing called “The Brainiac/Sinestro Corps War,” where I’d worked with Bruno Redondo, who I’d done Star Wars comics with, and he then became one of the main artists on Injustice. We had a great time on that, and the editors absolutely loved it – “what you’ve done in these two issues, we love.”

>Taylor: And it was the same stuff – it was Guy Gardner [of the Green Lantern Corps] being an absolute prick in the face of genocide. Just finding that balance of humor and really, really dark – it’s one of the nastiest things I’ve ever written. And having someone like Bruno who can convey that smug so well – the acting he puts on the page is why we gel so well. And I think because of that, they approached me about Injustice.

>Taylor: And Injustice was just supposed to be a small thing. I think I was originally on for about 16 chapters – I’ve now written 80 or 90. It was a runaway success, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s just so much fun, man. I say this a lot, but it is the most freedom I’ve ever had on any licensed property.

Glixel: Just how much freedom do you have?

>Taylor: Jim Chadwick is my editor there, and he has a lot of faith in me. If there’s something he feels he needs to make a note on or he needs to clear, he’ll ask, and often I’ll say, “yeah, I’ll address that in a couple chapters,” or, “yeah, that’s because I’m gonna do this,” or whatever. And sometimes he’ll point something out, and I’ll change it briefly. But he really does have a lot of faith in me, which is fantastic.

>Taylor: And I think it’s the same with the guys at NetherRealm. I’m in contact with Shawn Kittelsen, who’s the main writer on the game. If there’s anything we ever need, we just DM on Twitter, and we’re like, “Hey, what about this?” And it’s like, “Hey, sure, go for it.” Most recently, that was great on the reveal of Batman having a daughter. That was a huge moment. I kind of rushed it past Jim, and I was able to go to Shawn and say, “Whaddya think?” To which I think his response, I think, was, “Sure! We’ll put her in Injustice 3.” [Laughs]

>Taylor: Having that relationship, and having that trust – the thing is, it has been successful, and when so many people are reading it, they just keep going, “Keep doing what you’re doing. We like it.” And that’s great. As a writer, there’s nothing more you can ask for – to have that confidence in your writing and to be able to know, every time I sit down, what I write is what’s going to go out there. It’s not going to be compromised by other people.

Glixel: Have you ever been amazed at what they’ll let you get away with at times?

>Taylor: Clearly. Absolutely. There are things I’ve written almost as a joke that get approved, and I’m like, “Oh, really?! OK! Great!” And I do that a lot.

Glixel: You’ve killed off a lot of characters…

>Taylor: The most emotional death was probably Ollie’s, seeing Dinah’s face. Him saying – what was it? – “My pretty bird. I was so lucky,” as he dies. You know, it killed a lot of people. And bringing that home at the end of Year 2 when we had our epilogue and Doctor Fate actually says, “Screw what was supposed to happen…” – in the game and in the outline and everything. “I’m gonna save her [from having been killed by Superman] and take her to another dimension to be with an Ollie who lost his Dinah.”

>I’ve heard from so many people who just cried openly in public reading that chapter – and what else could you want as somebody who entertains for a living? To touch people like that. Grown men come up to me at conventions and start yelling at me because I made them cry on a train – there’s no greater compliment.

Glixel: For me, it was the death of Jim Gordon... When he tells Batman, “I guess I get to disappear on you for once.” So good! But you’ve also had your fair share of almost comedic deaths – Kyle Rayner of the Green Lantern Corps, for example. Sinestro just pulls his finger off, and he suffocates in space because he doesn’t have his ring anymore.

>Taylor: And then they tear all his limbs off – yeah. Just for funzies. I got a lot of flack for that, but I’m actually a huge Kyle fan. I had his action figure sitting under my screen as I was writing that scene, kind of judging me. He got in a nice line about [Sinestro’s] evil mustache and whether he has time for evil manscaping or something – which is very Kyle. But yeah, we tore him to shreds. It was horrible. [Laughs] And yes, it’s comedic, but it’s also signal of intent. Especially with the first chapter of Year 2, we wanted to say nothing’s off limits. And that’s one of the beauties of Injustice – because nothing is.

>I think, too, one of the reasons this resonates with so many people is that when something happens, it really is permanent. With the exception of a couple of things, you feel the deaths because you go, “They’re not coming back. That’s literally it.” Whereas, in comics there’s that old cliché that nobody’s ever dead. But in Injustice, they kind of are.

Glixel: Does the game’s narrative ever step in the way of somebody you can kill off or not?

>Taylor: Yeah, of course – I mean, I can’t kill off people who are in the game already. And also, I guess it’s on me to kill a character that they talk about as being dead in the game. In the first game, that was Ollie – Ollie’s death and Dinah’s revenge, and her pain with a child coming in Year 2. That defined Year 2 in a big way. Year 1 was the breakup of the World’s Finest friendship – it was Superman and Batman falling out and not being friends anymore. Plus, you know, a dictator rising – but at the core, it was about those two characters. And it was a same in the second one – it was about Dinah, and it was about Ollie, and it was about Hal. Just this moment that creates this huge rift for all of them.

Glixel: So, is it always completely on you to determine how a character died, or does NetherRealm say, “Hey, that’s how Dick Grayson died, so that’s how you need to write it”?

