#dc:yj 5

[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! 🙄

[ectonurites]

…ok the next DC:YJ issue (#5) isn’t out yet (aside from the preview and a leaked page) but I wanna briefly talk about this criticism/sentiment i’ve seen in at least three or four separate posts across here and twitter:

Several people confused/frustrated by Meghan seeming to characterize Young Justice fans (via Mickey) as conservative homophobic sexist racist etc dudebros- when the Young Justice fandom they are familiar with is largely made up of a completely different diverse group of people. Plus the 1998 book itself being unfairly misrepresented as less progressive than it actually was in order to justify this.

To which there’s two points I’d like to bring up:

1. Meghan Fitzmartin is the one writing this book. Meghan Fitzmartin who wrote the story in which Tim became canonically bisexual. Meghan Firzmartin who has been constantly berated and criticized and sent hate by the vocal toxic homophobic Tim fans that think she ruined the character! A lot of those people aren’t fans of just Tim- they’re fans of Tim’s generation (in many instances because stuff like Young Justice 1998 was current back when they were getting into comics). And plenty are opposed to any change, not just characters coming out as LGBT, but more diversity in comics in general- more lead characters of color, more lead women, etc. The tumblr- and like stan dctwt- sections of the DC fandom might be what you see the most as a user of those communities, but they are not the only part of the fandom, not the majority, and not even necessarily the most vocal.

2. @gwynerso said the other thing I wanna communicate well when discussing misrepresentation of Young Justice 1998:

I think the whole point was that it was progressive, given the whole point is that Mikey had to heavily twist the guys memories and remove Cassie to make his “point”. Whilst we can talk about writing quality and whether it hits its mark or not, it’s definitely a critique of (x)

the sort of fan who will ignore the progressive elements of what they like to paint it in the gross light they want it to have. If it wasn’t progressive, Bart, Tim and Kon wouldn’t have noticed the dissonance. Mikey’s powers are reality bending on both ends like his dad’s. (x)

Because, as stated earlier, those types of fans of YJ do definitely exist and they are in Meghan’s twitter notifications on a pretty regular basis (plus I wouldn’t be surprised by some irl encounters at conventions she’s attended since UL #6 dropped). Maybe they’re not the ones reading the book (and even if they are, they’re obviously not the only ones) but it’s still a toxic mindset that’s within the comics community and she is actively painting that mindset as being the villain here (which goes along with the general theme in both this book and Dark Crisis as an event that things can’t/shouldn’t just go back to ‘how they were’ because things have changed, modern comics can’t just be ruled by nostalgia)

I think there is definitely fair discussion to be had about whether this was the book/story that was needed for these characters right now (I personally at this point don’t really think it was, in large part because a lot of problems/unfair treatment the YJ generation has faced were more editorial’s fault than the fanbase’s, and that’s something hard to actually approach through an in-universe story), I think there are certainly elements/execution/characterization worth criticizing (I’m just… waiting to formulate my final thoughts on any of that until we have the whole story, because the context of the ending could absolutely change/explain things), but it feels like so many people are just looking for reasons to be angry without taking a step back to think about the larger picture/larger comics community. Without trying to think about what is actually being communicated here and instead just getting defensive.

[ectonurites]

Since Dark Crisis was a massive critical and financial failure when do you think we can realistically expect a new YJ book (or Teen Titans book staring them)

Okay, I will explain my reasoning under the cut, but my guesstimate would be around 2 years post-Dark Crisis: Young Justice before getting something new featuring them—whether it be Teen Titans or Young Justice though, I could not say.

Now, rather than just pulling a number out of my ass, my immediate response to getting this question was to look at publishing patterns/trends when it came to Young Justice and Teen Titans books.

I was using cover date information from the DC wiki for this, so not the most foolproof/precise data set in the world, but enough to give me a general idea.

The first thing I wanted to look at was, more broadly, what sorts of gaps there were with NO Teen Titans or Young Justice book since those teams came to be.

This is because presently, while we do have a Titans book, we do not have a Teen Titans book. As much as those are obviously related, they do serve/feature characters of different demographics, so I was looking specifically at the things categorized as 'Teen'.

