Dark Crisis: Young Justice #5

Don’t Meet Your Heroes

Meghan Fitzmartin Writer

Laura Braga Artist

Luis Guerrero Colorist

Josh Reed Letters

Max Dunbar & Luis Guerrero Cover

Belén Ortega & Tomeu Morley Variant Cover

Dave Wielgosz Editor

Ben Abernathy Group Editor

Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Superboy created by Jerry Siegel.

By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.

Our cover prominently displays the main villain of this miniseries. Like any good villain, he thinks he’s the hero. He looks decent enough, but our heroes … not so much. Especially Superboy. Why can’t Dunbar draw him well? It’s such a downer on all his covers. The variant, as usual, is much better. But it only focuses on Robin and doesn’t include Impulse on it.

Our story picks up with Mickey introducing himself to Superboy, Robin and Impulse. He explains that he’s created the perfect world for his favorite heroes, complete with their best girl, Wonder Girl. Mickey says he considered bringing the real Cassie, but she’s gotten older and isn’t fun anymore. Impulse tells Mickey he doesn’t have the right to mess with them like this, and he tries to charge at the imp, but the ground opens up beneath him, revealing another horde of zombies. Mickey tells Bart that it’s okay to just be the comic relief — and for all of them to be the way they were when they were younger.

As a pair of zombie hands wrap themselves around Robin’s neck, as Mickey asks his favorite heroes if they don’t miss the old glory days. Conner tries to help his friends, but he oddly begins crying out, “Where is my hand?!” Even though it is clearly still attached to his wrist and looks completely normal. Tim is choking and Bart is being dragged down to the center of the Earth. And Mickey is droning on and on about how the glory days were robbed from them. He conjures images of Flash, Batman and Superman, saying these were the people who brought them up and promised them the world, but then left them to rot, replacing them with new protégés. Mickey then brings up Wallace West, Damian Wayne and Jon Kent, asking how Bart, Tim and Conner are supposed to compete with them, especially seeing as how two of them are literally their mentors’ sons.

Bart speculates that Mickey is doing all this because his dad, the real Mxyzptlk, didn’t give him enough love. Conner points out that Tim is dying, but Mickey ignores him, explaining that his dad had promised to grant him control of the fifth dimension once this generation of heroes took over. But sadly, Mickey says, their generation wasn’t set up for success and were repeatedly brought down. He brings up Deathstroke, Lex Luthor and Captain Boomerang, saying he presented them to his heroes as a gift — a chance to take out the people who caused the most damage in their lives. Mickey says their mentors never gave them that — they just said suck it up and move on.

Conner tells Mickey that he’s on the verge of killing two of his childhood heroes, so Mickey reluctantly releases Bart and Tim. As usual, Conner is more concerned with Tim than Bart, who asks how they can send this “toddler” back home to his daddy. Mickey angrily says he’s the only one who’s trying to help the Young Justice founders. He says their generation has been replaced by people he believes don’t have any right to be there. Mickey conjures images of all the prominent LGBTQ heroes in the DC Universe, including Tim’s new boyfriend, Bernard. He says he doesn’t care about these heroes, going on adventures and telling stories he didn’t ask for. Mickey even calls these new heroes ingrates, who haven’t had to work as hard as his childhood favorites, who have constantly been killed, removed from the timeline or simply forgotten about. And Mickey says he’s sick of never seeing his favorites again.

Our heroes are stunned by this … well, slightly homophobic rant. Bart asks if that’s what Mickey thinks of them, and Tim even swears. Conner tries to reason with Mickey, saying they were never about … that. Bart admits they’ve had a rough go, but he says those other heroes have, too, and they’re not any less important than heroes who’ve been around longer. Tim angrily says that you don’t get to tell people they don’t belong or shouldn’t exist. He insists they all make the world better. Mickey darkly responds with, “Never meet your heroes,” and ominously snaps his fingers.

It’s hard to tell what, exactly, happens next. There’s a lot of shwooms and fwooms and … I don’t know, fire? Energy? Lightning? Well, whatever it is, it’s more than enough to spook Superboy, who, for the first time in four issues, asks how to get out of this fake world. Bart says they probably can’t leave, but he helps guide his teammates past the … uh … dangerous stuff? Anyway, Mickey keeps insisting he’s right, saying his heroes have shown him who he needs to be. Robin, in desperation, decides to throw a small bomb — not at Mickey — but at the fake Wonder Girl, who has done absolutely nothing this issue. We’re then treated to three very boring black panels that only say boom, crash and zip.

