#Dark Crisis Young Justice

[batcavescolony]

I feel like comic writers and some fans have forgotten that Young Justice is mostly about the girls. The main storylines were about Secret/Greta, Cissie, and Anita. The boys were there but they had their own runs. Take Young Justice Dark Crisis, yeah it's all about the boys IF you only read the first 5 ish comics. After that it's either big comic events or about the girls. Really the girls are the main characters of Young Justice, the boys are there to draw people in.

[livsoulsecrets]

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #2

It’s lowkey funny that Bruce being homophobic was another proof for Tim that they were trapped in the wrong world

[pinkbelugacollective]

only good thing about dark crisis is that bart looked like a total babe:

while kon lost his scruff and his dignity to become one of those wistful gay twinks that start crying after their first tequila shot:

[ectonurites]

the artist formerly known as Arrowette and her Wonder Girl-friend

[ehliena]

When your 5th dimension imp isn't imp shaped but speaks the truth.

Bart was replaced. I like Ace, but DC making Wally West black and then retconning it to make is seem like Ace was meant to be a new character altogether?

Tim was replaced, but he's still there. New alias and all. Hell even Jason called him the boring one in Task Force Z.

Conner (poor sweet boy) was replaced and forgotten.

[dailytims]

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #3

[two-sibyls-tall]

Cassie was a little unhinged in this story methinks. Honorable mention for Cissie on the last one there.

[jewishcissiekj]

Alright, so Cissie is back.

(Green Arrow (2023) #1 cover art by Sean Izaakse)

I feel like I’m calm enough after the unbelievable burst of excitement and happiness this cover gave me when I first saw it, so let’s talk about this.

First off, I have to say that until I saw this cover last week, I didn’t think Cissie should be Arrowette again, and this cover gave me different ideas and hope for Cissie’s future, so my judgment might seem clouded. 

So first, to any Meghan Fizmartins and co out there listening who have no idea why Cissie quit being Arrowette, here’s a “brief” summary:

After her Counselor and mother figure, Dr. Marcey Money, gets killed by her ex-boyfriend, Cissie (rightfully) throws a fit and blames the lack of gun control in the U.S. as the reason for the murder. After that, she puts on a darker version of her Arowette costume (the same one Sean Izaaksa used for the GA cover), and goes to hunt down Marcey’s killer and his friend that was with him. During the chase, Cissie questions herself how much of a “Good Guy” is she, chasing down these men like that. At the end of the fight, she fires a killing shot from her bow, intending to kill Dr. Money’s murderer, when Superboy comes out of nowhere and catches the arrow. Then, she runs away and cries, confused and distraught. In the next issue she’s in a catatonic state following her actions, and after she gets out of it she breaks her bow and declares it’s not hers anymore. In the next issue she quits Young Justice. She makes it clear she never wants to be Arrowette again in the rest of the series, saying she can’t lose control again and talking about how her mom forced her into the hero life. 

For a much more extended and detailed version I recommend reading Young Justice #15-17, it’s a great story and a great read.

Now, she has donned the Arrowette suit a couple of times after quitting, most, if not all, were pretty weird and out of character. 

Starting off, we have that creepy thing in Spyboy/Young Justice, which I’m not 100% sure is canon at all, but it’s still worth talking about for a bit. In this miniseries, Cissie doesn’t actively choose to be Arrowette again any way, with Kon & Bart stealing her clothes while she’s in the bath and replacing them with the Arrowette costume, basically forcing her to put it on. They did give her a choice as to which costume to wear, the darker version from before or the usual one, and she chose the usual one, but I don’t feel like we should really give them credit for that. After that, she walks around in the costume, but doesn’t shoot a single arrow (she almost does, but she gives up on it) or fight, and is really just Cissie in a costume and less Arrowette. She also talks about how her friends are uncomfortable with the ‘Cissie’ part of her and they don’t know how to react to her with one of the spyboy characters. Overall I don’t hate it, except for the way they actually got her in costume.

Next we have the most confusing one yet. In Wonder Girl (2007) Cissie tells Cassie she could always go back to Arrowette for her (and later on in the miniseries she actually does), Completely disregarding her quitting storyline. That might (probably) be the writer’s mistake, but I’d like to think Cissie was at a point in her life here where she made peace with the whole “Arrowette” thing and with her mother and is just willing tp help an old friend with her slightly unusual skillset. She also previously hadn’t completely associated her archery with Arrowette (she competed in the Australia Summer Games an won a gold medal during ‘98 YJ), so maybe she’s just come to peace with that part of it all now. But since that is never specifically said in the series, I’m only assuming stuff.