The only exception to this is The New Teen Titans Vol. 2 because the book remains with the same team but switches names to 'The New Titans' partway through—it wasn't a relaunch of the book with an older team though, just a rebrand/name change as the characters had aged. It is still widely considered the same run, so I felt separating it (when we're talking about DC's publishing standpoint) didn't make sense.

ANYWAYS, their run years are as follows:

Teen Titans Vol. 1: 1966-73, 1976-78

The New Teen Titans Vol. 1: 1980-84

The New Teen Titans Vol. 2: 1984-96

Teen Titans Vol. 2: 1996-1998

Teen Titans Vol. 3: 2003-2011

Teen Titans Vol. 4: 2011-2014

Teen Titans Vol. 5: 2014-2016

Teen Titans Vol. 6: 2016-2021

Teen Titans Academy: 2021-2022

As is perhaps evident, the only gaps are between 1974-1975 (hiatus during Teen Titans Vol.1), 1979 (between Teen Titans Vol. 1 & New Teen Titans Vol. 1), and 1999-2002 (between Teen Titans Vol. 1 and Teen Titans Vol. 2).

The largest of those being four years (1999-2002)... but those years are covered by Young Justice's initial run!

The Young Justice runs (in main continuity, not counting tie-ins for the cartoon) are as follows:

Young Justice Vol. 1: 1998-2003

Young Justice Vol. 3: 2019-2021*

Dark Crisis: Young Justice: 2022-2023*

*To reiterate for clarity because I imagine some of you are going 'huh? DC:YJ was 6 issues all in 2022!' I'm using cover dates for consistency with this data—since the final issues of YJ Vol. 3 & DC:YJ each came out late in 2020 and 2022 respectively, their cover dates place them at the start of the next calendar year

So, putting all of that together, that means that ever since DC Comics began publishing Teen Titans books in 1966, the longest period with neither a Teen Titans nor Young Justice book being published was 2 years, between 1974-1975.

However, that doesn't tell the full story to answer your question about when we could expect to see the Young Justice kids again, it's just a helpful gauge about books in their 'teen' character age demographic.

To clairfy: by 'Young Justice' I am (for the sake of answering this question) specifically referring to Tim, Cassie, Bart and Kon since they are the group that moved together between Young Justice and the Teen Titans.

Now, things get a bit tricky trying to quantify 'were they together on a team' at certain points because characters die sometimes for a while (looking at you Kon and Bart), or temporarily leave teams for other assorted reasons—yet even during those periods, they may be plot-relevant to the book/still be associated with it (mostly looking at Kon for that one). Since those are more plot-specific variations but still take the characters into account (rather than just randomly omitting them), I am counting all of the runs in which T/C/B/K were members of the team even if one or more were not there the entire time.

Now, the runs that feature Tim, Cassie, Bart, and Kon are as follows:

Young Justice Vol. 1: 1998-2003

Teen Titans Vol. 3: 2003-2011

Teen Titans Vol. 4: 2011-2014*

Teen Titans Vol. 5: 2014-2016*

Young Justice Vol. 3: 2019-2021

Dark Crisis: Young Justice: 2022-2023

*Obviously, these books take place during the New 52 era, and these are drastically altered versions of the characters—particularly for Kon and Bart because N52 Kon and Bar Torr are entirely separate people. However, when the subject we are discussing is DC's publishing patterns with these characters as IP, these would count as they were the N52/at-the-time equivalents of the characters.

As we can see, the only gap in publishing there is from 2017-2018 (between Teen Titans Vol. 5 and Young Justice Vol. 3). Which, much like the only gap of 'no Teen Titans/YJ book', is 2 years.

Thus, based on these previous patterns of DC's publishing, my guess would be around 2 years post-Dark Crisis: Young Justice before something new with them.

Now, this obviously is not foolproof logic, and DC could easily deviate from this! Comics publishing truly is not the most consistent thing in the world—especially with how nowadays ongoing runs really struggle to last for nearly as long as they used to. I can't predict the future, and I also do not work at DC. Looking at past data is really the only thing someone on the outside can do to try to figure out what may come in the future, so... yeah! That's my guess, and only time will tell.