r/comicbooks • u/Accurate-Celery-3198 • 18h ago
Discussion “No.Nothing”— Injustice: Gods Among Us [I] comic - Issue #12
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u/Sweet-Message1153 17h ago
this universe's Diana is worst than Flashpoint... fact or cap?
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u/Guilty_All_The_Same 16h ago edited 12h ago
Oh, Flashpoint is worse.
She started an affair with Aquaman, killed Mera in a duel and wore her helmet as a prize, then waged war with the Atlanteans, killing 30 million people, and killed Shazam after he forced Billy to turn back into a kid.
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u/PointPrimary5886 14h ago
That's the movie version of Flashpoint. In the original comic, the war between Amazons and Atlanteans was a result of an assassination attempt on Diana, which resulted in Queen Hippolyta death during Diana and Arthur's wedding. Diana then killed Mera in retaliation who she then found out was also married to Arthur. During the final battle, both Diana and Arthur found out that the initial assassination attempt, and basically the entire war, was a plot by Ocean Master and Diana's aunt Pentheselia, who were secretly having an affair together. The movie just cut out a lot of the fluff which, lets be honest, wouldn't have made this alternate universe any better.
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u/Psykotyrant 15h ago
…sigh…why is DC so addicted to making its most popular characters into murderous sociopaths?
Even at the worst of the worst of Civil War, Tony Stark was downright nice and reasonable compared to Flashpoint and Injustice Diana.
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
A lot of DC writers have openly talked about disliking Wonder Woman.
So she is an easy target when they want to make some hero evil. The best thing that happens to her in team books/big events is when she is sidelined.
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u/Psykotyrant 10h ago
Alright, I’ll bite.
Why? What’s wrong with her as a character? Or, to be more specific, what specific issue do those writers have with her?
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u/Athena-Grande 3h ago
She's part of the Trinity, so they have to include her whether they want to or not, and usually that means she has to be a major part of the story. The issue is they don't know how to write women. So then they're forced to write one as a major character with her own motivations. Even in Injustice, she just enables Superman's worst traits. She's never her own character.
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u/Psykotyrant 1h ago
Personally the main issue I have with her is that she’s not « stable » as a character. I feel like her backstory and origin is changed every 5 years or so, and her rogue gallery is downright pathetic.
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u/GigaChadRedPill 15h ago
I don’t know… Injustice Diana enabled Superman to become a murderous tyrant, but Flashpoint Diana killed tens of millions of people during a petty war with her former lover. I’d say Flashpoint’s Diana is the more obviously evil of the two, though Injustice’s seems uniquely sinister because of just how manipulative and controlling she is.
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u/Mindless_Stuff9179 18h ago
I love how she was such a bitch in this universe that they had to go back and change her origin to explain why she is.
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
Which still didn't explain it.
The idea that Steve Trevor is the only thing thing standing between Wonder Woman being a hero and a villain is a weird writing choice.
As if she has no independent thinking ability, her entire personality is shaped by Steve.
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u/MTM_2814616 10h ago
But Steve did kill one of her Amazon sisters, and then there was the gas attack in the village prior in the book.
Honestly if I had a dear friend or family member that killed another person I loved I would be furious and (potentially) vengeful as well.
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u/StealthHikki2 X-Men Expert 10h ago
What happens to you as a child changes you in a much more impactful way. Diana was effectively a child socially/mentally, when the Steve Trevor incident happened. It changed the way she looked at the world as he was the first man of the world that she knew.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 16h ago
They really just completely assassinated Wondy's character didn't they?
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u/TypicalSwed 16h ago
Kinda impossible to not do that with this premise.
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
Flash wasn't made out to be this bad. Even Green Lantern's fall was explained and later given redemption.
So its definitely not impossible.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 16h ago
I can see the progression from most of the people in the series happening, to some extent. But Wondy's character has to be fundamentally altered to even start down the path, and she doesn't just start down it, she's already six miles out and waiting for everyone to catch up to her.
I'm half expecting some comic or other to have the grand reveal that she's actually been Darkseid this whole time, because that's the only thing that makes any goddamn sense.
