#dark crisis: young Justice spoilers

[saturook]

We know already. The love of your life, the sunlight of your days, the starscape of your nights, the soul of your pathos, the heart of your wonders, the song of your smile, the tempo of your pulse. Sheeeeesh! 🙄

[pinkcreatorshark]

DARK CRISIS: YOUNG JUSTICE #6 (FINALE) SPOILERS

So, I skipped a bunch of issues because I got lazy, but here's my thoughts for DCYJ the finale, and my overall thought of the run at the end.

First of all. Look at them all ready for battle and this mf out here posing and looking directly at the camera.

So Im not sure why the comic turned into the "Cassie is the greatest hero ever" power hour but I mean sure, I guess. Literally everyone the past like three issues is just "Cassie you're so great and amazing and smart and pretty" it started to feel like a Cassie book and not a YJ book.

Imagine getting told by both guys you dated in a span of a few minutes that they were never really in love with you

Never getting over Tim admitting he had romantic feelings for Kon, and then Kon saying he didn't have it in him to live anyone. Unrequited timkon is real. (I'm saying this as a timkon, timber, AND timberkon shipper)

I'm sorry but Human!Red Tornado looks like Ric Grayson in a dramatic cape

So Conner being invisible is honestly the saddest shit. Being unseen is his biggest fear, and that was who's whole thing in this run, as well as where the new Superboy comic is going. His fear of being unseen, unheard, and unneeded. He needs to feel needed or he doesn't know what to do with himself. He feels like he HAS to be the one to save the day or what's the point of him being there? That shit broke me.

Overall Thoughts:

So, the comic run overall was. Not very good from a character perspective, but was fine? I guess?

It felt like the writers understood some characters and completely butchered others. It went from being a Cassie hateclub to Cassie is the best hero ever in just a few issues and that. Felt weird. It did have some funny moments, like homophobic Batman, and literally everyone including Bart realizing how gross his writing was towards women back in the day.

It also addressed some stuff, albeit a bit heavy handed, that I think doesn't get talked about a lot like how Tim and Kon tend to third wheel Bart a lot and how Bart is just treated as some dumb kid when he's probably one of the smartest on the team. It also remembered kons TTK which I call a win. But it also completely misunderstood some things, like Cissie saying why she left the team.

For a moment it showed what YJ used to be but it quickly became a parody of itself. And I think that was intentional because of who the villain was, but also it was too much so and it felt forced which hurt it in the end.

There also was a lot of hating on the new generation characters that have been giving a lot of poc and LGBT rep, which. Was not the way they should've gone about it. I don't think that's what they were intending, they were trying to make the villain make a different point, but it was toeing a very controversial line.

Overall, I feel like the run had a lot of potential, but leaned too heavily into the parody of nostalgia. It focused too much on what WAS and not enough on what IS. I think they were trying to make a YJ comic that re-solidified the bond between the characters, which I guess it accomplished, but it didn't in such a way that it made it seem like their relationship was flimsy at best to begin with and that their trauma was just something they could apologize for and everything be okay again.

I'm giving Dark Crisis: Young Justice a 5/10

[whisplion]

Anyways it seems I need to contribute writing to timkon for whatever the dumpster fire that is happening in the comics. I saw someone said that Conner was basically said to be very hetero in the new comic. I don’t buy it.

[sohotthateveryonedied]

the VALIDATION in this chili’s

[unknownunseenunheard]

Okay I’ll give Meghan one thing: unlike the fandom, she clocked that timkon was one sided on Tim’s side the entire time (like we’ve been shown repeatedly if you aren’t going off fanon material) so thank you for that

[the-overanalyzer]

okay i need context for timkon what just happened

In the last issue of the Dark Crisis YJ mini, Tim and Cassie have a very brief talk about that time they dated while Kon was dead.

In sequence with Sum of Our Parts, Fitzmartin's earlier story about Tim working through his confusion to figure out that he likes guys, the message is pretty clear: Tim was in love with Kon, was in denial about it, and sublimated those feelings into a relationship with Cassie as a coping mechanism.