>Taylor: I think it’s been up to me every time. Superman had to be the one to kill Green Arrow, but it was up to me how that happened. Jim Gordon probably didn’t need to die – that’s just me being horrible. With Superman and Lois, that was down to me in the end. I found a way to do it in the least violent way possible. I didn’t want him hitting her – I didn’t want any of that. So for him to just grab what he thinks is Doomsday, thinking he’s protecting Lois and his unborn child – it’s horrible and it’s awful, but it’s also the least “domestic violence” way I could think of to do it. It was tragic in every way, but it wasn’t as violent as certainly the newspapers made it sound at the time – talked about him being a wife-beater and things like that…

Glixel: That must have been the hardest thing – to get people over that hump of accepting that Superman went dark.

>Taylor: Oh, yeah, completely – and there are still people who hate me for it.

This is 1000x better than the Rebirth Blue Beetle

Glixel: How has the feedback progressed over the years as people have come to accept this more?

>Taylor: It died off eventually. There are still people who will come and attack me, but usually it’s not for the material – it’s from people who read about it on a blog or a website that reported on it wrong. Talking about beating Lois to death – that didn’t happen; someone else said that. I often find that the outrage is based off people hearing it from a secondhand source and not reading the material. Anybody who’s read the material understands why and where it goes, and why it’s a bit worthier, I guess.

>But having said that, the first thing I did when I jumped onto Earth 2 with DC Comics was, Lois had died there, and I resurrected her with [penciler] Nicola Scott, and we had her step out of a giant fridge to “un-fridge” her, which we thought was pretty funny. So we had that in the back of our minds, always, to try and bring her back. And she became the heart of that book, so that was great.

Glixel: One thing I’ve found interesting about this universe is that in many ways it seems like the traditional DC Universe – we know the general characterizations of everyone going into all this terrible stuff that happened. How much are things set in stone for you regarding how defined this universe is?

>Taylor: The universe for me, I guess, is kind of how I understand it. And the characters are how I understand them. And things like the death of Superman – yes, they happened for me; that’s why he’s reacting to Doomsday in that way. Supergirl, obviously, was never a part of that – she wasn’t that pink blob thing with the giant red-haired Luthor. But those stories have been with me since the Nineties – I grew up reading these things. So the heart of that stuff has to come through.

>Taylor: Supergirl is a really interesting character. I’m writing her at the moment, and writing her introduction. Being able to have that innocence and hope in something like Injustice is going to be really interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how people react to that and if they’re like, “Oh, man! This isn’t Injustice! It’s not dark and nasty enough!”

>Taylor: Everything I’ve read about the DC characters over the years and everything I love about them goes into it in some way. The characters you know and love are the characters I’m trying to write, and their reactions are based on 25 years of history for me. That’s why we understand Ollie and Dinah’s love; we understand how close Superman and Batman are. And for those who don’t, we do little shortcuts to that. We have Superman rush to tell his best friend that Lois is pregnant – and Batman already knows ‘cause he’s Batman. And he asks him to be the godfather – things like that.

>Taylor: Just little nods for the hardcore fans, like our ultimate dream – which was my first good-bye to Injustice [during Year 3] – where I just wanted to make everything right. We made Lois Lane the president and made Wonder Woman the secretary general of the United Nations. She’s not even allowed to be an ambassador anymore, but…regardless…she was. And she was married to Batman in that. And, you know, that sort of stuff is all for people who know some of that history and have grown up with this.

Glixel: You mentioned Supergirl and Batman’s daughter. What’s in store for the upcoming issues of Injustice 2?

>Taylor: We’ve now found out that one of our main antagonists is Ra’s al Ghul. Harley is there – that’s why they went after Damian, etc. He basically wants to save the world just like Batman does. Batman wants to resurrect a world that Superman corrupted; Ra’s wants to save the world from climate change. You know, he sees what’s happening. He sees that humanity is essentially doomed because we’re over a certain percentage of carbon. He says that for the world to survive, humanity needs to be essentially culled. And there are people who are going along with him. There are people like Vixen and Animal Man who are right there beside him, and people like Poison Ivy, who want to save the green; who want to save animals. They don’t believe that humanity has a right to kill off everything else around them.

>Taylor: It’s interesting – again, it’s shades of gray. People go, “He’s kinda right! It’s horrific…but he’s kinda right.” And it’s the same for Batman. He’s just trying to save lives – he doesn’t believe in ever taking a life for any purpose, and he’s right too. So you bring these moral absolutes together and smash them, and you get stories like this.

>Taylor: And this story is far-reaching – we have a lot planned. And yes – big, big groups of powerful people butting heads again, and both of them feeling like they’re in the right. And that’s the beauty of stories like this. “Every villain is the hero of their own story” is the old saying, and that’s exactly right.

Glixel: Do you find it a lot more challenging this time around because Superman is incarcerated?

>Taylor: No. What he’s done has cast a shadow over this whole thing. But really the stories aren’t Superman’s stories so much; it’s a lot of other people’s stories. So when we brought back Green Arrow and Black Canary, we have stuff coming up for them that’s really sweet. And you would have already seen Black Canary propose to Green Arrow. There’s stuff like that coming up, and they have a child now. It just feels like the whole universe has evolved, and there’s still so much to come. More pain to come, but also more joy as well.

>Glixel: Can I ask you a really geeky question here?

>Taylor: Absolutely! Because so far nothing else has been geeky.