Bendis: The Voice of Youth at DC?

Bendis wrote two teenage versions of Spider-Man very well for a very long time over at Marvel.  So when he pitched DC on writing two of its preeminent superteams that happen to be made up of teenagers, the company apparently went “Okay, sure.” and let him have at it.  Naturally I picked up the first volumes of “Young Justice” and “Legion of Super-Heroes” because I have very fond memories of how the writer wrote two teenage versions of Spider-Man very well for a very long time.  I wouldn’t say that these memories actively misled me in my ongoing search for quality comics to read and write about, but I’m not sure if either of these series will be joining “Ultimate Spider-Man” and the solo adventures of “Miles Morales” in that regard.

Young Justice vol. 1:  Gemworld involves Lord Opal of the titular realm finding out that his once-flourishing kingdom has been brought low because each time there’s a capital-C Crisis on Earth, his place gets wrecked.  So he sends some warriors to Earth and do some wrecking there:  Starting with Metropolis.  Superman isn’t home right then, but there happens to be a handful of teenage heroes on hand to take up the fight.  Tim “Red Robin” Drake, Cassie “Wonder Girl” Sandsmark, Bart “Impulse” Allen, Kelli “Teen Lantern” Quintela, and Jinny Hex — Jonah’s granddaughter, in case you were wondering.  While they’re able to team up and make short work of the invaders, they’re all headstrong enough to try and chase them through the portal they made back to Gemworld.  Some of them are split up along the way, leading to an encounter with Princess Amethyst and… Connor Kent?

The mystery of how the Superboy Who Is Also a Clone of Superman is explained in due course, and it’s just one of many subplots that Bendis has decided to cram in here.  The plotting in “Gemworld” pulls triple duty as it’s a “Gathering of the Team” story, filled with flashbacks of what everyone was doing before they joined the team, and a team-up against Lord Opal (with some ruling family scheming thrown in for good measure).  This means that while the reader isn’t bored by the action in this volume, which is energetically rendered by Patrick Gleason, John Timms, and friends, it becomes hard to get invested as the narrative jumps all over the place.  As Bendis is involved, this means that there are still some fun scenes and ideas sprinkled throughout the volume:  Everyone’s conversations in their prison cells, Cassie’s heart-to-heart with her grandfather, Bart stealing Opal’s “prime gem.”  It’s just that there aren’t enough to make me able to recommend the volume as a whole.

Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 1:  Millennium could be said to have the opposite problem.  It starts off with one character having a long walk to the 30th century, where the Legion resides, checking in at various DC futures (illustrated by the likes of Jim Lee, Dustin Nguyen, Jim Cheung, and more) along the way.  From there, it picks up with a few members of the Legion foiling the sale of a stolen relic, Aquaman’s Trident, before we see Jonathan Kent formally welcomed into the team.  You see, this story picks up from the end of “Superman vol. 2” and Jon plays a fairly large role in this story.  Which involves the Legion dealing with the aliens who stole the relic, and the planetary leader who hired them to do so.  Who also happens to be the father of a Legionnaire.

The plot threads connecting the issues here are pretty simple and straightforward to grasp.  Which is good because you’ll be hard-pressed to keep track of all the members of the Legion that are featured in this story.  Some of them are given more prominence than others, while genuine effort is made to flesh out a few.  That leaves, oh, over a dozen to float around the periphery just adding noise and distracting the reader with their presence.  Honestly, I’m impressed with how main artist Ryan Sook is able to draw such an incredibly large ensemble and still maintain a decent level of detail throughout these issues — though he does have help from the likes of Mikel Janin and Travis Moore who drop in to draw a few origin stories.  The largeness of the ensemble also doesn’t feel like it plays to Bendis’s strengths as a writer, as he’s best when he focuses his skills with characterization and dialogue.

Still, I think I have to give the (marginal) win to “Legion” simply because its overall story held together better than “Young Justice’s” did.  Where the first volume of that series felt like it was lurching all over the place in terms of plot, vol. 1 of “Legion” actually felt like it was building towards a climax, which it delivered on at the end.  While neither volume is an unqualified success, I have to admit that I’m more interested in reading about the further adventures of the “Legion” than “Young Justice.”  Still, both are also a step down from the writer’s “Ultimate Spider-Man” glory days, where every volume could be counted on to be pretty great.  Make of that what you will.