I'd have preferred it if the book had just come out and said it, but I'll take what I can get. Tim's in a relationship right now anyway, and I can see why Fitzmartin wouldn't want to get more concrete with the ship she isn't actually writing.

[dick-the3rd]

Tim buddy I think it's past the time you share some news

[roseworth]

okay? how about you make out about it

[fantastic-nonsense]

the sheer comedy of knowing that literally everyone is going to ignore Earth-16 being called one of the Multiversity Earths and will continue to refer to it as "The Young Justice cartoon universe"

[chamiryokuroi]

whats going on with tim??? i’m so confused?????

There was a leak of tomorrow’s DC:YJ where it is implied Tim had a crush on Kon back in the day, which would make timkon canon at the least one sided

[SPOILER UNDER THE CUT]

[yuriinadress]

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6 PREVIEW

[radioactive-earthshine]

Young Justice Dark Crisis #5 Preview

I'm just trying to not go into full offensive mode here but I'm really tired of this...

Wally was NOT Bart’s mentor and he didn’t raise him.

Similarly neither did Clark to Kon.

Either this is yet another gargantuan error on the artist's part or Meghan... Oh Meghan is severely lacking her basic knowledge of these characters just as so many feared.

I hope things will suddenly make sense in the last issues but it doesn't look like we'll get it...

[celestial-ringleader]

Dark Crisis: Young Justice Thoughts

Y’know what I’m not waiting until after work, I’m getting mad over DC:YJ and some fans online are also just making me annoyed so I’m gonna break down all my thoughts on the comic. This will probably get rant-y so if you dont like that feel free to ignore. Or don’t. I’m not your dad.

So to start off, I decided to look into what the writer’s other DC projects, how much experience she had in writing, and what she’s prominently known for. As of right now, her most prominent works have been DC:YJ, Tim Drake: Robin, and the DC Pride special for Tim. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t been writing for DC for a while, her earliest work being in 2021 with Batman: Urban Legends. But what she is most known for seems to be writing for Supernatural, the last three seasons specifically. Which all this combined is not promising. Megfitz hasn’t been doing DC comics for that long and from what I can tell based on the writing, most of her info comes from fanon interpretation or summaries about Young Justice. If there is evidence she read the comics for the sake of DC:YJ, feel free to add on.

Now that that’s out of the way, holy shit this comic was so painful to read. In the beginning I thought it had potential to be good, I assumed it was going to be some kind of story about the characters avoiding their grief and living in the past instead of thinking about the future, but the moment the third or so issue came out I knew that this just wasn’t gonna be that. And dear god did it spiral out of control. To make this easier, I’ll just break this down into chunks so I can organize my thoughts. (DISCLAIMER: I will not be going into the art style of the comic because to me that doesn’t say anything about the quality of writing, look at the current Nightwing run for example: it looks great but its writing is holy wattpad batman. I’ve also read a good chunk of comics YJ ‘98, a good amount of comics about Kon-El and Tim Drake from the 90s into the 2000s, so I like to think I know what I’m talking about. If anyone comes into my comments or inbox being nasty, I’m gonna ignore you. I don’t have time for that shit.)

The Plot

To say this plot was really convoluted and non-existent wouldn’t be enough to describe how messy it all felt. The plot was pretty alright in the first and second issue but it very quickly started to make less sense and the characters started acting very strange just to get the plot along. In fact, I’d say the plot was moving forward and the characters were dragged along for the ride rather than it being the characters moving the plot forward. This was a simple premise and it became needlessly complicated, shit would just happen, the characters would react, and then another thing would happen; rinse and repeat. It felt incredibly rushed overall, and I’m aware it was only six issues but I’ve read miniseries that have done more in six issues than what happened in DC:YJ. After I finished reading it, it just felt like nothing happened at all and that’s weak storytelling if it left no impact on the audience or just made the audience mad.

Like what was the rising action, the climax, the falling action? Why was it full of the characters meandering around and not having agency in their own story?? How can you have a story last for six issues and still leave barely a dent in the grand scheme of things?? As I read this, I kept wondering if this was an early draft that wasn’t edited with how much of a skeleton the plot was.

