Listen Up!
Meghan Fitzmartin Writer
Laura Braga Artist
Luis Guerrero & Hi-Fi Colors
Pat Brosseau Letters
Max Dunbar & Luis Guerrero Cover
Serg Acuña Variant Cover
Dave Wielgosz Editor
Ben Abernathy Group Editor
Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
Superboy created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.
Our cover makes a pretty decent attempt at showing Young Justice fighting E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E. We have the full roster of the late-’90s JLA, plus several members of the Titans and Lobo for good measure. Lobo, of course, was briefly a member of Young Justice, not that I’d expect any of these creators to realize that. Anyway, I find this to be a rather mediocre cover. Dunbar gives everyone a stretched, squished face. At least he gives Impulse fingerless gloves — something that Braga failed to do.
The variant cover is much better. I’m not the biggest fan of the angry Wonder Girl flying right toward us, but I really enjoy the background images. It reminded me of how exciting Patrick Gleason’s art was when the Young Justice series was first revived.
Superboy is the narrator for this issue, beginning by referring to Impulse and Robin as his “frustrating best friends.” He wonders exactly why they’re fighting the JLA and Titans right now, but he’s confident that whoever’s behind this is no match for him. Robin tries to say something, but Superboy suddenly can’t hear him. Bizarrely, he reasons that this world is just as frustrated with Robin as he is. Robin’s voice eventually does come through, though, and he says that something is messing with the sound waves.
Robin tries to get his teammates to regroup, while Impulse calls this his nightmare. Superboy, meanwhile, laments that his friends don’t remember that this was the time when they were at their best — kings of the era. He tells Robin and Impulse that they can’t win this fight, so they should just stop fighting and accept this world. Superboy reasons that they were beaten, bruised and battered in the real world, but they can make a new start here. Impulse reports that Superboy’s tantrum somehow fixed the sound waves, but Robin simply wonders if Superboy’s lost his mind.
We then return to the real world, where Cassie, Cissie and Red Tornado have arrived at the abandoned Titans Tower in San Francisco, where Cassie hopes they can find some sort of transport to outer space. Cissie asks why they don’t go to Happy Harbor, but Cassie coldly says it was destroyed while Cissie was away. (This is news to me, because Brian Michael Bendis’ run ended with the entire team hanging out at Happy Harbor.) Luckily, our heroes have no troubles entering the base, but they oddly decide to visit the hall of fallen heroes, which oddly still has statues of some who have since come back to life, like Donna Troy and Conner. (Bart and Conner originally had massive golden statues in front of the tower, which they both gleefully destroyed after coming back to life. Apparently Conner had a second smaller one below.)
Cassie darkly says this room always felt like an inevitability, and Cissie stupidly asks why Cassie never told her about any of this. Cassie’s reaction is pretty appropriate. She tried to talk to Cissie — a bunch of times — but Cissie refused her. Cassie says that Cissie thought she was just shutting out the boys, but she was also shutting her out. Even though Cassie tried to respect Cissie’s request for distance, she couldn’t help but feeling like her old friend was treating her as though she were invisible. In her anger, Cassie destroys the Superboy statue, as Red Tornado reports that — unsurprisingly — he was unable to find a spaceship. But Cissie was prompted by the word “invisible” and asks Cassie whatever happened to Wonder Woman’s invisible jet.
Twelve hours and a trip to Themyscira later, Cassie, Cissie and Red Tornado are cruising through space in Wonder Woman’s famed jet. Apparently, Hippolyta owed Cassie a favor, even though Cassie acknowledged Hippolyta’s death in the first issue of this very series. In another stroke of convenient luck, Red Tornado just happens to possess “biometric schematics” of Bart, Conner and Tim, and has the jet scanning for their signatures. The android narrow-mindedly assumes the boys must be somewhere in this universe.
Cissie awkwardly tries to apologize to Cassie, but is harshly rejected. Cassie says that if she wanted to be friends, she would have reached out earlier. Thankfully, Red Tornado steps in, pointing out that the two of them are friends and have been through too much to not be honest with each other. He begins to lecture Cassie on finding the balance between bottling up her anger and lashing out too much, but he’s interrupted by a swarm of bug-like aliens attacking the jet. Cassie says she’s heard of these space mites before, but she wonders what they’re doing here — as if we the audience were supposed to know where “here” was and where space mites were normally supposed to be.