Since then, she wasn’t seen as Arrowette or in general for more than 10 years, only showing up again in Young Justice (2019):

There’s no real explanation for her coming back this time other than, again, like last time, she’s made her peace with Arrowette and is only helping an old friend (Conner, this time) dressed in the most generic Archer-superhero outfit that came out of nowhere. She was barely in the series, but her return was handled badly anyway. Unless, of course, you’ll consider my theory from the previous time she came back canon, it’s pretty annoying that Brian Michael-Bendis brought her back, instead of Anita for example (which would’ve made much more sense), even after stating she was retired.

Now we have my least favorite handling of Cissie post-quitting.

Oh, Dark Crisis: Young Justice, the definition of shattered hopes. 

This is complete and utter bullshit. Not only Cissie kept being an archer after quitting and had several storylines in Young Justice (1998) related to her archery outside of Arrowette, Cassie not only knows that, she was literally there for half of it. Cissie is an archer, and that’s a part of her that she pretty much completely separated from her Arrowette persona, and she made that clear in more than a few instances during the original Young Justice run. I hope Joshua Williamson isn’t taking Cissie character lessons from this run, which not only handles Cissie quitting weirdly, but is outright spreading misinformation about Cissie.

Has Meghan Firzmartin even read the original YJ run? I don’t think she did, at least not fully. Cissie quit because of very specific reasons I've previously stated, not this. She also has a good relationship with the rest of Young Justice, and definitely doesn’t see them this way. 

Even though Cissie isn’t Arrowette at any point in this run, it feels much worse than any of my prior examples. Also, she is basically running around as Arrowette there, just without the costume. I hope the new Green Arrow series will ignore DC: YJ, because it’s just bad.

So to sum it up? I’m not completely disappointed Cissie is Arrowette again. I do hope Williamson will actually handle her past and not make her a whole new character for his run. I think a Cissie as Arrowette story can be interesting, if it’s at least implied she felt with her trauma from her quitting incident and made peace with everything the name and the costume mean. However, with all my high hopes, I'm still being realistic and I'm gonna say I don’t think I'll get everything I want in the new series. The series is currently a mini-series of six issues, unfortunately (but preorders might change that and give us more issues! Preorder the first issue!), and it tackles a seemingly large cast of characters with a lot of mysteries and questions around them and their appearance in the book. And with the actual plot being them trying to find/retrieve Ollie from where he was last stuck in in Dark Crisis, I do think there'll be space for good character interactions but not for a lot of individual character exploring. Overall, I think the series will handle Cissie’s return basically how YJ (2019) did, with a mostly unexplained return, but I guess a girl can dream about more.

[elioherondale]

Y'know, it does genuinely suck that you can't criticize the Skyrocket pitch because ppl will accuse you of being transphobic. There are people who have said, on record, that if this change had gone ahead that it would've been the first comic book they would have ever read and that's honestly kind off insulting to Connor's entire history. Like, it got to the point where people were rebutting the genuine criticisms by campaigning people to apologize to Meghan Fitzmartin for writing Dark Crisis: Young Justice.

[coolcomicbookcovers]

[watsondcsj]

Newest Jon Theory

Assuming that Jon is the presumed dead fetal child of the Injustice Superman all grown, how does that work? The 5th Dimension.

Jon has already been the subject of ire of one 5th Dimensional Imp directly and indirectly by his son. It's very possible that they will be made to blame for the 2018 mess, too. Teen Jon , having spent his entire life from "birth" until the volcano in an imaginary Truman Show scenario, may have had a piece of the 5th dimension take root in himself. It reveals itself like Clark's old Superman Blue look, but it more akin to Yz, the Thunderbolt.

This does put my last "Composite Jon" theory to bed, but this one seems far more likely.

[batcavescolony]

I think I'd respect YJ Dark Crisis more if it got anything right about YJ 98 canon

Happy Harbor was destroyed Young Justice issue #18. In Young Justice #19 they got a new base in an abandoned hotel in the catskills, the base that they were in for the rest of their time in YJ (BEFORE they joined the Teen Titans),

And the kicker?

It's a base CISSIE HAS BEEN TO MULTIPLE TIMES!!!!