The Dialogue 

This won’t be a big segment, but the dialogue felt unnatural to read. At best it was clunky, at worst it was uncanny. I’m sorry but people don’t talk like robots or say quippy shit all the time. The scene I have in mind is the one where Tim is telling Kon about how he and Cassie were torn apart when they thought he was dead, but it was written in such a jarring way that it just felt like someone pressed a button on a piece of cardboard and it started talking. This emotional scene felt so lifeless and that monologue had no impact. At other times it felt like the characters weren’t actually saying these lines and were only speaking because that’s what the plot dictates.

This brings me to a sub-section; the drama. My god the drama was so ham-stringed and confusing. A lot of the drama presented was drama that had already been settled or was shit that straight up didn’t fucking happen. Kon was already aware of Tim and Cassie getting together after he died and he understood why they did, Kon already knew that Tim was in a rough state after he died so the “reveal” left me thinking “...no fucking shit?? you guys had a whole heart to heart about this???”. The only explanation I have is that Megfitz couldn’t come up with anything new so instead fell back on old drama and hoped the fans would be like “haha I remember that!” but literally every YJ fan I’ve talked to just rolled their eyes. Congrats you remember basic shit, now can you prove you know how to write dialogue with their personalities still in tact. Jfc.

The Characters

GOD. GOD FUCKING. U G H H HH H HH H HH HH H 

This is the part where my theory that Megfitz did research through twitter a la Tom Taylor and this is also the part where I get angry because WHAT WAS THAT BULLSHIT CHARACTERIZATION I READ WITH MY OWN TWO EYES?? Not only did the characters feel lifeless, they also were just so so far from themselves that they felt like clones. Like I kid you not, I thought Cissie was a clone or an illusion early on and was very quickly disappointed when I realized that this was just shitty writing.

I went into this comic reading for Kon, from my pfp you can probably guess he’s one of my favorite comic characters period, and dear lord that writing for him was atrocious. Not only did you have him disregarding his friends, but there were a lot of instances where he brought up old drama (as I stated before) and was largely uncaring about how others felt. Which is so wrong on so many levels. Like how can he just yell at Bart and make him cry?? Kon-El?? Being a dick to his friends???? What the fuck was Megfitz even referencing for him?? Like yes he was a little shit of a teen and would make a habit of flirting with people, but at the end of the day he cared about his friends and never looked down on any of them. Especially Bart, Tim, and Cassie. He never saw Cassie as “small, meek, and helpless uwu” he was attracted to her almost instantly yes, but throughout YJ ‘98 and TT ‘03 it’s pretty obvious he respects her as a person and knows she’s strong and capable. In fact, it was Cassie who even broke off their relationship and he never held that against her and was happy to let their relationship go.

Which brings us to Cassie and Cissie....dear fucking god. For a comic that claims it’s speaking out against sexist writing from the 90s, the portrayals of their female characters sure felt really fucking sexist. Cassie only existed to have a very lazy “girl power” moment, Cissie was nothing more than a cardboard cut out who acted so OOC it took me out of the story, and literally no other afab YJ members were mentioned. Did Greta just stop existing in their minds? Anita became their friend, why was she listed under villains? The part that made my head turn the most with Cissie was when she claimed that she left bc she felt like it was all about “the boys” and was telling Cassie she should just stop looking for them essentially bc they were “holding her back” and I’m here thinking that Megfitz straight up didn’t read YJ if she forgot that Cissie leaving was because she wanted to live a normal life, not because of any resentment towards her friends. In fact she went and visited them frequently after leaving and every time they were all so happy to see her back. Ofc they wanted her back on the team, but they respected her decision and encouraged her to live the life she wants. To move on to Cassie, this portrayal made Geoff Johns’ writing for her seem amazing in comparison. She was the leader of YJ, she was respected by her friends, and they never left her out or made her a “third wheel” in their friendship. Yes, she wasn’t there from the get-go but once she, Cissie, and Greta were added it all became a mutual friendship between the six of them. Tim, Kon, and Bart didn’t look down on her just because she was a girl. That was how the fans treated her, which is the biggest reason why these characters are unrecognizable:

The fans are the ones who prioritized Tim and Kon and left out Bart and Cassie, not the comic. The fans are the ones who made Bart out to seem dumb, the fans are the ones who would make Cassie exist only as a love interest. These interpretations seeped into the comic and made it seem like it was this toxic friendship when it LITERALLY WASN’T. NONE OF THAT HAPPENED IN CANON. 

