Young Justice - A Review

Young Justice is a television show that probably aired on a network once. I watched it on Netflix, so I have no idea. It's basically the story of a bunch of sidekicks who become a team of "real" superheroes, which, of course, is a completely new idea that no one has ever heard of before.

You know, unless you don't live under a rock, in which case you've totally heard of Teen Titans and you instantly recognize that this is basically a repeat of the same ideas, with a different name and a few different characters.

Are you waiting for me to ridicule this obvious recycling of old ideas? Well you're going to be waiting a while because reusing the same ideas over and over again is kind of a staple in superhero storytelling. Scratch that - it's a staple in all storytelling. Ancient Greek writers basically wrote stories that everyone already knew, but people got over themselves and were able to appreciate the plays anyway. Unoriginality is the foundation of Western culture.

I mean, Deadpool (Wade Wilson) was totally a ripoff of Deathstroke (Slade Wilson) and he's the most (only) awesome thing in the Marvel Universe.

I mean, if you're looking for a genre that's never repeats itself, you should stay the fuck away from superheroes. DC has a rule that, if a story was written more than seven years ago, you can totally reuse its plotline as long as you promise to redraw some of it.

Anyway, in this story, the sidekicks are allowed to join the Justice League as superheroes, which would be overwhelmingly exciting for these kids if it weren't for the fact that it's total bullshit. The League lets the kids take a visit to an overhyped tourist attraction and a completely underwhelmed Speedy (who is Green Arrow's sidekick, not the Flash's - it's a stupid name) basically flips the bird to everyone and leaves.

Still better than the time Speedy started shooting up heroin, though.

The rest of the kids are told to sit tight while the real heroes go punch out some bad guys. So, like good boys and girls, they totally disobey the adults' orders and investigate a fire at a laboratory. They end up uncovering a secret facility where a bunch of bad guys have cloned Superman, calling their Kryptonian clone creation "Superboy." This is obviously against the League's explicit orders, but hey. At least they didn't join Speedy to go shoot up heroin.

So yeah, the Justice League is mad (especially Superman, who apparently didn't want to be randomly find out he was a father that day) but they can't be that mad, since the sidekicks did save the day after all. So they give the kids their own hideout and make them a covert ops team (which is fucking awesome, just saying.) They try to invite Speedy to join them, but he still thinks the League doesn't respect them enough or something.

I'd rather shoot up heroin anyway.

Now I have two main criteria when it comes to shows, comic books, novels - basically any form of entertainment. Is it fun, and is it interesting? I'm sure loads of nerds sit around in their Batman t-shirts and underwear with a need for complex continuity, philosophical meaning, and uniqueness, but that's bullshit. The story is basically about good people who punch bad people. Get over yourselves, geeks.

And yes, it's fun as fuck. Lots of decent punching scenes, with funny characters, recurring jokes, and teenagers being teenagers to fill the time in between. Sure, Speedy is a little bit too angsty for my tastes and Superboy has his whole identity crisis, which would be totally relateable if I was thirteen, but it's not worse than any of the bullshit Batman spews.

And more than that, the plot is actually half-decent, and each season's story arc is compelling enough to make you want to watch the next episode, but not so unbearable that the individual episodes don't have their own resolutions.

My only complaint is that Superman is a total dick to his clone/son. No "Hey, so if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here for you." No "This is my aunt and uncle who live in Kansas, if you wanted some parental figures." Not even a pat on the back when they first meet. Just a bunch of "Fuck you, kid. I don't want to talk to you right now." No wonder the kid has angst. His dad is a dick.

"Sorry, Superboy, I got this call to take from, uh, someone important."

I also have mixed feelings about Aqualad. On the one hand, he makes aquatic powers look badass, which is really hard to do for me because I live in a desert where someone with aquatic powers would basically have the power to splash me on a hot summer day. He also says his name in a way that makes you forget that what he's saying is literally the only combination of words lamer than "Aquaman."

But on the other hand, he manages to fall under the "Electric Black Guy" trope. Now, I know what you're thinking. "What the fuck are you talking about? Is that even a thing? Did you create some sort of weird stereotype in your head about black people again?"

Well let me take you back to the first black superhero, Black Lightning. He had the ability to zap people with lightning, which was probably just a random decision but I like to think it was a Black Power pun. (Get it? Because black people have no power! Sorry Mike Brown.)

If only he had electrical superpowers.

This led to a lot of superheroes who were basically just copies of Black Lightning, with names that emphasize both their lightning and their blackness - Soul Power, Juice, etc. This really isn't a problem to me, because, like I said, unoriginality is the foundation of Western culture.

But then it's like every comic book writer ever decided that all black guys should just zap people all the time. Yes, you have those superheroes who are obviously just copies of Black Lightning. But what about Storm, who mostly uses her weather powers to zap the bad guys? What about Coldcast, who has the more vague "electro-magnetic" powers, meaning he has control over electrons on a subatomic level, but basically just electrocutes people into submission? How about the fact that, in the Amazing Spiderman movies, the one character they decide to make black is Electro?

And why the fuck does Miles Morales, the half-black half-latino guy who becomes the Ultimate Spider-Man, have to electrocute his enemies at the end of every battle? Is that even a thing that spiders do?

Please tell me what kind of spider can do this. I want one so bad.

Aqualad clearly has a name and origin that should suggest that he has only water powers. Aquaman only has water powers. The other Atlanteans that we meet during the course of the show only have water powers. But somehow, Aqualad, by virtue of skin color, must have the ability to turn his water-whips into electrowhips.

There are two other black superheroes in the two seasons of this show as well. One of them is Static,  a young black kid who finds out that electricity is his bitch. The other is Bumblebee, who in theory should have Bumblebee powers, which boils down to shrinking and - you fucking guessed it - bursts of electricity.

I'm not including this guy because his only superpower is putting up with Bumblebee's shit.

Is there something I'm missing? Do all black people have the ability to control electromagnetic energy? Is there some stereotype about black people being electricians? Was Nikola Tesla black? Is that how Thomas Edison got away with stealing all his ideas and then killing kittens to make him look bad?

I mean, I guess it could be worse. "All black guys have electric powers" is a weird stereotype, and I definitely don't feel like it's a good thing, but at least they don't give every black superhero a ridiculously short temper and an addiction to drugs.

That's what Speedy's for.