Injustice: Year Five Comic Concludes With Superman Versus Batman

Injustice: Gods Among Us tore the DC Universe in half. After suffering a great loss, Superman decided to use his power to rule the world. Knowing this was a bad idea, Batman gathered heroes and villains to stop the Kryptonian's reign. If you played the video game, you know how the story goes. The comic series has showed the events leading up to the game. This week, the final chapter is released.

Brian Buccellato has been writing the last three years of the story's continuity. We've seen some epic clashes and tragic deaths. We talked to him to find out what the story holds, how his feelings about the game have changed, and news about a new series being released before the Injustice 2 game and comic.

GameSpot: How does it feel writing the ending of the current Injustice comic?

Brian Buccellato: In some ways it's really sad because I feel like I'm losing a friend or I have a child going off to college or something. It's been with me for a long time and working with Jim Chadwick for the last two plus years, that has been a huge part of my life. Getting to the end is sort of bittersweet.

Obviously you knew where the series had to go. Were there any difficulties getting everything tied up or setting the stage for the video game timeline?

There was some creative difficulties just in some of the logistics. It's really hard to look back at ... I don't know how many issues, 5 years worth and hundreds of issues of the book and try to tie up every thread. That was challenging. I'm so glad that we got 20 issues to sort of bring the story to a close. We did what I think was a pretty good job of tying everything together, but I'm sure someone is going to find one or two moments that happen a little differently in the book. That was definitely a challenge, but I gave it the old college try.

That's where the alternate Earth can come into the story?

Yes.

When you originally played the video game, who was you go-to character?

I liked all the big brutes when I recently played it. Like Grundy and Doomsday because they hit really hard. I hated Aquaman because I always felt that his trident had too long of a reach, so I think that was kind of a cheater character.

Did your desire to play change after writing the comic? Are you looking at the other characters now that you've gotten to know them?

Yes, I'll never play Superman again. He's a jerk. I do like Harley and Catwoman, and I think they're worth a look in the video game.

Okay so the tough question, what are some of your favorite moments that you've written?

Wow, that is tough. I mean I'm really proud of the whole Alfred story line. I think that that sort of was me firing on all cylinders in terms of finding a story that was compelling and emotional, and exposed the overarching theme of the story. I'm probably most proud of that.

I also really liked the Harley/Shazam running gag. That was really fun to write. Harley is ... she's Harley. She's really fun to put in weird situations and see what she says and what she comes up with.

I think Wonder Woman kicking Superman's butt was probably my single favorite moment, when she breaks his arm. I think she gets a bad rap and everyone always assumes that Superman will beat Wonder Woman, so I enjoyed showing that she has more butt-kicking abilities than he does.

Would that be your favorite battle?

Yeah I think hands down it's my favorite battle. I did like when the Gods came in because it was a lot of action, but my single favorite battle was that.

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Can you tell us anything about Injustice: Ground Zero?

Yeah, I can tell you that it sort of follows the game story so the end of our regular Injustice run takes us right up to the beginning of the game mode story, and so Ground Zero is going to focus on that. It will do it through the POV, which is point of view to the lay person, of a specific character. Basically we're telling the story through the perspective of Harley. She has a very unique perspective because she's tied to the heroes and the villains, and all the bad stuff, but through the course of 5 years of Injustice we've seen her grow. It's going to be interesting to see what her perspective on all these events are.

It's not going to be a blow-by-blow of the video game story because that would kind of be boring to just see exactly how it plays out, so we'll see it from her point of view ... which is not always reliable.

What's your involvement with this?

I was originally going to write the whole thing, but I got this fellowship at Universal Pictures, so I am doing that for the next year. I developed the story and I wrote a number of the plots and then I had to walk away. Chris Sebela, who I believe is an alumni from the DC workshops is taking over the reins. It's mostly going to be his baby, but it will sort of follow along the story that Jim Chadwick and I started.

Any last things you want to say about your time with Injustice?

Any last things that I want to say? I just want to say that Dr. Guerrero does not exist in the Injustice universe. He never did and he never will.

Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Five Chapter 40 is on sale Tuesday, September 20 at www.readdcentertainment.com.