Young Justice #11: Over and Over, Again and Again

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to Brian Michael Bendis stories. I don’t remember if I said the same thing in my last Young Justice review, but it’s such a prevalent thing with his books that he makes many story decisions that I love and just as many that I dislike or break with the larger continuity of things. He’s been given the reigns to do what he wants with Superman and his Wonder Comics imprint and that, to me, is a double edged sword when it comes to the current state of DC Comics at the moment. This book is a prime example of why.

This issue of Young Justice picks up right after the events of the last issue, the events of Action Comics #1016 and Naomi #6. If a reader hasn’t been following the latter two (or did a quick Google search), then their first introductions to either of these characters in this issue could be immensely confusing. Bendis tries to do a quick rundown of who Naomi is through some back and forth dialogue with John Timms’ static shots of the hero and the “scientist.” 

Glory and the rest of her STAR Labs staff have built an outpost near where Naomi first discovered her powers and soon after, a rupture in space-time opens and out comes Young Justice in a pretty nice double page spread of them holding on to Jinny Hex’s truck. This shot was actually pretty funny with their different poses of them holding on for dear life with Gabe Eltaeb’s bright and vibrant colors surging with multiversal energy, drawing the eye across both pages. 

After introductions, Naomi passes out after expending so much of her energy over the last day or so and wakes up in her home with the rest of the team crashed at her parent’s place as well. Timms does his best to show the team finally relaxing in peaceful sleep after their many issues long adventure as Naomi creeps through her home to see each member curled up around the house and outside. She even thinks to take a peek at Jinny’s trunk only for the country girl to tell her, “No touchin’.” It’s a nice scene and sets the relaxed tone of the issue in contrast to the action packed previous issues.

Soon after, Naomi makes proper introductions to the team as they explain what they’ve been going through. Conner then pops up and asks what those scientists were doing and when he finds out that it was STAR Labs with Dr. Glory, he shoots off to confront her. Conner returns to the scene is still angry that she sent him Gemworld in the first place, but unfortunately for him, she sends him across the dimensions again to the land of Skartaris: Home of Warlord. 

One of the small things that soured me on this issue, is the fact that Tim mentions that he was unable to get a hold of Alfred or anyone in the Batfamily. Though, Batman #82 or the one before that showed that Tim had been back to Gotham at some point and knew that Alfred was dead, hell he was even stabbed in the chest by Thomas Wayne during the big Batfamily brawl. While I understand that not every story should be a part of every event, it does make this seem pointless as it’s not contributing to Year of the Villain and sending Conner back through the Multiverse after just getting done with a similar storyline seems like too much.