Art team: Laura Braga, Luis Guerrero, and Pat Brosseau
Release Date: 11/15/22
Price: $3.99
Reviewed by: Jon Wayne
If you're reading this review, you know I've done my best to be fair and impartial throughout this series. Still, now that we have finally reached the end of this dumpster fire, my gloves are coming off: Meghan Fitzmartin is a hack who can't write herself out of a paper bag and shouldn't be allowed near DC comics characters ever again.
Many fans complain when a prominent writer takes over an iconic character and gives them a new direction, such as a Brian Michael Bendis or a Scott Snyder. But at least those guys are/were big names who had earned the privilege of writing those characters. Fitzmartin had written very little in comics before being gifted this team and given apparent carte blanche to f*ck up the characters.
We open with some nonsense and get more nonsense throughout the issue. The plot literally doesn't make sense. Our villain Mickey Mxyptlk (I'm going with McMxy) hasn't been developed beyond being a misogynistic a$$hole that Fitzmartin uses as a figurehead for the political zeitgeist of the 90s that she's decided is the real villain of Young Justice. Yet a showdown of words between him and Cassie, and later Bart, serves as the big set piece for the final issue of this series. Scintillating stuff, indeed!
In between that nonsense, you get even more nonsense where the boys take turns apologizing to Cassie for random stuff that was resolved 15 years ago! Bart apologizes for no reason - which is not great but par for the course of this series. Then Tim's apology for making out with her after Conner died heavily implies he did so because he was secretly in love with Conner - that is literally fanfiction straight from Tumblr! Finally, Conner apologizes for apparently being a $hitty boyfriend to Cassie - and while Conner and Cassie's relationship may not be on the same level as Conner and M'gann on the animated series, it was considered iconic enough to be featured in the climax of Infinite Crisis and a key plot driver in its aftermath. All of these were meaningless apologies because there was no reason for them! All of this is contrived nonsense!
Eventually, the team works together to lock Mxy up in a string from string theory, which will work to keep a 5th-dimensional imp locked up just because! If any of y'all doubted that Fitzmartin ever read a comic with Mr. Mxyptlk in it like I did, here is our evidence. For some characters in the DCU, there are key elements that you just can't mess up. With Mxy it is that he, as a 5th-dimensional imp, is not bound by the laws of our 3rd-dimensional world. It's a small but vital detail, the overlooking of which may fall more on editorial, but it is also further proof that Fitzmartin was writing this book over her head.
It's clear she has barely read the cliff notes on DC comics; why is she getting such high-profile work? She seems to be carving out her own little "Fitzmartin-verse." In the Fitzmartin-verse, the actual history of the characters she's been writing has been rendered irrelevant because it didn't fit the nonsense narrative she's been trying to push in this book.
Bits and Pieces:
Reading and reviewing this book was like watching a slow-motion trainwreck over six months. The best thing in this issue was the preview for Blue Beetle: Graduation Day in the end.
1/10
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