This past weekend we attended the always fun Supanova convention in Adelaide to pick up a hardcover edition of Injustice: Gods Among Us. We managed to nab the books writer, Tom Taylor, for an interview about Injustice: Year 2, The Deep and the all new run of Earth 2.
If you want to listen to the interview and can handle G-Funk’s weirdly husky voice, there is an audio embed at the bottom of the page!
Tom at the opening ceremony.
G-Funk: We spoke to you a few months ago…
Tom: Yes!
G: …and you wouldn’t tell us about Earth 2.
T: No.
G: Tell us about it now.
T: I wrote a book. It’s called Earth 2.
G: Elaborate?
T: It’s got pages…the pages are inside the cover…yeah, it’s kinda like one of those ones.
G: That sounds like a lot of books we’ve already seen. What makes this one special?
T: This one is set on another Earth, not the usual Earth of DC, and things are very, very different. There’s an Evil Superman who’s essentially the herald for Darkseid. He’s an insane zealot, and he’s a murderer, a killer. He’s quite insane. There’s a brand new Batman who nobody knows the identity of, which is a good thing, and his origin takes place next January in the Earth 2 annual. The big reveal in the last issue…have you read it?
G: Yes, I have.
T: The big reveal in the recent issue is that Lois, who was previously not alive on this Earth, is alive and in the body of a robot.
G: It’s Red Tornado, isn’t it?
T: That’s exactly it.
G: You covered some of the same themes of the all-powerful evil Superman in Injustice – what’s going to separate the two stories?
T: In Injustice he’s not really evil so much as he’s trying to do the right thing and taking it to far. He’s had a slooow degradation of character whereas in Earth 2 he really is just pure evil. He rises and is like “I’m EVIL!” Who am I going to kill today? Injustice is a morality tale, we see him trying to do the right thing at every step and it takes him to more extreme places.
G: Injustice is finished – what was the best part for you?
T: Injustice isn’t finished. We’re back in January.
G: OK, tell us more!
T: Yes – Year 2 begins in January. We’ve done Year 1 and no we’re doing Year 2 and I’m already writing it and it’s looking really good.
G: Give us a hint, what should we expect?
T: Ear…I mean Year 2 (I’m going to keep doing that) of Injustice basically goes a bit further. There are characters such as the Green Lantern who didn’t get the spotlight shone on him in the first series so we’re going to head towards that. His story, how he essentially became a Yellow Lantern by the time the game came about. I don’t want to spoil things for people who haven’t read the end of the first one…
G: Spoiler warning then. Will we see more Green Arrow and Harley Quinn?
T: See, you haven’t read it have you?
G: I have, but a while ago.
T: You haven’t read the ending.
G: It’s comics, people come back!
T: To tell you the truth there has been the Injustice Annual that came out print and digitally this week. Both of them are in it and it’s almost entirely about Harley. If you liked that chapter with Green Arrow and Harley we billed this as a Harley and Lobo story but it also serves as a sequel to that chapter.
Meeting the fans on the convention floor.
G: You’ve been limited to the characters from the game so far. Is there anyone you want to add to the Injustice comic?
T: You are going to see some new faces. In Year 2 there are going to be more characters.
G: Are you going to give us a clue?
T: Uhhhhh…no.
G: Darn. Will we see the characters from The Deep crossover?
T: Into Injustice?
G: Why not?
T: Who says that one hasn’t already been in there?
G: Whoa. Do I have to go looking for it?
T: Yes.
G: Damn.
T: I’ll give you a hint – there is a whole underwater scene.
G: Ok. I’ll do that later.
T: (Laughs)
G: The Deep 3: when?
T: We don’t know at the moment because we’re concentrating on the TV series. We’re working on that with Technicolour and ABC in Australia. A lot of our focus is there while I write Injustice and Earth 2 so there’s not much room for a lot more. There is something else The Deep related that will hopefully you’ll know about before the end of the year. We will see.
G: We’ve got The Deep, Injustice and Earth 2…are you going to get back to Star Wars at some point?
T: I don’t know. Possibly actually. I was working on something Star Wars related earlier in the year and had conversations this week about something. So we shall see. I don’t have a lot of time, I will say that.
G: I does seem that, since we last spoke to you, you are suddenly a much more famous person.
T: (Laughs) I think…you know…Injustice, if you look at the front cover, it does say ‘The Worldwide #1 Bestselling Comic”. So…people have bought it so people are reading my stuff more. Which is good!
Also very good friends with Catwoman.
G: You’re getting more attention from DC, and you’ve been teamed up with Nicola (Scott).
T: Yes I have and it’s great to be working with Nic. We get along very well and it’s great to be working on a book together.
G: I think you guys suit each other very well.
T: Yes, yes…I think so too.
G: Do you get much collaboration time or do you send the words and she sends the pictures?
T: Well, yes and no. We do talk a lot about what we’ve got coming up. We’ve got some new characters coming up in Earth 2 so she and I have obviously been talking about them a lot. We do get to collaborate.
G: Batman has got a very different design. Did you have a lot of input into how he looks?
T: The look of him was decided before I came on board the book. His origin is where I come in.
G: I’ve run out of questions. Tell me something interesting.
T: No.
Listen to the interview here:
Read our original interview with Tom Taylor here!