And this might be a hottake for some people, but I just don’t like how she’s writing Tim. Just looking at anything with him in it feels like it’s fanon Tim and not the same Tim who’s existed for well over thirty years. He just has no personality outside of “the smart Robin who is bi” which is basically how fandom sees him. And I’m a huge fan of Tim, he’s my favorite Robin out of all of them and I’ve been reading a bunch of comics with him and it’s just so annoying that people are just gonna assume DC:YJ Tim is all he is; bc in that case I don’t blame fans for thinking he’s boring after this. But that’s a whole other rant for a later date.

The Message

What even was it. Like literally what was the message or purpose behind this comic? Originally it seemed like the boys were avoiding their grief and then it became this whole thing about “ew 90s BAD and if you liked 90s comics you’re BAD” completely ignoring that a lot of iconic characters today were from the 90s. This felt like it was a slap in the face as someone who loves YJ ‘98 and all the characters, yes I know YJ was never perfect but I still overall loved it and I loved seeing them just being teenagers figuring out their place in the world. With any story, it needs to have a purpose and a message for the audience to take and think about; with this, I felt brain dead because of how plainly it was laid out for me. The audience couldn’t take anything else aside from the overwhelming message printed so plainly. Mickey was doing all of this because...he doesn’t like the current heroes and wants to see more of “his heroes”....way to jab at YJ fans who just want them to be back together dude. Way to make YJ fans seem irrational and hateful towards current heroes. This wasn’t a commentary on grief and filling the role of a predecessor who passed away, this was just telling people that 90s comics were bad and you shouldn’t have nostalgia or want to see more because then that means you hate the current characters. If this is a problem, then just WRITE THOSE STORIES. Don’t make some big meta commentary that spits in all our faces, just write these characters. 

Final Thoughts

This comic run was a mess. it had so much promise and potential to be good and it fell so fucking flat. I haven’t read a comic that disappointed me this much since Trial of Magneto, and for people who have followed me for a minute knows how I feel about that. Somehow DC:YJ makes Tom Taylor’s Nightwing run look eons better and that is saying A LOT. Overall this comic was a six issue waste of my time and I wish I did more with my money and my brain cells, but at the end of the day comics are just gonna be like that. Either they’re good or they’re a swing and a miss. Needless to say, this has turned me off from any further works Megfitz does and I will put YJ on the highest shelf until writers learn to actually write and understand these characters. After what happened with YJ 2019, I’m having less and less faith in that but idc.

Usually I don’t give number ratings for comics, but for this one I’m making an exception. I rate Dark Crisis: Young Justice a 3/10. Get better Megfitz.

[lafoget]

listen DCYJ was horribly written with tons of factual errors and VERY BAD META (i refuse to take seriously the author who written-out Anita from the main characters and put under the label "villain" and stripped Cissie of her personal story and fully completed arc just to show how David's run was focused only on boys), but at least we got a one sided timkon and maybe an old Cassie's origin, so... a small victory i guess...

[the-overanalyzer]

So...the leak was real. I wish it was a little more explicitly said, but as someone who's been fixating for 15 years on the idea that Tim and Cassie were using each other as a substitute outlet for their unresolved romantic feelings for Kon, I'm honestly giddy at even this much acknowledgement.

[timothy-kaplans]

Meghan Fitzmartin: Yeah we’ll be exploring Tim and Conner’s relationship* *only retreading old arguments from far better books and a tacked on vague reference in the second last page, while gassing up a underdeveloped and boring love interest.