Young Justice #8 Review

Fear and Loathing On Earth-3

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: John Timms, Gabe Eltaeb, Wes Abbott

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: September 11, 2019

Even though Earth-3 was destroyed by the Anti-Monitor, it's time to head on over there with our Young Justice team, where we'll find out if Brian Michael Bendis knows anything about DC Comics or if he's just going to make it all up as he goes along, whether it makes sense or not.  Problem is, I love Earth-3, I love the Crime Syndicate and I personally hate that they're all dead and that evil Earth was destroyed....... That's how it is though so I'm looking for a reason that Earth still exists and some explanation about our heroes fighting their evil counterparts.  Let's jump into this issue and see if our Young Justice team can overcome their foes and if Brian Michael Bendis can overcome continuity.  Let's check it out.

So we have our Young Justice team stuck on Earth-3, where they spend the entire issue getting their asses kicked by their Earth-3 counterparts, while constantly yelling if anyone has a Multiverse Map...... which may be nice if they also had a way to traverse the Multiverse, but I guess it's a one step at a time deal.  As for our Earth-3 Young Justice team....... which would be called...... Young Crime?.... Young Doom?..... No idea, but they're led by Amaxon Thunder and her underlings are Luthor-El, Drake, Speed Zone, Hack and Hex......... I have no idea why Superboy's counterpart would be called Luthor-El, since his father was Ultra Man, who's name was Kal-Il, but I guess that's just something that Bendis didn't care about when crafting this story..... or why a Batwoman showed up at the end....... or why Owlman would have a Robin, or a Drake as he's called here.  The biggest problem is..... our characters just show up and their counterparts are already there to start battling them without an explanation and everything about them just feels rather unimaginative.  

There isn't much of a story here, beyond just introducing the baddies of this world and even with a big brawling fight between everyone......... the fight isn't even all that interesting.  You don't get a sense of what these characters can do beyond the basics or how they're different than our heroes and maybe that's something we'll learn as the series progresses, but as for their introduction here...... I just wasn't impressed and that kills me for how much I love evil versions of characters.  

All in all, I enjoyed John Timms' art for the most part, even though some panels got a little too small for me to really make out the action they were trying to depict, but as always with this book, the art is never the problem.  It always comes down to Brian Michael Bendis not really telling a story and the bits that he does throw in it seems like he has no knowledge of the characters he's writing and him wanting to change things for the sake of changing things.......... I speak of Tim Drake's possible new name, which I'm not a fan of.  There just isn't much to this issue at all except for some new character name dumps and none of them really came off as all that interesting or compelling to me, which drives me nuts because this type of story is usually my bread and butter........ not now though and sadly I don't see it really getting any better as it goes along.

Bits and Pieces:

If you're looking for an issue that's a big fight scene between our heroes and their unimaginative evil counterparts from Earth-3...... Well, maybe this issue is for you because it certainly looks good, I just can't say that the story is there or that Brian Michael Bendis really cares about the characters he's writing.

5/10