One problem for DC and Marvel is, since they never retire characters but just keep adding more, you end up with things jammed up. You get a new generation of teen heroes who would, in theory, go perfectly on the Teen Titans. Except, oops, the previous generation of teen heroes are still on the Teen Titans, because the Justice Leaguers haven't retired and stepped aside.
Maybe that's not why Young Justice came into being, that there were a bunch of '90s teen heroes with no group of their own, but it sort of feels that way. So Robin (Tim Drake), Superboy and Impulse started hanging out together. By issue 4 the Cassandra Sandsmark Wonder Girl and Arrowette (who was an Impulse supporting cast member, I think) joined in. Peter David added Secret, a brand-new character who escaped being treated as a lab rat by the government, to the mix, and that was the core group for the first couple of years.
Part of the problem team books have is, there's only so much they can do with the characters who have their own titles, and sometimes they have to adapt to the curveballs those books throw. Superboy lost his powers for a while, and David and Nauck adapted to that. Superboy has an evil clone? OK, let's use that at a time when the team is already struggling. Robin and Spoiler's relationship is rocky due to trust issues? Use that for Secret's progression. The whole "Tower of Babel" JLA story got factored in because if Batman's been planning to take down the JLA, is Robin doing the same to his teammates?
The title ran for 55 issues, and in some ways, I think you can follow it in terms of Secret's arc. Secret's so happy at first just to have friends, a place to stay. She tries to do anything for them, to always be there for them. If Red Tornado's wife is in a coma, Secret will do all she can to wake her up. But some of those friends leave or get pulled away by their lives outside the team, while Secret has no life outside Young Justice. That desire to do anything turns into attacking Spoiler when she tries to trail Robin and learn his secret identity. Which is a problem (Secret's crush/fixation) Robin really has no clue how to address. The more they learn, the more they lose, the more things hurt, the more frustrated Secret gets. The more inclined to do what she wishes and take what she wishes.
I'm making the book sound heavier than it is, though there are definitely downer issues, or those trying to deal with things like gun violence, racially-motivated crimes, child murder, parental custody issues. Admittedly that last was about whether an android could have custody rights for his adopted daughter.
But there's also a lot of lighter issues. The guys meeting a Mxy from earlier in his life and turning him into the prankster he's known as, or Impulse trying to use hypnosis on Little Lobo before his date with Empress. Because it's Peter David, there's also a lot of bad puns and recurring gags. There are two government agents whose last names are Maad and Fite, so they're referred to as "Fite n' Maad". Or anytime Robin points out the obvious someone will remark you can tell he was trained by the world's greatest detective. I didn't know Tim spent time with Detective Chimp. That stuff can get old, but some of it at least has the feel of in-jokes between the characters. The sort of things close friends would bust each other about.
Nauck's art is exaggerated enough to carry the jokes it needs to. The pictures Impulse sometimes has in his thought balloons, or making a sheik look like Ben Stein, because David named the characters Ali Ben Styn. His teenagers are more muscular than probably a lot of teens, but other than Superboy (who is kind of a special case, being a half-clone of Superman), not excessively so. Impulse isn't as gawky and oddly-proportions as Humberto Ramos drew him in his own title, but it's in the same ballpark. Robin is somewhere between Pete Woods' stringbean Robin and Tom Grummett's more cut version. You can tell they're still growing at this point.
5 comments:
I really enjoyed Young Justice on the whole - like you say, it was this weird thing that was neither JLA nor Teen Titans but which seemed to give the characters enough freedom to have some fun. And my overall memory (despite the serious issues they covered that you mention) is that it was mostly good fun, even despite David's punning - I think the first issue had a mousy female archaeologist called N Dowd who was transformed into an over the top busty villain called Mighty Endowed, and that was a clear signal of what was to come.
Still, I enjoyed it. :)
Yeah, Mighty Endowed. She might have popped up one more time, in a special or an annual or something. I like that David started off being silly before starting getting into the heavier stuff. The "parent/teacher" conference issue, where Nightwing shows up as Robin's parent, claiming Batman was busy. Right, "Busy". Definitely didn't forget.
I think the only issue of this I've read* is that odd crossover with SpyBoy, because for some reason I was reading SpyBoy at the time. I remember nothing about it.
*I've read a few DC crossovers, and the way those work everything gets sucked in, so I've probably read a Young Justice tie-in to Emperor Joker or something, but I can't be sure.
From what I can tell just looking at the covers, I think the only DC event Young Justice officially tied into was "World at War", or something like that. There was a mini-event it might have headlined, where all the adult heroes got turned into kids, and it did a 3 our 4-part crossover with PAD's Supergirl, but that seems to be about it.
Yeah, the Sins of Youth fifth week event which YJ lead into and bookended, where Klarion was reintroduced with a much more whimsical side (I mean, sure, he was still evil, but there was a cheekiness to it.) The only other crossover was the Joker: Last Laugh event.
Spyboy/YJ was a stand alone three issue miniseries which I only picked up because I was reading YJ. :)
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