When the lights go back on, the fake Wonder Girl has a suction-cup arrow stuck to her forehead. That arrow was fired by none other than Cissie King-Jones, who apparently still has trick arrows despite being retired. Cissie is naturally joined by Cassie, Red Tornado and Wonder Woman’s invisible jet. The boys slowly pull themselves off the ground and Bart says, “Finally.” He explains that when the sound waves were messed up (for a very brief, inconsequential amount of time last issue), he decided to try messing with sound waves himself by vibrate a sign to Cassie. Inexplicably, Bart claims that every person has their own frequency, and he’s spent enough time with Cassie to know what that frequency is. Alrighty then.

Cassie apologizes for taking so long to get to Mickey’s world because it took her a while to recognize Bart’s message. She adds that they needed an explosion to actually take them to the fake world, which conveniently happened when Robin threw his small bat bomb. OK. Whatever. Mickey is naturally upset by all this, but mostly because Impulse didn’t act like the dumb goofball. For the first time this miniseries, Tim finally comes to the defense of his friend … by … oddly saying that Bart knew his teammates, which means he knew one of them would try an explosion, which implies that Bart knew all along that an explosion was necessary to reach this interdimensional world. Yeah … sure. Anyway, Robin says Impulse is more than a sidekick and Superboy adds that he’d make a pretty smart leader. Bart sheepishly says, “Maybe one day…” 

The fake Wonder Girl abruptly charges at Cassie, who just … claps her hands and … maybe strikes the fake one with lightning? Again, the art is of absolutely no help here. And when the fake Wonder Girl fades away, the sound effect literally says the word “fade” — which isn’t much more help. Suffice it to say the fake Wonder Girl is gone and Cassie calls her friends “dweebs” for believing it was real. Instead of arguing that they’ve known she was fake for quite some time now, Bart, Tim and Conner merely apologize to Cassie. Luckily, she’s more glad to finally have them back than to be mad. At the moment.

Cissie asks who the kid in the bad hat is, so Tim asks Mickey to say his name. Mickey, however, refuses to say his name, saying he can’t be easily tricked like his moron of a father. He then darkly says that none of them will get out of here alive, to which Robin confidently says they will because they’re Young Justice. Everyone begins to battle bland glowing orbs of goo, while Robin thinks to himself that the only way to defeat Mxyzptlk is to get him to say his name. Backwards. Robin (and Meghan Fitzmartin) forgot to add the backwards part to it.

Bart, meanwhile, is thinking about a more productive topic: escape. He reasons that since he was able to send a message out to Cassie and she was able to inexplicably enter the world, then they must be able to leave. Bart decides to try escaping through the Speed Force, but to his astonishment, Mickey’s glow blobs are somehow eating the Speed Force.

Meanwhile, Cissie finds herself enjoying shooting exploding arrows into the glow blobs. She admits that she missed her old friends, but regrets that she can’t tell that to Cassie. She oddly says it was too much before — being close to death and almost killing friends. Once again, I have no idea what she’s talking about, which is probably just another indicator that Fitzmartin never learned why Cissie quit being Arrowette.

Superboy reports that Robin has somehow become trapped inside a glow blob — although we never saw that happen. Luckily, Conner’s able to free him with his tactile telekinesis and one of Cissie’s arrows. Superboy then notices that Impulse is seemingly frozen in place. Cassie is able to snap Bart out of his Speed Force trance and she asks him if he could get them out of there if he had a little more power, seemingly implying that she had the ability to grant him more power. Bart says, “I’ve been looking, but I can’t find an opening to take us through —” In the very next panel, literally, Cassie says, “How about you take us through the Speed Force?” Even though she said the exact same thing Bart was saying, Bart agrees that this plan might be possible.

So Red Tornado and Superboy somehow give Impulse the boost he needs (don’t ask me how), while the others protect them from Mickey. A purple bubble surrounds our team, but I have no idea who created it or how or why. Anyway, Bart suddenly tells everyone to jump, and they leap through a yellow portal, landing back in the real world. Cassie says Hippolyta is going to kill her for leaving the invisible jet behind, and I am compelled to remind everyone that this miniseries began with Cassie mourning the death of Hippolyta and never once saying anything about her coming back to life.

Anyway, our heroes find themselves in the ruins of their former cave at Happy Harbor. I still don’t know what happened to it, since it seemed perfectly fine when Brian Michael Bendis ended his Young Justice run, but whatever. Cassie says they need to hurry back to the Hall of Justice, because everyone was getting ready for something big happening, and I’m wondering how she knew that since she’s spent the past day traveling to Themyscira and through space. But it’s a moot point, anyway, because Mickey Mxyzptlk suddenly arrives behind them.