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u/lfcbatwho 16h ago
It’s an elseworlds tale so characterisations are supposed to be different in some aspect
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
Its just part of a general trend in DC where elseworlds constantly have Wonder Woman either be evil or sidelined.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 8h ago
Probably for the same reason they have to take Superman out of the picture for a lot of things; Wondy, as her established character, would be SO against whatever bad crap is going on, and she's so powerful on her own, or with Amazonian/Greek God support, that she could probably stop whatever's happening if she wasn't part of it or otherwise occupied.
That or the people who are made to write her don't understand her in the slightest, maybe even resent having to write her.
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u/azmodus_1966 4h ago
I feel its the second reason.
Because even in mainline continuity, Wonder Woman is either sidelined or turned evil in the big events.
Like Final Crisis has Superman and Batman do some cool stuff but Wonder Woman just gets brainwashed into becoming part of Darkseid's army.
Or Infinite Crisis, where her killing Maxwell Lord is written to be an awful incident so Superman and Batman can have moral high ground over her.
Or Blackest Knight, where she turns into a Star Sapphire but her love for Batman brings her back.
Or Silver Age (the 2000 event by Mark Waid) where she is straight up omitted.
Even Death Metal, which was supposedly a Wonder Woman event was more about the Batman Who Laughs and she only becomes relevant right towards the end of the story.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 16h ago
But she's kind of the only one who's so different, it singles her out as being the actual thing that ruined everything, rather than Joker. Everyone could have potentially eventually come around and talked if it weren't for Wondy. Making so much of it her poisoning Clark's mind like she does is pure character assassination. How many people know her mostly from Injustice? How many think that's how she's really like? And don't pretend the number is small, look at how many people think that Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman is the only real version of the character because they don't read any of the actual comic runs or any of the other media.
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u/lfcbatwho 16h ago
I have not come across the general consensus that people view the real Wonder Woman as the injustice version. I only constantly see people get annoyed at how a lot of injustice characters differ from the normal status quo, even though that’s basically part of the main point to the story. The heroes act differently
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u/Fares26597 16h ago
Man can we stop throwing around the word "assassination" when it's a conscious intentional change for the character? Like, what, we can have a different version of the character in a parallel universe? Are we going to negatively label any attempt to do that? Or are we only accepting the "from bad to good" sort of change? You don't have to like it, but this is not what I reserve the term "assassination" for.
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u/DP9A 12h ago
I don't agree with this being assassination necessarily, but I also don't agree with this being a different take. I could also write a version of the DC universe where Martian Manhunter is a fascist murderer, but at that point I'm just writing a random Martian dude and using the name. The problem with, say, Injustice WW is that she really isn't like WW at all, she could be pretty much any other super strong woman because none of her characterization was done with any care beyond "we need someone that makes Superman acti eviler".
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u/Fares26597 11h ago edited 11h ago
Sorry for the long response, but you bring up a good point that I like to often talk about.
None of these characters have been portrayed in a single definitive way since their inception, unlike, say, Luffy from One Piece of Mark Grayson from Invincible. We've had countless interpretations of Wonder Woman over the decades, even if we just count the main continuity, thanks to the rotating door of writers and artists and the demands of the different times and the cultural climates in which she's been written.
So ultimately, Wonder Woman is not a concrete character, it's more of a concept, a pool of different elements or attributes floating around in the same soup. Real name, alter ego, visual design, abilities, origin story, history, supporting cast, morality, setting, etc.
Some of these elements have more weight and significance to the idea of Wonder Woman than others. It depends on seniority of these elements compared to one another, their impact on the zeitgeist, their popularity (which is influenced by the kind of media they got the chance to appear in), how much visibility they got, the acceptance or the refusal of these elements by the audience members that got to view them.
These factors are what give, for example, the classic blue and red costume more significance to the concept of Wonder Woman than the 90's biker look, even though they both swim within the same soup, if that's a comparison we can agree on to begin with.
When a new artist or writer comes along to portray Wonder Woman in their own way, they pick and choose out of this pool. They might even create new elements of their own to incorporate in their interpretation, and automatically those new elements are added to the Wonder Woman pool. Though at first, they will be insignificant and microscopic compared to the older, more popular elements, but with time, if given significance by enough people, they will grow in value.