We check back in on the boys, who are still locked in their battle against the JLA. Fortunately, Bart is doing some serious multitasking. The distortion with the sound waves earlier made him wonder if whoever is behind this world is doing it with vibrational frequencies. Superboy is frustrated that Impulse isn’t listening to him, which earns him a coy, “Sucks, doesn’t it?” As Superboy continues his repetitive appeal to his friends about this world being better than reality, Impulse quietly says one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen: “C=\SQRT{\FRAC{K_S}{\RHO}}” It took me a long time to figure this out, but I think Bart is reciting an equation related to the speed of light and letterer Pat Brosseau was trying to type in a fraction underneath a square root. But I think he messed up a little bit of the coding, and it came out as gibberish. I know from my experience of editing at dc.fandom.com that if you miss just one bracket, you mess the whole thing up. I assume Brosseau’s lettering program operates under similar principles. Unfortunately, if this is the mistake I think it is, then it’s a real shame that both editors overlooked what could have been a pretty neat moment of foreshadowing.
Anyway, despite Superboy’s plea that they stop fighting, he himself has continued to throw punches at the old JLA. Robin flat out asks Superboy if he’s taken too many hits to the head, saying it should be pretty obvious that this world isn’t better and it’s not even their real past. Impulse, meanwhile, keeps muttering to himself very quickly, talking about vibrating at just the right speed. Superboy ties up Wonder Woman with her own lasso and baselessly accuses Robin of having had a better life after he died. Robin is so stunned by that insane comment, that he freezes on the battlefield and has to be saved by Impulse from being pulverized by Big Barda.
Once he recovers, Robin steals a stake of kryptonite from Batman’s utility belt and viciously stabs it through Superman’s heart. (At least, I’m pretty sure it was Superman — he was drawn so skinny, I could have sworn it was another version of Superboy.) Robin opens up about how awful it was after Superboy died, even admitting that he tried to find a way to clone him and changed his costume to honor him. Robin explains that he actually found more inspiration in the hero Superboy grew to become than the hero he was at the beginning of his career. And Robin closes his speech rather profoundly: “We aren’t our past. It’s who become after everything else falls apart. That’s what matters.”
Superboy hates to admit that Robin is right, but he doesn’t believe he’s worth of being an inspiring figure anymore. Impulse, meanwhile, stupidly holds the Atom in his hands, repeatedly begging him not to grow. The Atom does grow, but then … does absolutely nothing. I guess Braga got tired of drawing him? Anyway, Superboy asks Robin what he’s supposed to say now, and Robin says he doesn’t need to say anything — just understand that it wasn’t easy when he was gone.
Impulse’s frustration finally boils over and he reminds his two friends that Superboy wasn’t the only one who died. He points out that they don’t take him seriously, don’t ask how he’s doing, and don’t listen when he tells them something’s wrong. Impulse recounts how he was initially thrown back in time a thousand years but he didn’t care because Superboy and Robin became his best friends. And they had fun … until they started treated Impulse like a sidekick.
At this point in his diatribe, Impulse is randomly choked by Donna Troy, but he easily escapes. Impulse continues his speech, saying he was used to being a sidekick with the Flashes, but not with Superboy and Robin. Bart then quietly says, “Okay, here goes. Hope you’re out there.” A strange little flickering of energy forms around Impulse, as he concludes his remarks by saying Superboy and Robin only care about each other.
We then cut back to the real world, where Red Tornado has flown out of the jet to battle the space mites, but there’s too many of them. Since Cassie is the only one who knows how to fly the jet, she sends Cissie out to help Red. Conveniently, Wonder Woman’s invisible jet came equipped with a space suit that fits Cissie. Even more conveniently, Cissie decided to bring her bow and arrows on this mission. However, Cissie doesn’t even get a chance to shoot an arrow, as a space mite immediately severs her line, sending the poor girl drifting off into space. Red Tornado takes off after her, and as soon as he catches Cissie, a mysterious red light suddenly appears right in front of the relieved Cassie still in the jet.
Returning to our emotionally distraught boys, Impulse steers the conversation back to the strangeness of this world, and Superboy and Robin actually participate in this discussion. Impulse points out that this place is filled with loads of memories, and Superboy and Robin put together that the memories are different — definitely not theirs. Superboy concedes that this version of the Mighty Endowed felt intentionally sexist. And Robin says he barely even remembered Tora from the first time around. Impulse asks which of their old villains could create a world like this, and we are treated to one of the most bizarre panels of this entire series.
