DC’s Injustice universe is back and colliding with the main DCU

DC Comics announced Monday that Tom Taylor, the writer behind the flagrantly successful Injustice comics, will return to the Injustice: Gods Among Us universe — a setting he put on the map — within the pages of his own Superman comic, Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent.

In the world of video games, NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice: Gods Among Us and its 2017 sequel are fondly remembered as fun and compellingly competitive games. But in the world of comics, Injustice is counted, in no uncertain terms, as one of the best tie-in comics ever made. Back in 2012, Taylor was a relative unknown when he was hired to write 15 issues of back story for a game where everybody in the DC Universe, heroes and villains alike, would be beating each other up. By the time the final Injustice arc came to a close in 2018, it had run for over 170 issues. Taylor and his artistic collaborators from Injustice have continued to team up, with Taylor penning beloved runs on All-New Wolverine, Nightwing, and Superman: Son of Kal-El, the latter of which has set the stage for him to return to Injustice.

Taylor’s Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent will see the son of the main DCU’s Superman hunting a killer through the multiverse when an evil alternate Superman takes it upon himself to kill every version of Jon’s father, Kal-El. And that adventure will bring him to the world of Injustice, in which Batman leads a resistance against Superman, who was driven to global takeover after the Joker murdered Jon’s mother, Lois Lane.

Image: Clayton Henry/DC Comics

Taylor pointed out plenty of obvious shocks to come for both Jon and the characters of Injustice. It’s a world in which Lois’ unborn child died with her, and to that world’s broken Superman, Jon himself is a glimpse of what might have been. It’s also one in which Jon’s best friend, Damian Wayne, joined the bad guys.

“Injustice for me is a very troubled time. I had so much fun on that book. Obviously, I was on it for years,” Taylor said in DC’s news release. “But there’s a lot about Injustice that that rubs me up the wrong way. I don’t believe Superman, no matter what happens to him, can become that person. I don’t believe Wonder Woman becomes that person. So, for me, it’s a really interesting Elseworld.”

What happens when Jon Kent — the optimistic, maybe even innocent son of an unimpeachably good man — confronts the dictator his alternate universe father has become? To find out, you’ll have to start following the “Road to Injustice” with Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent #1, hitting physical and digital shelves on March 7.