You can pickup your copy of DCeased #2 now where all good comics are sold!
Synopsis
Millions are dying every minute. Heroes and villains alike are falling. Can the Justice League unite to find a way to stop the spread of death? Can they save humanity from extinction? Can they even save themselves? The key to survival may hinge on the last moments of one of the World’s Finest Heroes…
Review
How does DC Comic follow up DCeased #1 (reviewed here), a story which almost entirely wiped out life on the planet? Well by taking even more of its pantheon of characters in this excellent second issue.
Picking up where issue #1 left off Superman, Lois and Jon are safe in their apartment alongside Damian Wayne who just happened to be on a play date when the world went to hell.
Of course that issue featured a huge cliffhanger in which Batman appeared to meet his end at the hands of a zombified Nightwing. Well all was not what is seemed…
This issue quickly revealed that Bruce survived the scuffle but only for now. I loved the revelation that he had enough time to put himself in one of Mr. Freeze’s cryogenic suits to slow down the virus.
A genius, classic Batman move to help get to grips with the situation. The situation leads to some great emotional interplay between father and son as Bruce and Damian have a typically stoic goodbye.
Amongst all the chaos Tom Taylor has managed to inject some heartbreak in to the series which comes as a complete added bonus to everything else he has going on.
Elsewhere the book opens up a much wider view on just how the DCU has been affected by the Apokoliptic virus. Scenes featuring Aquaman add some great context as to how the virus can spread off land due to its digital nature.
We get a glimpse of Harley and Ivy to shine a light on a different area of the DCU. Issue #1 shied away from showing villains post-infection and stuck with members of the Justice Legue. Seeing Harley approach the infected Joker clearly had to be a bucket list moment for Taylor and artist Trevor Hairsine. I’m sure Mister J would find the entire situation devilishly funny.
It’s the Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary sequence which is easily the highlight of the issue. There’s so much in these scenes that it would be impossible not to focus on it.
Firstly; its great to see Oliver Queen back as Green Arrow following the end of his series, also to see him back with Dinah given how the Green Arrow series ended. But with these scenes Tom Taylor cements himself as a serious risk taker in the DCU.
Time for some major spoilers: killing Hal Jordan was a huge move for the series. His cosmic influence could have been an incredible help to the team so taking him off the board puts them squarely back at square one in the fight against the virus.
But having knocked them down I hadn’t at all expected what would happen next. For Dinah to receive the ring and become a Green Lantern was an even bigger moment. One that has already caused cosplays as a consequence. This is easily one of Dinah’s most standout moments in her entire history.
Could she be the saviour that Earth needs right now?
As a premise, DCeased set out to be a cool, Elseworlds entry in the DC Universe but with this issue it has become something so much more.
With the sheer level of emotion and character thrown in to issue #2 the series has become a standout story all in its own right. This is not simply a cool idea, this could be the DC Universe’s biggest crisis to date!
Verdict
Issue #2 of DCeased builds on the first issue and throws the scope of the story far wider. It takes a neat, gory story idea and makes it in to something so much more: a compelling character story on our favourite team of heroes and their loved ones.
9/10
DCeased #2 is written by Tom Taylor with pencils by Trevor Hairsine, inks by Stefano Guadiano and colours by Rainier Beredo.
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