Cus it didn't matter that she wasnt on the team she was still their friend! So she still hung out with them at their base and helped out sometimes when needed (she helped during the war and got roped into playing baseball and stuff)

[esonetwork]

The Earth Station DCU Episode 313 – Legends of Tomorrow Series Finale

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/the-earth-station-dcu-episode-313-legends-of-tomorrow-series-finale/

The Earth Station DCU Episode 313 – Legends of Tomorrow Series Finale

This Week on Earth Station DCU! Just like the Legends, Drew Leiter and Cletus Jacobs discuss the Legends of Tomorrow Series Finale. Superman learns more about his sidekick Boy Thunder when David loses it against some pirates in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #9. Even though she has been grounded for another week because of her grades, Courtney sneaks out of the house to join Red Arrow in the search for Wing in Stargirl: The Lost Children #1. Batman confronts Black Adam about his recent actions of killing the pilot in Black Adam #6. Batman and Robin give Victor a chance to redeem himself in Batman – One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze #1. Selena saves Dario and then has encounter with Batman in Catwoman #49. Nightwing gets his own Imp in Nightwing #98. The new mayor deputizes the Rogues in The Flash #788. Young Justice must fight against their own 5th dimensional imp in Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6. Trapped on a strange world, Bruce Wayne learns the truth about it in Dark Crisis: Worlds Without A Justice League – Batman #1. All this plus, DC News, DC TV, Shout Outs, and much, much more!

————————

Table of Contents

0:00:00 Show Open

0:01:24 DC News

0:18:26 Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #9

0:22:39 Stargirl: The Lost Children #1

0:27:56 Black Adam #6

0:30:46 Batman – One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze #1

0:35:54 Catwoman #49

0:41:15 Nightwing #98

0:43:50 The Flash #788

0:47:34 Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6

0:49:04 Dark Crisis: Worlds Without A Justice League – Batman #1

0:55:28 Titans S4 Ep3 – Jinx

1:01:47 Stargirl S3 Ep12 – Frenemies – Chapter Twelve: The Last Will and Testament of Sylvester Pemberton

1:07:17 DC’s Legends of Tomorrow S7 Ep13 – Knocked Down, Knocked Up

1:18:42 Show Close

Links

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #9

Stargirl: The Lost Children #1

Black Adam #6

Batman – One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze #1

Catwoman #49

Nightwing #98

The Flash #788

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6

Dark Crisis: Worlds Without A Justice League – Batman #1

Tales of the Teen Titans (1984-1988) #56 (Cletus’s Read More Comics Pick)

But First, Let’s Talk Nerdy Episode #78

Earth Station One Tales of the Station

Earth Station One Tales of the Station Vol. 2

The Chameleon Chronicles: Colors of Fate

The Chameleon Chronicles: Sisters of the Thorn

If you would like to leave feedback, comment on the show, or would like us to give you a shout out, please call the ESDCU feedback line at (317) 564-9133 (remember long distance charges may apply) or feel free to email us @ earthstationdcu@gmail.com

[pinkbelugacollective]

tbh as much as i wanted bart to beat kon’s ass for his disrespectful behavior in dark crisis, i know in my heart that any REAL fighting between bart and kon woulda put kon on suicide watch afterwards and put bart into a state of nonverbal rage that might’ve actually made him shoot someone forreal forreal by the end of the book. opposite sides of post-fight mental breakdown. kon’s crying in his bathtub with the shower running, and bart’s silently seething and crying and overthinking his place in life while running laps on the equator.

[avayarising]

I understand now why I didn’t enjoy this storyline very much. I could tell that the message was ‘you can’t go back to the past’ and it felt obvious to me that this message was not one that the characters particularly needed to hear so it all felt very much like an excuse for getting them out of the way. It didn’t occur to me that it might be a message for the readers.

I think I missed that because of the very achronological way I’m reading comics. Maybe it was more of an issue for the characters at that time.

But it makes me feel better about Cassie saying ‘I can’t believe you thought that was me!’ (which I felt was rather unfair because they very much didn’t – although if I recall rightly Tim in particular was thinking mind control rather than entire construct), if I consider it as something she’s actually saying to the audience rather than the other characters.

But I still feel they are hard done by. Even if it does tie in thematically, and even if it is an argument that needs to be made, it still very much feels like artificially getting them out of the way, either because they’d screw up the story the writers wanted to tell about the other characters or because they aren’t important and so just need to be given some filler plot. I would have felt better if getting Tim and Kon and Bart out of the way so they couldn’t interfere had actually been someone’s motivation in the story, because that would show that at least they were actually important enough to do something about.

Dark Crisis: Young Justice

I think my first, most top-level thought about this as a title is that the expectations you bring to this title have a large impact on the narrative you get out of it.