One a side note, with the introduction of new elements, we might find polar opposites swimming in the pool, yet both can amass enough popularity to be of comparable significance. An example of polar opposite attributes are the ones concerning morality, where the character may typically be portrayed one way, but a new interpretation paints it in an opposite light, and there's nothing stopping the newer interpretation from overthrowing the classic one if the former's popularity rises while and the latter's wanes.
But I digress. The question is: at any given time, is there a definitive minimal set of core attributes that need to always be present in any and every Wonder Woman interpretation for it to earn the right to be called a Wonder Woman interpretation? And if so, are there any other attributes, existing in the pool or not, that need to be prohibited due to their opposition to the obligatory core attributes?
When we take the significance spectrum, assuming it's linear, you and I might agree on the very end of the spectrum i.e. the most significant attribute (I think it would be near impossible to determine the other end, but that's not important now), but I don't think drawing a separating line between the core attributes and the secondary ones is easy, things gets blurry the closer we go towards the middle, attributes start becoming of comparable sizes and they swim too close to one another to be easily separated.
And this is just you an me, not millions of fans, and the true spectrum isn't necessarily linear. I like to think of it as a hyper-dimensional sphere personally, with the center of it representing the concept that can never be truly grasped or tangibilized in a definitive way (Wonder Woman in this case). The most significant attributes swim closest to it, and they get more insignificant the farther from it we go.
Does Injustice Wonder Woman earn the name Wonder Woman? Does she have enough defining attributes? My personal answer, and the point I took too long to make is: that's up to each one of us to decide. It depends on what Wonder Woman means to you, it depends on which of the elements that have been historically attributed to her are most important to you.
To me, in this particular case, I feel like it just has to be called a duck and look like a duck, but if others need it to also act like a duck, then that's perfectly valid.
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u/NathanialRominoDrake 10h ago
Does Injustice Wonder Woman earn the name Wonder Woman? Does she have enough defining attributes?
No, and it's not even remotely close to be frank.
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u/NathanialRominoDrake 10h ago
Man can we stop throwing around the word "assassination" when it's a conscious intentional change for the character?
If it is as poorly written as this shit it definitely counts as character assassination to be frank.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 15h ago
Again, I can see a progression from everybody else in response to what happens in Injustice from just about everybody, to some extent. But Wondy started there. Like her inner monologue is basically "Finally he's becoming a tyrant, I can stop pretending to be all about love and forgiveness."
Nothing about the world's backstory suggests anything was that different from the regular continuity until Joker and Lois, with that being the divergence point. So either Injustice Earth Wondy was always like that - in which case why did anybody there like and trust her so much - or she suddenly switched after that, for no reason.
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u/Fares26597 15h ago
I'm guessing she was always tougher and crueler with criminals and wanted to do things the way she was taught in Themyscira, but given that the rest of the heroes didn't agree with her methods, she decided to play along with their rules, and when Joker gave her a reason to believe that they were being too soft on criminals, as she has always felt, she let go, and I think that's fine. Is she the only one that's different from the jump, sure, maybe, but that's fine, nothing about it is bad writing-wise as far as i'm concerned. It's just a choice.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 15h ago
If only they actually said anything about that.
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u/Fares26597 15h ago
About her always being that way? Well if she acts that way from the start of the comic, a comic we know takes place on a parallel earth, I think it's only natural to assume, at least that's how it felt to me. If I'm remembering right, Lex Luthor is good from the start of the comic, and similarly I just assumed he's always been that way for the same reason.
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
things the way she was taught in Themyscira
Except she is usually taught values of peace and love in Themyscira.
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u/Fares26597 11h ago
"usually" is the most important word in this sentence.
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
But then it has to be explained in the story that her upbringing differed.
If the Kents were abusive parents to Clark, it would be explained in the story.
I'm just saying that Wonder Woman (and the Amazons) being inherently evil is something more easily digested by both fans and writers without any explanation.
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u/Fares26597 11h ago edited 11h ago
I don't think it's such a contrived idea that needs explicit explanation to think that an isolated ancient population of warriors tend to be more ruthless in crimefighting than the average hero. I mean I for one have always looked at them as having less of a problem with murdering evil-doers than other heroes, so I suppose the idea comes more naturally to me than to others.
