Youth Ends
Meghan Fitzmartin Writer
Laura Braga Artist
Luis Guerrero Colors
Pat Brosseau Letters
Max Dunbar & Luis Guerrero Cover
Jorge Corona & Sarah Stern Variant Cover
Dave Wielgosz Editor
Ben Abernathy Group Editor
Superboy created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.
Our cover is a supremely disappointing way to wrap up an absolute mess of a miniseries. It honestly feels like Dunbar just phoned this one in. Every single character looks bored, uninterested, ugly and all around … off. And putting them in front of the Hall of Justice implies that Young Justice will actually participate in the Dark Crisis event. Spoiler alert: They will not. Not in this issue or any of the Dark Crisis issues. Deep sigh. This has been a very frustrating experience.
Contrary to the credits, this variant cover is actually by Todd Nauck. (It is fitting that we’d get one more editorial mistake before the end.) I absolutely love this cover. And it almost breaks my heart by showing me what I wished this series would have been — a story that brought back Secret and Empress and Slobo and Fite ‘n Maad and Cissie’s mom and Riproar and Harm and Dante and Dis and the exploding Mount Rushmore and everything that made the Peter David/Todd Nauck series so rich and wonderful. Well, this series may have let me down, but at least it did give me some great variant covers.
Our story picks up in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island, where Red Tornado, Impulse, Wonder Girl, Robin, Superboy and Cissie King-Jones are shocked to see that Mickey Mxyzptlk has followed them back to the real world. Cassie is our narrator once again, and she vows to not lose her friends again after working so hard to get them back. She uses an unprintable swear word to describe Mickey, saying she doesn’t care how powerful he is. Oddly, though, she tells her team they can’t let Mickey escape … even though he just followed them there and has made no indication that he wants to leave. But Robin agrees with Wonder Girl, saying the amount of damage Mickey could cause to the world is too great to risk. He starts barking out orders, while Bart quietly whispers something to Cassie.
Suddenly, Robin loses the ability to speak as his mouth seemingly disappears. So instead of attacking Mickey, everybody stands around watching, while Cassie lectures him. She calls him a child, who remakes worlds in his image because he doesn’t like free will. Mickey doesn’t deny this, explaining that he saw how Pariah faked the deaths of the Justice Leauge so they could live out their fantasies. Mickey then “siphoned” off some of Pariah’s power (I guess?) to give his favorite heroes the world they deserve. This information about Pariah and the Justice League is news to our heroes, since this miniseries hasn’t dealt with the Dark Crisis event at all.
Right on cue, Red Tornado reports an S.O.S. call from the Hall of Justice, but Cassie insists on staying put and battling the “hateful, spiteful brat.” She wildly says Young Justice is just as strong as Mickey, but Cissie reasonably points out that they’re little more than a ragtag group of misfits. Conner reminds her that the only way anyone’s defeated Mr. Mxyzptlk was to get him to say his name backward (thank you for remembering to say backward!), but they don’t think Mickey will fall for that trick. Mickey tells Conner not to bother reasoning with Cassie since she’s just a girl and she’s only ever brought them down.
We then get a flashback to just seconds earlier, when Bart was whispering to Cassie. Turns out he lent her some of his speed to slow things down for just the two of them. Bart tells Cassie he has a plan, but he needs her to distract Mickey. And Bart wisely picked Cassie for this job because he’s picked up on Mickey’s misogyny. He asks Cassie to make fun of Mickey and challenge him, while promising her that he actually does have a plan despite his goofy reputation. Cassie tells Bart he was always smarter than they gave him credit for and she’s glad that he’s stepping up, since he makes a good leader.
Bart, however, rejects the compliment, saying this experience has shown him that he and the others didn’t always treat Cassie great. He says he was initially scared a new girl would change them and get in the way of a good thing. So he — and Conner and Tim — treated her like a third wheel. But Bart now tells Cassie that she’s more than the three of them put together. He sadly says he hopes this isn’t the end of Young Justice, because she makes a great leader. (And once again, I have no idea where Fitzmartin is coming up with this revisionist history.)
We cut back to the present, with Cassie openly mocking Mickey, suggesting he lives in an interdimensional basement. Cissie wisely warns against antagonizing an omnipotent foe, while Red Tornado and Superboy stupidly say they need to abandon this fight to help everyone else out at the Hall of Justice. Mickey makes fun of Red Tornado and Superboy, pointing out that even if they do go and help defeat the villain of Dark Crisis, they won’t be appreciated and won’t be called on until the next universe-breaking villain. He (rather accurately) prophesies that Young Justice will be forgotten again after Dark Crisis ends. Superboy then says, “Great. He’s growing.” And Wonder Girl says, “Finally ate his veggies.” But the artwork doesn’t show or suggest Mickey turning into a giant or anything like that.