If you're picking it up for the words 'Young Justice' in the title, thinking you're going to get a fun romp of a story, you are necessarily going to be disappointed (and indeed that has happened to many people who've read this).

If however you look at it in context of the words 'Dark Crisis', as a tie-in mini to an event heavily involving themes of trapping people in dreamscape universes arising out of their subconscious, and the narrative of 'who grows up to step into the shoes of the Justice League'...? Then yeah. The story contains a lot of very relevant commentary on that.

I can see what the original pitch from Fitzmartin was for this story, and it's compelling. I think the pitch, premise and argument she is making are very interesting; I just don’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions and the exact characterisation used to achieve those conclusions.

Because. In the context of an event that has Jon Kent building a new Justice League out of a collection of heroes in his generation who largely are the relatives of the classic Justice League, despite having very little personal experience or time as heroes, and of the Original Titans generation realising that they need to step up and take on leadership of the broader community again, as they go through losing their mentors once more... a title about the inbetween generation, who have been ignored, asking 'well what about us? Why are we overlooked here? Once upon a time, we would have been seen as the future' makes sense.

Mickey offering Kon, Tim and Bart what he sees as the lure of being the hero - of growing up into the role originally seen as their destiny - is a potent one in a broader narrative that has Jon Kent openly stating multiple times that he has to be Superman because his father is not there and to live up to what his father would be doing; where Damian is once again being haunted and positioned as 'the true Son of the Bat, Heir to Batman, Has No Other Future Destiny', and where even Wally is being positioned as feeling junior to and not fully able of filling Barry's shoes. (Wally's inferiority complex is entirely unnecessary, but he is right that Barry is seen as the more 'multiverse proficient of the two of them)

Because. Why is the generation below Young Justice the ones who think they need to try and fill the shoes of the Justice League? Why has the Young Justice generation been replaced but not given the space to grow into new roles, and is the demand they step aside for the younger heroes a fair one? These are discussions to be had about the characters and they're had constantly by the fandom, and I think choosing to tackle it as a topic head on in an event focusing on the issues of legacy and what people desire secretly in their hearts is probably the place to bring it up.

And in that context, some of the choices of story that various characters were given, particularly Kon, make a lot more sense.

Bart gets to be the character who understands what is going on, who twigs to the situation first and how to fix it, because Bart is the character most often underestimated and treated as the afterthought and the comic relief of the three boys in fandom. They're in Bart's area of expertise, and he gets to showcase that as part of his growth and difference.

Tim is conflicted, because Tim has been conflicted ever since Damian was introduced and set up as a rival. But also Tim and Damian have largely made peace with each other, to the point where they're just fondly bickering brothers. And what convinces Tim that the present is better than the past is Bernard, and by analogy being bisexual and being openly allowed to be bisexual; it's an argument that it's better and easier for Tim to accept who he is in this present where he's written in the 2020s and can interrogate his identity, than to be in the 1990s and written by Chuck Dixon.

And Kon...Kon's entire story has always been about how he was created to become Superman, his destiny was to grow up to fill that role - and how it will never happen, for him. He spent years struggling with how that affected his identity and perception of himself, and whether he does have the ability to choose his path. Kon asking ‘isn’t it better here’ (in the past, when he was young and had a clear future trajectory) in an event where Clark is in a dreamworld where he gets to raise Jon (and none of the rest of the family are evident) and Jon’s running around announcing he’s Superman, he needs to live up to what his father would be doing…yeah. That IS potent commentary. Because Jon, a character who probably still is younger than Kon, is Superman. And Kon, who believed he was Superman from the moment of his decanting, is stuck as Superboy. He's been replaced and people don't even remember him.

So Kon being the fall guy who needs to be talked around the hardest in the story makes sense narratively, even if some of his lines don't wholly fit his characterisation, because when this story came out Kon was the character most in a situation where he didn't have connections to the present and a forward trajectory.

(And right now of course Tim and Kon are in the healthier positions, storywise, while Bart is the one careening around without proper characterisation. Swings and roundabouts)

And then we get to Cassie and Cissie.

And while the three boys have got to be their present selves, but pasted back into the setting of nostalgia...Cassie explicitly gets replaced and all of her characterisation wound back in the dreamworld version of her.