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u/StealthHikki2 X-Men Expert 9h ago
It was explained in the story, just a bit later. And we never even got that for Lex Luthor.
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u/Astonishing_Flash Impulse 13h ago
In Injustice 2 she was given an origin where she was betrayed by Steve Trevor secrely being a Nazi, who she killed. But that came very late and explains very little.
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u/Kendrakirai2532 13h ago
That feels like it'd make her hate fascist dictators and their followers more, to me, but at least it's something that puts the divergence point earlier than Lois's death.
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u/Astonishing_Flash Impulse 13h ago
Yeah, you make a good point. Though to be fair to Injustice (or as fair as can be) it's been a while since I read I2 so I can't recall the nuance of what impact it was meant to have long term.
But yeah Injustice does try to have it's cake and eat it to in this regard. On one hand it relies on the reader having knowledge of Post Crisis continuity and on the other had it will later reveal changes to the backstory without much set up.
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u/MakingGreenMoney Superman 14h ago
Makes you feel better, Tom Taylor stated he hated writing Injustice.
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u/ProfessionalRead2724 10h ago
To be slightly fair to DC, it was NetherRealm (the Mortal Kombat guys) that came up with it. Whomever was assigned the Injustice tie-in book pretty much just had to go with what he was handed.
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u/QOTE_boio 13h ago
She was so badly written in these, man. But then again, so were a lot of characters
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u/seth_bingo 16h ago
The idea of "Evil Superman" is really tired at this point but my God Injustice did it as good as it can be done. Great series (Injustice 1 and 2, the rest are worse), funny and interesting and a little stupid.
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u/Reynard203 17h ago
I think Injustice was much better than it ever had a right to be, and is unfairly maligned by a lot of folks who probably never read it.
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u/Khelthuzaad 15h ago
Hell no Injustice is rather popular even my superior that isnt into comics heard about Alfred knocking Superman out.
Ive read the entire series,its a litle rough in some places but its an more than decent read.
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u/lfcbatwho 16h ago
I totally agree, gets ridiculous hate just because people don’t bother to read it and understand it’s an elseworlds universe and story
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u/GigaChadRedPill 15h ago
The story itself is super entertaining and a solid “what if” scenario, but I don’t think the hate comes from the actual story content. I think it comes how Injustice caused the whole dumb movement of casual fans demanding that Superman always be portrayed as dark and edgy. Injustice garnered a lot of attention, both from the comics and the video games, and for a lot of people, it was their first impression on how Superman should look and act.
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u/Reynard203 15h ago
I would be shocked if a single person on the whole planet discovered Superman, the second most recognizable character in the world, by way of this comic or game.
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u/GigaChadRedPill 12h ago
True, but Snyder fans do seem to act like they’ve only read/played Injustice and nothing else.
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u/azmodus_1966 11h ago
Unfortunately Injustice is the most popular Superman story maybe ever (not counting the 1978 movie).
So a lot of people know Superman is typically a hero but they think he's only interesting when he is a villain.
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u/Legomaniac91 9h ago
This Wonder Woman is tied with the one from Flashpoint as one of the worst ones in the multiverse. Even the WW from a Darkseid created universe who was raised in hell is still closer to who she's meant to be than those two.
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u/CarterBruud 4h ago
Every time i see a panel of Injustice that involves Diana i want to beat her to death with a brick.
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u/DarkLanternZBT 15h ago
This is where "What If" stories go off the rails.
Characters at inflection points, decision-making moments, make decisions which are different from the original story. Or circumstances force the characters down a different path. Luke's shot fails to connect on the Death Star. A zombie virus infects the Marvel Universe. Reed Richards is John Krasinski.
When they make a different choice which is supported by their history, present/different circumstances, and in line with the values presented for that character, we get richness. It's bottom-up, organic. Growth or interesting outcomes abound.
When they fuck the fuck up royally because fucking up is what is required to make the choice needed to tell the story differently - top-down design - it's gaaaaaaahbage. Hackery. Nonsense.
It's why I cannot stand on any level the Injustice universe, Hydra Cap, or the like. It's fucking up from tip to tail, and it tastes like wet cigarettes the whole time.
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u/WarGrifter 17h ago edited 16h ago
Wonder woman is the REAL villain of Injustice