Young Justice #20

Final Justice

Brian Michael Bendis and David Walker Writers

Scott Godlewski Art

Gabe Eltaeb Colors

Wes Abbott Letters

John Timms and Gabe Eltaeb Cover

Derrick Chew Variant Cover

Bixie Mathieu Assistant Editor

Brittany Holzherr Editor

Jamie S. Rich Group Editor

Superboy created by Jerry Siegel.

By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.

Our cover is a pretty nice, pretty standard pose of the entire team, including the Wonder Twins and Dial H for Hero kids, whom I guess would fall under the “part-time” status? Amethyst is also here right up front, pretending that she hasn’t been missing since issue #15. Naomi takes the spotlight, which makes sense, since she’s really the only character on this cover with a future (her own CW show). Everyone looks good, living up to John Timms’ standard. However, for the life of me, I have no idea why Teen Lantern has placed her green energy around Impulse. I also have to scoff a little at the promise of a “thrilling conclusion.”

Our variant cover (from dc.fandom.com) is an odd, moody collage that puts strange emotions on some of the characters. Why is Robin looming ominously over everyone? Why has Naomi turned her back on the team (other than to go star on the CW without them)? Why is Superboy not only front and center, but isolated from the group? And why is Impulse so small?!

Our story begins with a recap page that uses the same image I posted last issue of Poseidon attacking Wonder Girl and her friends, while Bart sneaks in a few more bites of his burger. Here’s the text that engages in only a small amount of revisionist history:

“Robin, Superboy, Impulse, Amethyst, Spoiler, Wonder Girl, Jinny Hex, Naomi, and Teen Lantern have come together with Dial H and the Wonder Twins as Young Justice!

“Young Justice took down the once great, but now evil, science corporation S.T.A.R. Labs, escaped a harrowing adventure through the multiverse, saved Gemworld from its evil oppressor, and teamed up with the Justice League to take down the Legion of Doom once and for all.

“In doing so, the entire group found out a lot of things about their past and their responsibilities to the future and each other.”

If that were a Wikipedia entry, I would have added several “citation needed” notes. But that’s OK. We know what really happened. And what is happening now in the story, is Teen Lantern courageously standing between an unseen assailant and her defeated teammates. To find out how we got here, we need to go back in time 33 minutes.

Robin, Superboy, Wonder Girl and Impulse have decided to take Naomi, Amethyst, Jinny Hex, Spoiler and Teen Lantern to Mount Justice, which Tim dubs as the “unofficial official headquarters of Young Justice.” He explains that technically, it’s a Justice League facility, but Young Justice is allowed to use it, as long as they clean up after themselves. This prompts Cassie to chastise Bart for leaving big messes around, but Bart blames Conner, calling him the “sloppiest Kent.” Conner calls Bart the most annoying speedster, who says “that is saying something,” before realizing he just burned himself.

Tim begins the tour, but Bart immediately dubs him boring. Conner shows off the fully stocked kitchen, but Bart thinks the gluten-free options are gross. Cassie begins to explain the purpose of the meeting room, but Bart points out that it’s self-explanatory. He begs to show off the secret water tunnel, connecting their pool to the ocean, but the new girls are more interested in the Red Tornado, who is oddly standing motionless under a light.

Bart proudly proclaims the Red Tornado to be the most sophisticated android in the entire multiverse. Jinny, perplexed, calls him the Red Tomato, but Teen Lantern is surprisingly a big fan. Robin and Superboy explain how Red was basically their babysitter, while Impulse wonders aloud why the android appears to be sleeping. Spoiler references the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, which Bart claims to have not read, despite bragging about having traveled the entirety of the space-time continuum. (Either Bart is joking or he has forgotten that he did read the entire San Francisco Public Library back in the day.)

Bart points out that even if he was recharging, Red Tornado should have reacted to their presence by now. Of course, Bart seems even more surprised that Red has a huge fan in Keli. Bart jokes that it’s more understandable for the Blue Devil to have fans. He then touches Red Tornado, who immediately activates and attacks the group, calling them trespassers.

His initial blast knocked out Impulse, Amethyst and Jinny Hex. Superboy tries to order Red Tornado to stand down, but he mechanically orders the “intruders” to surrender before knocking out Conner and Cassie. Naomi takes a swing at him, but his knocked out, too. Robin and Spoiler coordinate a tag-team attack, but that doesn’t work, either.

And so that brings us back to the beginning, with Teen Lantern inexplicably the only hero left. And even more inexplicably, Teen Lantern completely dismantles Red Tornado in a single blast. Suddenly, John Stewart arrives, saying he should have confiscated Keli’s ring when he first saw her three days ago in what has now been titled the Battle of Shuster Park. Keli argues that she’s earned it, and the rest of Young Justice immediately wakes up to back her up. So John agrees to let her keep the Green Lantern ring, as long she repairs Red Tornado and meets with him at the Hall of Justice.

Robin, Superboy and Impulse then decide it’s time to call a “secret team meeting,” which turns out to be just hanging around a campfire outside the cave, along with Dial H and the Wonder Twins. And although the page says “Never the end!”, this is the end of this series.

What a waste. Such a disappointing end to a colossally disappointing series. I mean, why did we even come back to Mount Justice? Just to give Teen Lantern a little moment? Yeah, we saw Red Tornado, but he didn’t actually speak to the gang. Does he even remember them? We could have had some great callbacks to the original series. But no. Instead, we got ... nothing. Absolutely nothing. This issue was just a space filler. DC told Bendis he’d have to end at issue 20, and he clearly didn’t know what to do. So we got the laziest of references to the “good ol’ days,” and Amethyst was suddenly brought back as if she hadn’t been missing since issue 15. Oh, and let’s throw in Dial H for Hero and the Wonder Twins, too, just because. They all fell under Bendis’ strange Wonder Comics experiment that sadly fizzled out to the disappointment of all.

Dial H and Wonder Twins were wonderful comics. But they were never going to have a huge audience — especially with the (wrong) impression that they existed outside of mainstream DC continuity. This wasn’t true, but it seems like most of the creators at DC believed it to be true, as there was an incredible reluctance to use these characters in any other book. With Young Justice, that never should have been a problem. But it was. And, sadly, many of these characters will slide right back into obscurity.

This series started off with so much hope and promise. It was bright, bold, colorful and exciting. But then Patrick Gleason left, and Bendis began throwing more and more characters at us and more and more questions that would never be answered. I think it’s fair to say at this point that Bendis never was able to answer all the dozens of questions he brought up. Perhaps he felt he’d be able to figure things out eventually, but he never got around to it. It also seems like his knowledge of DC history and continuity was severely lacking. I suspect David Walker was brought in at the end to try to clean up Bendis’ mistakes. But there wasn’t much he could do.

Now we’re back to hoping and praying that someone will revive this series — or at the characters — and actually give them some room to breathe. In the meantime, let’s close with the new house ads:

Lobo stars in the most gratuitous tie-in of all! Dark Nights: Death Metal Infinite Hour Exxxtreme!

Get to know DC’s breakout character of 2020! Punchline #1. (Was she really a breakout character, or did DC just hype her up a lot?)

And we end with what may be the last DC Nation Spotlight on Teen Wonders.

Next time? Well, I’m not exactly sure. Bart allegedly made a few appearances in some of the Death Metal books. So we’ll see what I can find. Until then, keep praying for some good Impulse stories!