Well, we certainly have a lot to unpack here. Let’s begin with my complaints of general sloppiness. Braga’s art has become steadily worse throughout this miniseries, suggesting a rushed job to me. Bland, empty backgrounds. Stiff, repetitive poses and expressions that were likely copied and pasted. Incomprehensible action sequences. And a general lack of cohesion with the story. For example, if Superboy’s hand was supposed to disappear, then actually make it disappear!

Fitzmartin’s writing also suffers from many of the same problems. Repetitive, bland and not cohesive with any sense of established history or just plain logic. Lots of things just happen in this issue. Without any rhyme or reason. How can Red Tornado’s whirlwinds and Superboy’s tactile telekinesis help Impulse open a portal to escape from an interdimensional world? Who cares? We’re going right through the Speed Force, even though we just barely said — one panel ago — that it was impossible to go through the Speed Force! I feel like I’m going crazy here.

Bart’s talk of personal frequencies also bothered me. Yes, I did like how the previous issue set up that he was doing something sneaky and important. But this just didn’t make any sense. Especially since we didn’t get to see the exact nature of Bart’s message to Cassie. And being able to connect to other people’s frequencies is as nonsensical as it is creepy. I much would have preferred a true blast from the past and had Bart create an energy scout that could escape Mickey’s world. Bonus points if you show Bart talking about the inherent risks of creating a scout beforehand!

But that’s not what this story is about. Fitzmartin isn’t concerned with the technical details of characters using their powers in a consistent manner. What she really wants to do is tell a story about the most toxic of fans who use nostalgia to cover up their bigotry. And that’s actually an interesting story to tell. I wish this story were a bit more refined, and I wish we got to this point earlier, rather than wasting time by clumsily trying to present old Young Justice stories as problematic. But we’re here now, and I actually kind of enjoy it.

The beauty of this is that a lot of the things Mickey says are absolutely true. Bart and Conner were killed, then erased from reality, then — worst of all — were just forgotten about. Technically in continuity, but never appearing in any comics or even being mentioned. And Tim didn’t have it much easier, either, going through an awkward Red Robin phase, following an even more awkward (but mercifully brief) phase as Drake. But that’s what happens when new characters make the old ones redundant. And it genuinely hurts to see favorite characters get shoved aside. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

This miniseries has talked a lot about becoming the next generation of heroes. But what does that actually look like? Dick Grayson, DC’s original sidekick, spent decades as Robin before becoming Nightwing, then had to wait a couple decades more before he finally became Batman. But that didn’t last very long. Wally West had a nice long run as the Flash, but once Barry Allen returned, he became redundant and had to suffer through years of his own personal limbo. Geoff Johns did try to grow up Young Justice. He put them on the Teen Titans with … mixed results. DC did let Bart Allen be the Flash, but they gave that series to the wrong creators and it was hastily aborted after just a year. So what I’m saying is it’s very rare and often fleeting for a sidekick to take the mantle of their mentor.

Truthfully, I don’t think many fans of Conner, Tim and Bart ever wanted them to be Superman, Batman and the Flash. We just want more stories of them. So the whole argument that this series has been making over and over again has never had any weight to it. But Mickey’s lament of Young Justice being forgotten does strike a chord. It’s completely understandable to feel like Mickey from time to time. However, Mickey went too far by insisting the newer characters don’t deserve to exist. And he went way too far by specifically targeting the LGBTQ heroes.

No, I don’t think Meghan Fitzmartin is arguing that every fan of Young Justice is a bigot like Mickey. But the worst, most toxic corners of the internet are full of people just like him. People who consistently only seem to complain about non-white, non-straight characters. People who won’t let themselves enjoy the incredible new stories being told about Jon Kent, Yara Flor, Nubia and all the rest. As much as I love and miss Impulse, I haven’t punished myself by taking on the attitude that everything new is awful. And all characters who don’t look like me don’t deserve to be printed. Some people are incapable of accepting that mindset. And that’s who Mickey represents.

This is a rather interesting topic that deserves a lot of room to explore. Unfortunately, Fitzmartin waited until issue 5 of a 6-issue series to introduce it. This should have come up in the second issue, giving us plenty of time to discuss and debate complex ideas that actually resonate with the audience, rather than wasting time by repeating the same hollow arguments over and over again.

Next time, we’ll take the quickest of quick looks at the finale of Young Justice: Targets.