Originally published on Patreon
Where the first issue of Dark Crisis: Young Justice felt a little disjointed, and a little strange in places, the story seems to have found its footing with the second issue, and has become an enjoyable examination at not only the lives of the characters, but comic history too.
There are two main stories taking place across this issue. The first if Cassie trying to find out what happened to her friends and former teammates. She goes to Cissie, former the hero Arrowette, to ask for her help; and kind of gets her eyes opened a little to what it's like being a female hero.
Cissie points out how Cassie's own life is being dictated by the boys, yet again. Cissie tells her how much harder it is to be a female hero than a male one, how you're always a supporting character, always there to pick the pieces up for the guys, how you'll always been seen and judged differently to them. And it also seems like this is a part of why she quit being a hero to begin with.
These themes, of reexamining the past with a more critical and objective eye is reflected in the other main story, where the three guys find themselves in what appears to be their past (90's and 2000's comics). Initially this starts when the team, having been joined by a Cassie who claims to be the one they know from the rel world, finish their fight with Well Endowed, and go off to fight Tora. The guys begin to question what they're doing as a team of young heroes by fighting women, they start to talk about how their villains tended to be jokes, and ones made at the expense of women, and foreigners, and they talk about how cartoonish it all felt.
Like with the talk from Cissie, this feels like a great acknowledgement that yeah, comics from twenty years ago were often quite cartoonish (as they can be today), and were also sexist, and kind of racist. But the moment that really brings it home to the trio, especially Tim, that this world isn't right, is when Batman talks to him about how he's destined to end up with Stephanie Brown one day. Tim tells him no, pointing out that he's dating Bernard, and Bruce says 'She's your destiny. Once you're out of this phase.'
Fucking goddamn homophobic Batman. This is the moment where we know this isn't time travel shenanigans or anything like that, because Bruce would never say that, and whoever this fake Batman is deserved to get his teeth kicked in. And boy is Tim done with this shit now. But again, like elsewhere in the book, this talks to the casual homophobia that used to be in comics. DC has come on a long way since those days, and has a superb roster of queer heroes and has normalised treating queer people like people. I especially liked when Cissie was introducing Cassie to a friend of hers and she included pronouns. This is great, this is showing how much better things are now, but this homophobic Batman is showing us how they used to be. I've never hated Batman as much as I did in this one panel.
The issue ends with the guys trying to find a way out of whatever this all is, but reality changing and warping around them, throwing obstacles in their way; with the final page presenting them with three pretty big obstacles in the form of Deathstroke, Lex Luthor, and Captain Boomerang.
It's still not clear exactly what's happening in this series, or where everything is going to be heading, but this issue was a huge improvement over the first, and presented the readers with some interesting and fun stuff for sure. Hopefully this trend will continue over the course of the series.
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