Black Manta – supervillain from Aquaman, first appearing in 1967 – will make his next appearance in Injustice 2, this September. A gameplay trailer showing off his moves just popped out of the oven, and he’s loaded with quite a huge variety.
Scorpion may not be in Injustice 2 yet, but Black Manta gets a form of his get-over-here-spear. The version shown pulls Aquaman to the other side of Manta for a quick laser blast. Whether he can pull opponents to either side depending on inputs or follow-up with any attack is not yet clear.
Speaking of laser blasts, Black Manta is filling the Cyclops role in this superhero showdown with frickin laser beams from his frickin head. If you’re as curious as I was, Cyclops and his lasers debuted four years before Black Manta.
As if lasers weren’t enough, Manta can also fire rockets. How he stores the ammunition is inconsequential. They fire in pairs and have homing abilities.
Speaking of rocket tech, Manta can also fly/hover like the Rocketeer. The trailer shows him gracefully floating above Aquaman’s poorly planned trident attack, and unleashing a few rockies to start a combo.
The ocean-tech keeps coming with Manta’s mines-from-the-air that drop down quickly onto an opponent’s head, setting them up for more combinations. This is the first Injustice character I’ve covered, do all of their movesets have this kind of variety?
You can try to memorize all of Black Manta’s moves when the Injustice 2 Fighter Pack 2 releases in September. Other characters in the pack include Hellboy and MK’s Raiden, both are not DC universe characters if you were wondering.
What’s Raiden’s backstory? Is he pissed that the Injustice crew took what could have been the next Mortal Kombat? Did Scorpion or Cyclops send him to get their moves back? He is a god of lightning, so I suppose he fits alongside the Gods Among Us group. Probably even gets to eat lunch at the same table.