Cassie says she’s willing to risk being forgotten again if it means being nothing like Mickey. She adds that he’ll never be anything like his heroes, so Mickey decides to go full-villain mode with the dark line, “So be it.” Cissie is turned into stone (except for her head, for whatever reason), the mouthless Robin has now become green (whatever that does), Superboy says he’s become invisible (even though he’s just transparent) and Red Tornado is now human. Mickey tells Cassie that she made him do this, to which she responds with a “Now, Impulse!”
Impulse suddenly appears, issuing a lame, “Not so fast, Mickey!” He says even a child knows that no one makes anyone do anything. Between Bart’s hands is a bit of taffy-like energy in the shape of an infinity sign, and I’d guess it’s rather difficult for him to hold it, but the art isn’t helping too much. Cassie says, “Get ’im, Bart” as he tries to push the infinity symbol on Mickey, dropping another lame line about giving the villain a time out. Mickey recognizes this piece of energy as a quantum entanglement trap, designed to keep him in a quantum echo chamber between atoms.
Unfortunately, Bart tells Cassie that he’s not strong enough to hold the trap together and they need more people. Mickey destroys the trap with a simple kick, saying he never bothered taking away Bart’s powers because, despite what his friends say, he’s nothing. Mickey vows to break them all one by one, prompting Wonder Girl to order Red Tornado and Impulse to protect the immobile Cissie and Robin, while she looks for Superboy. Robin is now fused to a stone, or something, and covered with vines. Impulse advises Red Tornado to stay out of the line of fire since he’s human now, but he still insists on shielding Cissie from Mickey.
Superboy realizes that nobody can see him or hear him (even though we never saw him attempt to communicate with his friends), and his powers are also gone, too. Conner can only watch helplessly as Cassie attacks Mickey with her … heat vision?! When did she get that power?! Oh, and Cissie suddenly isn’t a statue anymore and starts shooting arrows at Mickey. Anyway, Conner remembers how small and helpless Cassie seemed when he first met her, but she quickly proved she didn’t need his help. In fact, Conner realizes, Cassie didn’t need any of them, but she chose them all the same. And now he feels like they let her down. I have no idea how or why they let her down, but that’s what Bart and Conner are feeling right now.
Mickey knocks Wonder Girl out of the sky, but Superboy actually catches her. He apologizes to her and promises to never hurt her again. And even though Superboy thought nobody could hear him, Cassie does hear him, but she still can’t see him. Conner tells Cassie she deserved a better first love than him, as Mickey transforms into a giant snake, causing Bart to yell out, “I hate snakes!” Cassie quotes Game of Thrones by saying you don’t get to choose who you love and for better or worse, Conner played a part in making her the woman she is today.
Cissie is suddenly a statue again, and she cries out for help when the ground starts shaking. Red Tornado helps her again and Impulse saves the plant-like Robin once more, complaining that he can’t leave him alone for one minute. Mickey then finally turns himself into a giant, gloating that Young Justice can’t win. Cassie says he doesn’t really believe that. Even though everyone else takes them for granted, Cassie says Mickey knows more than anyone what they’re capable of, which is why he split them up. She says that he wouldn’t be able to defeat them if they were together and had their powers. Mickey says he’s not afraid of these barely primitive beings, so Bart challenges him to bring them all back to full power. Mickey actually agrees, saying he’ll prove just how weak they really are. With a snap of his fingers, everyone is back to normal.
Bart cries out, “Young Justice, grab the symbol!” Suddenly, everyone is “holding” the quantum entanglement trap, which is now much larger and centered directly on Mickey. The imp says he destroyed the trap, but Bart simply says energy can’t be created or destroyed, even by someone like Mickey. Bart explains that once he knew he needed the strength of others, he hid the trap in the Speed Force and waited until Mickey was cocky enough to give everyone back their powers. Bart reasoned that Mickey may be too smart to say his name backward, but he can’t escape physics. The trap is an atom split in two, responding to itself like an echo chamber, which Bart felt was most appropriate for Mickey. Suddenly, the imp is … I don’t know … sucked into the split atom? Well, whatever happened, he’s gone now.
