Young Justice #18 Review

Daddy's Girl

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis, David Walker

Art By: Scott Godlewski, Michael Avon Oeming, Gabe Eltaeb, Wes Abbott

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 1, 2020

Young Justice has been a real disappointment to me because we just have the most basic idea of what Bendis thinks these heroes are thrown at us with sing-song dialog that really goes nowhere in the end and I have to wonder if we'll ever get real explanations about characters and where they've been, in a way that hopefully doesn't feel forced or worse........ completely wrong about where they've been or why they're acting a certain way. We're eighteen issues in now and that hasn't happened yet and with the cancellation of this title announced, I don't know if I should expect anything different at this point. Let's jump into this issue though, where Tim Drake meets up with Spoiler. Let's check it out.

For this issue of Young Justice, we're going to focus on Tim Drake meeting up with Stephanie Brown so that they can take down her father Cluemaster. Ultimately, it really just feels like this issue is only here because at the beginning of this series Bendis had no idea that Cluemaster was dead, probably got some shade for it (I know I wasn't happy) and now he's trying to write a way for it to make sense. I'll tell you this, it doesn't We just have Cluemaster saying that he faked his death at the end of Batman Eternal, but that still doesn't jibe with what Spoiler was saying at the beginning of this series and this faking of his death is just a rehash of something Cluemaster previously did in the Pre-Flashpoint continuity......... the big difference....... There were actual emotion and character development for when Stephanie Brown had to go through that and then when she ultimately learned that her father was still alive. Instead of emotion, drama...... or a reason to read this book, you get jokes and a forced reason to shove the Young Justice team in by the end.

Speaking of things that you need to change because people called you out on it, by the end of this issue we have a small time jump, where Tim Drake is just Robin again and the rest of the team just briefly remark about it. Now, I'm not going to completely fault this because the "Drake" name was probably one of the stupidest things to ever happen to the Tim Drake character and if we just want to quickly sweep that under the rug and hope that it is instantly forgotten......... Well, I'm down. There should be something to this issue though beyond a writer clumsily trying to fix his fuck ups at the eleventh hour of this series' lifespan.

All in all, I enjoyed the art enough this issue, it's cartoony, but it's fun and it gets the job done, but the situations and storyline are just a mess and really do nothing for the characters overall. There's not much more that I want to say about this issue that I haven't already said in my description of the book because it would just be me cursing some more and wondering how a book with these characters involved can be so bad and how we could have gone so long without answers to why these characters have been forgotten and how when we finally got those answers they were big nothing burgers with extra bullshit. Alright, I'm calming down now........... Stephanie Brown fans might actually get something out of this book since it features her and her father, but they've probably already read a better version of this story a little over a decade ago so........... Oh! Tim Drake is Robin again.... there's something to like!

Bits and Pieces:

The art continues to be the best part of this book since we once again have Bendis trying to write himself out of a corner since it seems that he finally learned that Cluemaster was dead after he opened this series with Stephanie talking about him being alive. So that's our issue here folks.... trying to make this series make sense and to do that, we're going to be taking some plot points from Pre-Flashpoint Stephanie Brown stories to get there.

3.5/10