Notably, Fantasy Cassie is present for stories she did not appear in, in the very early days of Young Justice. Indeed, Young Justice #3, an issue that contains Mr Mxyzptlk, is officially titled "The Issue Before the One Where the Girls Show Up!". But the Cassie that Mickey chooses to use...is a costume never seen at Happy Harbour. It's a version of her mid-Young Justice costume, from about #20-#49. It's the one from before she's chosen as leader. He doesn't want her 'ugly' early costume, where Cassie's still hiding herself. He doesn't want the leader, the adult that Cassie is in her real aspect, or even the girl who joined the Teen Titans. He wants the idealised 'best' Cassie that everyone carries on about, just one section of her story.

And Cassie herself, in her conversations with Cissie, is having what are largely meta commentary discussions about the way the fandom and the 90s treated female characters, particularly in positioning Cassie as the afterthought of the Core Four.

Like, no doubt, Cissie gets stuck being nominated to be the character getting somewhat villainised to drive the plot forward. But again, part of why Cissie ends up in that role is that she's simply a less important character. Cissie's main trait that even the fans want to argue for her to show is "I don't want to be a hero, I don't want to be here". (See for instance everyone yelling for Cissie to get out of costume and go home in Green Arrow). And that's the thing. Even in her civilian aspect, she has rarely appeared on page, and even in storylines after YJ98 which mentioned her she occasionally never showed up. If Cissie and Cassie are really supposed to be best friends, where has Cissie been? It's worth poking at.

Cassie is arguing for her growth, and her complex history, and her leadership. She's also arguing to be allowed to have the narrative space to have her friends, both male and female, depicted as important to her.

All that said: I don't think the story manages to fully deliver and land the story it's trying to tell. Aspects that let this down as a title and cause drama:

I think part of the issue is the choice to use Mickey Mxyzptlk as the villain, rather than Bedlam. I think the choice of Mickey was taken explicitly for the 5th dimension 'comic story followers' aspect, and also to reflect in Mickey elements of Superboy-Prime and that aspect of Infinite Crisis, given the large effect IC has on this story, without actually making the villain Superboy-Prime and pulling the focus of the story over to what he explicitly had done to Young Justice characters. They clearly wanted to evoke the 'overentitled comic book fan' narrative encapsulated both in the concepts of the Prime universe and the 5th dimension as the villain of the piece to struggle against. The problem is that a lot of fans do not enjoy having that mirror turned so fully upon them, highlighting a view of insider frustrations with their fandom.

If it had been instead Bedlam, who is a world-shaper with a massive immaturity complex, the fundamental shape of the story could have still happened, but would have had the additional veneer of not openly attacking the fandom's idealisation of and nostalgia for Young Justice 1998. More people would have enjoyed the story. However, to make that change the story would have had to drop openly wrestling with the topic of fans demanding versions of characters that eliminate their intervening growth. It would still have underlaid the plot and gone down smoother, but also would have largely been overlooked and ignored by the fans the message was trying to talk to.

Would a spoon full of sugar have been a better narrative choice than what amounted to a take that? I think there are arguments either way, and many of the fans the message was targeted at have responded to it in any case by rejecting and ignoring it.

In addition, both Megan Fitzmartin and Laura Braga are less across the exact details of the characters and Young Justice 1998 than they really needed to be, which leads to a handful of art and plot screw ups that I feel let people dismiss the story. "Look they depicted Empress as a villain! They don't know what they're talking about!" and so on. Fitzmartin tends to write in ways where I can tell she's read things, but equally it was a while since she last read them (it's part of why her characterisation work often feels a little skewed to the fan versions of characters that she remembers or has developed in her head rather than following on from a recent writer/appearance). Just general editorial cleaning up of mistakes like this would have helped because I see a lot of people arguing that these silly mistakes are reasons the story is bad and they don't like it, when clearly they're actually discomforted by the plot itself.

Overall however, I think that Fitzmartin manages to successfully make the points she clearly wanted to make. The problem is that the fandom very much did not want to hear some of those points, and so rejected the story. People don't like to hear ‘you have to let go of what you idealise, not all change is bad and we exist in a universe where things have changed and throwing a tantrum about it doesn’t achieve what you want’, especially if they came in hoping to see their favourite characters having an adventure, and instead received a deconstruction of their favourite title.

I don't so much think I enjoyed it as a story, as it was quite heavy handed in places, but I do respect the analysis and commentary of the run, particularly in how it presented a coherent reason for why the Young Justice generation were so completely overlooked and excluded from discussions of who is a legacy and who steps forward happening in the main storyline of Dark Crisis.

I don't agree with all the conclusions, but I was interested in watching the argument.

[ehliena]

I take it back. This 5th dimension imp ships TimKon.

Or at least that's how I choose to interpret his spiel about them being replaced and shoeing Bernard.