Conner asks if they basically sent Mickey to the Phantom Zone, and Bart says this trap is even more finite and infinitesimal. He starts to reference an article he read about string theory and splitting a laser beam, but Conner cuts him off, saying all he cares is that Mickey is trapped. Red Tornado says they should now hurry off to join the fight at the Hall of Justice and Bart triumphantly says, “Young Justice prevails!” But Tim realizes he hasn’t apologized to Cassie yet. He says he’s sorry for hooking up with her after Conner died, explaining that he didn’t understand what he was feeling at the time. Cassie says some things get clearer with age and they aren’t the same kids they were back then. Of course, she admits they probably weren’t ever really kids, but she vows to make sure the next generation doesn’t go through what they did. And with that, they rush off to allegedly join the big final battle of Dark Crisis.
This story technically is concluded in Dark Crisis #7, but I won’t be covering it. Young Justice only shows up in the background after all the fighting has finished and Superboy literally asks what they missed. Their lack of involvement in that massive event was even worse than what Mickey predicted. Not like this miniseries actually cared about Dark Crisis. Or the Brian Michael Bendis run. Or the Peter David run. Or general cohesion and logical sense.
I think I’ll start there. This story — especially this issue — was a disjointed mess. I have never seen artwork this disconnected from the story. The most glaring example of this was the page where Cassie was still a stone statue at the top of the page, but then was totally fine at the bottom and firing off arrows like normal. And then two pages later, she was a statue again. Did Laura Braga just not know what Meghan Fitzmartin was doing or what? Because apart from being lazy, rushed and uninspiring, this art made the story more difficult to understand. And there was so much to be confused by.
The most confusing thing of this issue was how Bart, Conner and Tim were all tripping over each other to apologize to Cassie. And I have no idea why. They dropped some empty words about treating her like a third wheel, but that never really happened. Bart said he was worried about having a girl crash their boys club, even though one of the very first things Young Justice did was rescue a girl named Secret. Did Fitzmartin merely glance at that early cover of Young Justice where the boys were hiding behind a “No girls allowed” sign and extrapolate a whole history of abuse and neglect slung at Wonder Girl. Meghan, if you’d actually read the issues, you’d know that cover was a joke! Cassie was never mistreated by the boys! They helped her gain confidence, find her voice and even become leader of the team!
And was it so bad that Tim hooked up with Cassie after Conner died? Tim didn’t force himself on her. She willingly and knowingly agreed to go out with him. And, by the way, Meghan, this was another topic that was thoroughly dealt with in past issues. We didn’t need to rehash all that drama or present a Superboy that had mysteriously forgotten all that. It’s almost like Fitzmartin was desperate to make a scathing commentary on the past but couldn’t find any strong examples to work with. So she manufactured some. All for this moment where the three boys would sorrowfully come to Cassie on their knees and she would bravely say the trauma she endured under their neglect has only made her stronger. If you ask me, she should at least apologize for acting like a jerk to them in the first issue and wishing they were dead. But that’s just me.
I really wish we would have spent more time exploring Mickey’s point of view. He’s a lot like Superboy-Prime, but more focused on this specific problem of DC unceremoniously dumping off certain characters and replacing them with hot, new, shiny ones. I think it’s a perfectly valid complaint that deserved more room to discuss. Obviously, Mickey’s homophobic and misogynistic views are what prevents him from being a fully sympathetic character. But we could have had a real fun time talking about the power of nostalgia and the dangers of indulging too much in it. Instead, we engaged in repetitive arguments and apologies fueled by revisionist history.
Now let’s talk about Bart. I like how he was the most serious and most clever hero in this miniseries. And he even got to sort of act like the leader of the team. All that is great stuff. In fact, it feels long overdue. But did Fitzmartin accidentally make him too powerful? The new abilities he displayed in this miniseries rival the overpowered time-traveling scouts he had back in the day. Bart now has the ability to locate specific individuals based on their unique “vibrations” and send messages to them, even if they’re in another dimension. He can also casually freeze time for at least one other person with him, and he can create impossible-to-explain “quantum traps.” And yes, that didn’t make at all. And it made even less sense when Bart’s non-speedster friends were also able to hold that trap and add power to it. I guess Fitzmartin just REALLY wanted to banish that internet troll to an echo chamber, no matter what.
Well, I should probably stop ranting now. No sense in beating a dead horse. As much as I hated this miniseries, I actually hope DC will quickly build off this. Revive the Young Justice series. Make Impulse the leader. Answer some basic continuity questions. And keep this creative team far away from it. No offense, Fitzmartin and Braga. I’m sure you’re perfectly lovely people. But I don’t want you working on my favorite characters anymore.
And so that wraps up the turbulent year of 2022. Next time will be the Year in Review before heading into 2023 and Jeremy Adams’ One-Minute War.
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