True Young Justice fans will recognize Fite ‘n Maad, Harm and Empress. And they’ll also know that only Harm is a villain of those four. The large ominous face looming in the background was teased in an earlier issue (and we’ll soon learn who he is). But the man in red, front and center, is quite perplexing. I will freely admit that I had to do a reverse image search to figure out who he is. Turns out he’s Baron Bedlam, an old Outsiders villain. And while he was adapted for the animated Young Justice: Outsiders series, he never appeared in the original Young Justice comics.
So what is he doing here? Simple. Fitzmartin told Braga to draw Bedlam. So Braga did a quick Google search and drew the wrong Bedlam. She was supposed to draw the imposing evil purple genie behind World Without Grown-Ups and World Without Young Justice. Not this guy. Sadly, this error got past the colorist and two editors. Not to mention the bizarre inclusion of three genuine heroes in this group. And this one is all on Fitzmartin. I’m now convinced that she only read the first handful of Young Justice issues — you know, the ones with the Mighty Endowed and Tora, and Fite ‘n Maad were slightly antagonistic toward the boys, and Empress was slowly being introduced from the shadows. Fitzmartin probably assumed that Empress was a villain, which led to the strange rant she gave Cissie in issue #2. Anyway, this single panel is a perfect representation of this miniseries. It displays an embarrassing lack of knowledge of Young Justice.
Now let’s return to the story. Impulse suddenly claims to know who it is, thinking it’s Mr. Mxyzptlk. (Although Bedlam would have been a good guess. He basically did the exact same thing to heroes. Twice.) Before Bart can elaborate, a young man suddenly appears, wearing orange and purple. He says he’s excited to finally meet our heroes. Conner is shocked to see the mastermind behind this world is a kid their age (how old, exactly are they?). Also, the Watchtower, JLA and Titans have suddenly vanished, leaving our heroes surrounded by strange, swirling colors and ribbons of light. Bart realizes this isn’t actually Mr. Mxyzptlk, and the young man confirms that to be so. He’s actually Mxyzptlk’s son, Mickey. He introduces himself as Young Justice’s biggest fan and says they have to stay here to save their childhood.
I’m not happy that a new villain was created for this miniseries. Forget the fact that this has absolutely nothing to do with the main Dark Crisis storyline. Fitzmartin had the perfect foil right under her nose the whole time — the original Mr. Mxyzptlk! Did she skip the issue where Impulse, Robin and Superboy taught a young Mxy to be the fun-loving goofster he is today? It makes perfect sense to me: Mxy, who has always had a fond spot for the heroes who taught him how to have fun, is horrified at how they’ve been forgotten and neglected by the universe. He tries to create the perfect world for them, but messes it up. It’s a much cleaner and, dare I say, more satisfying story. But one that robs Fitzmartin’s ability to have someone scream, “You’re ruining my childhood!” I’ll save my thoughts on that for later.
For an issue that promised a fight between Young Justice and EVERYONE, that fight turned out to be the most boring, inconsequential part of this issue. Our heroes were never in any real danger, and the JLA members never even said a single word — missing an opportunity for some fun psychological warfare. It was just a bland background for our very redundant argument. The boys have literally been saying the exact same things for three issues now. Seriously, how many times does Superboy have to learn the same lesson? And why does he like this fake world, anyway? They keep saying that it’s better because he never died in this world, but they never show what that means.
Mostly, I’m just depressed by the overall sloppiness of this comic. There’s the unforgivable Bedlam error and the confusion of Impulse’s equation. But there was also a great deal of inconsequential moments that instantly resolved themselves. Like the sound waves problem at the beginning. Nothing bad happened because of it, but that didn’t matter because it was gone as soon as we acknowledged it. Just like Cissie drifting off into space. In fact, every single thing about the Cassie/Cissie subplot was a ridiculous waste of time. This has been an incredibly frustrating read. I do like how Impulse is the most responsible one here, and the only person actually doing something. But on the whole, I’m quite depressed with how substandard this miniseries is.
Next time, we’ll take a very brief look at Young Justice: Targets #5.
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