Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #3 Review

 


Writer: Meghan Fitzmartin
Art: Laura Braga, Luis Guerrero, and Pat Brosseau
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 16, 2022
Reviewed by: Jon Wayne

I will not sugarcoat it no longer: this book is garbage. There is no clear plot halfway through this series that is the main tie-in book to a Crisis level event. The characterization of the heroes we’re all reading this for assumes nothing has happened to them since they were originally on Young Justice in the 90s.

Meghan Fitzmartin’s degradation of our heroes gets off to a smashing start when she tells us that Conner Kent has never come to terms with Lex Luthor being part of him… This is a plot beat that’s been covered several times before, most notably, once again, in Geoff Johns Adventure Comics run following Conner’s rebirth in Final Crisis. Either Fitzmartin is getting lost in the high-minded meta-commentary - that Conner has come to terms with his connection to Lex, but DC keeps dragging him back to his Young Justice days, as evidenced by reverting his costume - or she just does not know him well enough to know this is well-worn ground for Conner.




Beyond that, why is Impulse the one to solve the mystery and not Tim Drake, the detective? Tim has spent years training with the World’s Greatest Detective. It makes no sense to me that Bart is the one to be putting all the pieces together of this mysterious world. And it is not like there has been any lead-up in the previous two issues that would suggest Bart was ahead of his comrades in figuring this out, so him being the genius here feels like it's out of left field.

We also completely dropped the real Cassie Sandsmark plotline from this issue, and that’s jarring given how when we last saw her, she had teamed up with Cissie and Red Tornado. Instead, we focused more on fake Cassie, who seems to be serving as a siren-like temptress for our big bad to keep our heroes in this world. One thing I’ll note that I’m already cringing about is Fitzmartin hinting at plans to rehash the Cassie-Conner-Tim love triangle of the early 2000s. Once again, it was all resolved in that Adventure Comics run by Geoff Johns I keep mentioning. It was handled very well in that series, and I have zero interest in seeing someone as clueless as Fitzmartin trying to one-up Geoff.




The story ends with the cliffhanger of revealing the big bad for this series (which has already been spoiled by solicits/the internet) that just feels blah. I have no hope nor any level of excitement about this series anymore, and that makes me really sad. Art is fine, but not nearly enough to make up for how bad this story is.

Bits and Pieces:

I came out of comic reviewing retirement for this book; that’s how much I love the team of Young Justice. Halfway through, I’m not entirely convinced I’ll review all 6 issues; that’s how bad the story and characterization have been. If you’re a fan of Young Justice, don’t bother reading this book.

4/10

4 comments:

  1. Honestly when it comes to character regression this is just the tip of the iceberg. This isn't the only book cherrypicking what parts of DCU history it wants to acknowledge. Like this issue they referenced Deathstroke shooting Bart but they seem to have completely forgotten his time as Kid Flash. Even in the flashback to Infinite Crisis when he fought Superboy Prime he was in his Impulse costume. And don't get me started on Nightwing. Blockbuster's death is completely forgotten as is the destruction of Dick Grayson's building or of Bludhaven for that matter. Even the Rebirth stories aren't even referenced. It's like they just turned the clock back to the Chuck Dixon era. If that's not character regression I don't know what is. My point being that this series isn't the only one guilty of this.

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    1. Ha ha, yeah, it's a bit frustrating. One of the most recent ones I've seen is in the new Azrael book, where they're giving his back story and jump right from Knightfall to what Jean Paul was dealing with last year in the DC Universe.

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  2. "Comic reviewing retirement" That would be a shame, wouldn't it? I still have no idea what you thought of the first two issues of Zdarsky's Batman.

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    1. this wasn't my review, it was Jon Wayne's review - I have just been bogged down by Podcast recording and editing. Though I did like the Zdarsky Batman issues, I really liked the catwoman backups. I am not sold on Failsafe, though.

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