Dark Crisis: Young Justice #3 Review

 

Writer: Meghan Fitzmartin

Art: Laura Braga, Luis Guerrero, and Pat Brosseau

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: August 16, 2022

Reviewed by: Jon Wayne

I will not sugarcoat it no longer: this book is garbage. There is no clear plot halfway through this series that is the main tie-in book to a Crisis level event. The characterization of the heroes we’re all reading this for assumes nothing has happened to them since they were originally on Young Justice in the 90s.

Meghan Fitzmartin’s degradation of our heroes gets off to a smashing start when she tells us that Conner Kent has never come to terms with Lex Luthor being part of him… This is a plot beat that’s been covered several times before, most notably, once again, in Geoff Johns Adventure Comics run following Conner’s rebirth in Final Crisis. Either Fitzmartin is getting lost in the high-minded meta-commentary - that Conner has come to terms with his connection to Lex, but DC keeps dragging him back to his Young Justice days, as evidenced by reverting his costume - or she just does not know him well enough to know this is well-worn ground for Conner.

Beyond that, why is Impulse the one to solve the mystery and not Tim Drake, the detective? Tim has spent years training with the World’s Greatest Detective. It makes no sense to me that Bart is the one to be putting all the pieces together of this mysterious world. And it is not like there has been any lead-up in the previous two issues that would suggest Bart was ahead of his comrades in figuring this out, so him being the genius here feels like it's out of left field.

We also completely dropped the real Cassie Sandsmark plotline from this issue, and that’s jarring given how when we last saw her, she had teamed up with Cissie and Red Tornado. Instead, we focused more on fake Cassie, who seems to be serving as a siren-like temptress for our big bad to keep our heroes in this world. One thing I’ll note that I’m already cringing about is Fitzmartin hinting at plans to rehash the Cassie-Conner-Tim love triangle of the early 2000s. Once again, it was all resolved in that Adventure Comics run by Geoff Johns I keep mentioning. It was handled very well in that series, and I have zero interest in seeing someone as clueless as Fitzmartin trying to one-up Geoff.

The story ends with the cliffhanger of revealing the big bad for this series (which has already been spoiled by solicits/the internet) that just feels blah. I have no hope nor any level of excitement about this series anymore, and that makes me really sad. Art is fine, but not nearly enough to make up for how bad this story is.

Bits and Pieces:

I came out of comic reviewing retirement for this book; that’s how much I love the team of Young Justice. Halfway through, I’m not entirely convinced I’ll review all 6 issues; that’s how bad the story and characterization have been. If you’re a fan of Young Justice, don’t bother reading this book.

4/10