Warning! Spoilers for Young Justice #15 below
Brian Michael Bendis continues to slowly peel away at the mysteries behind his enigmatic, DC universe-shaping mega-plot in his latest installment in the teen adventure series Young Justice. After a long odyssey sliding through the Multiverse, the Young Justice team is now bigger than ever before, with allies constantly joining the roster. Bendis is no stranger to writing massive team books, but spear-heading every major character in his Wonder Comics imprint into a single classroom-sized team is a feat even for him. And with a future threat to the Multiverse on the horizon (one that can only be solved by the reforming of Young Justice), this merry band of teen heroes will need to mature past their typical roles as sidekicks and graduate to the big leagues.
Known for creating a bevy of teen heroes, including Marvel’s popular modern-age web-slinger Miles Morales, Bendis is currently one of DC’s most prominent writers, and his reputation for creating dynamic young characters earned him the unique job as curator for the publisher’s pop-up imprint focusing on its young superheroes. And with his latest Young Justice adventure crossing over with every title in his Wonder Comics lineup, Bendis is using a CW-style approach to storytelling that ties together an intricate web of plots and characters into one giant super team—dubbed the Young Justice League.
The latest incarnation of the team (which first graced the pages of DC Comics in 1998) mashes up nostalgia characters from DC’s ‘90s era such as Conner Kent (the gung-ho clone of Superman and Lex Luthor), Impulse (the hyperactive grandson of the Flash), and Tim Drake (the third Boy Wonder), with brand new characters in DC’s teen mythology. Newcomers to the team include Jinny Hex, the great-great-granddaughter of infamous cowboy Jonah Hex, the unofficial Teen Lantern Keli Quintela, and Bendis’s original character Naomi McDuffie. Even staples of the animated series such as Aqualad and Wondergirl are among the enormous cast of characters. With so many heroes featured in the Young Justice roster, Tim Drake (now simply going by Drake) suggests the team keep an “open enrollment” policy with its already bloated list of members and even offers a subtle rebranding of their name to symbolize their recent upgrade.
Rather than serve as an official team with a clubhouse and formal meetings, the newly named Young Justice League will take a somewhat unique approach to crime-fighting similar to that of 2004’s cult animated series Justice League Unlimited. With an entire planet of diverse heroes to choose from, having a fluid team structure will allow the Young Justice League to pull from an almost unlimited well of talents, skills, and power sets. With a constant flow of crossover characters such as Amethyst and the Wonder Twins, Young Justice is a revolving spotlight for DC’s teenage characters both new and old. Serving more as a “sanctioned youth organization” with Justice League connections than an elite club of sidekicks, Bendis's young super-team plays to his strengths with its motley cast—weaving big, individual character moments into a patchwork of overarching plots.
With the entire cast of DC’s Wonder Comics lineup crossing over in Young Justice, it feels like Bendis is preparing his own Endgame level storyline for his teen imprint. By the end of issue #15, Superboy confronts Impulse on important information the speedster discovered while racing through space-time; secrets he won’t share with anyone else. Throughout Bendis’s run, Bart Allen has not-so-subtly pushed for the reforming of the group, consistently reaffirmed the necessity of a youth-based version of the Justice League, but always being vague as to why. Issue #16 will likely peel yet another layer off the mystery and provide some context as to where the future of the team will head. Will it remain a fluid roster, or is there yet another looming crisis that will ultimately thin down the rather large cast of heroes?