Really excited for what's coming next. Both the mystery involving Cole and Majestic's past. Really great issue.

Even though some stories are repeated from the previous anniversary, it's still fun to read and amazing to see the new plans of these DC counterparts of these characters.

I'd like to say I feel some level of relief that this series has now met its end, but in all honesty, I'm still left baffled by how such a story was ever allowed to proceed on the course that it did. I was hoping we would get some sort of explanation into why this was worth putting the Dark Crisis title on it, but the fact of that matter remains that this series has absolutely nothing to do with the current Dark Crisis plot. It has offered us nothing of value on that front. There is no reason this should have been put into this lineup. At best, this could have been a one-shot standalone that someone decided to throw out into the universe, but to say this brings anything to the overarching story we're getting with Dark Crisis would be a flat-out lie.

Mickey's explanation for how he came to play in this is incredibly weak and reads as if they needed something to legitimize placing Dark Crisis on the covers at the last minute. You very well could have left out that bit of dialogue from him, and it wouldn't have made a damn difference to the YJ story or the main Dark Crisis one. Honestly, if Fitzmartin's aim was to show us just how unnecessary and easily discarded the YJ group is, this comic proved that point. Rather than making us feel how needed and vital this group could be, she ended up showing us the exact opposite. The whole main Dark Crisis storyline proceeded without them, and them being gone played no major role in what was happening outside of their own mini-series. And if that was, in fact, the whole point of this, then what a sad and shallow way to go about it. Fans were looking forward to this comic, to seeing this group get something fun again, to show us their relevance after having been forgotten for so long, and instead, were shown how they truly have no real place in this current DC universe. Fitzmartin proves that her story is exactly everything Mickey was complaining about, and yet it offered us no viable alternative, only the continued hammering home of how easily cast aside these characters continue to be.

It's honestly impressive. In an attempt to defy and rage against the worst of the comic world (which in reality is a small but admittedly vocal part of the fandom) and rail against a time and issues that not only the characters themselves progressed past in other stories and most readers have as well, this story has only managed to uphold those very same values it decries.

Again, the writing suffers from continuity issues, of being incredibly disjointed. At times, it seems to finally get its act together, best noted in the first 2-3 pages, but then quickly loses itself again to the same problems suffered in the previous issues. This time we get it mostly in this weirdly put stop-and-go format of the boys apologizing to Cassie. These moments felt oddly out of place, especially given the supposedly pressing nature of their fight not only against Mickey but also the fight happening in the main storyline, which they are now aware of. Like most of Fitzmartin's writing, instead of showing us why these boys should feel the remorse they did (because honestly, a lot of the previous work she is referencing doesn't support the degree to which their guilt weighs), we are simply told it. It comes off as disingenuine, as something said for the sake of someone else and not because it was needed at that moment in the comic. Tim's was by far the worst, in my opinion, as it was a weird aside when they were rushing to get back to the main fight, and it offered nothing of any real value other than to open the doors on his potential feelings for Conner (I'll circle back to this).

I want to love all these characters, and instead, I feel like I've gotten a series in which apologies are being made by characters who aren't the ones who should be issuing them, where we've lost the voices of characters in favor of making blanket statements and poorly directed commentary, where characters have been forced to deprive themselves of their own inherent greatness just to prop up another character (because where did we see anyone other than Cassie as the target of all of this?). And I get that's maybe the issue, a character getting overshadowed by those around them, but instead of showing us how amazing this team is, we were shown how amazing one character is (seriously, Tim Drake who?) only to ultimately be shown how completely irrelevant they really are to the main plot.

Kon, perhaps, had the most legitimate reason to apologize personally to Cassie. Though they also had previous progression beyond what seemed to be his main hangup here, and the way Cassie brushes off his apology seems to show it was probably unnecessary in the first place. If anything, it likely serves as a foil to what came with Tim, where the implication seems to be that he had feelings for Conner, and that was the only real reason he had gotten together with Cassie in the first place. Again, I think this suffered from being put at the wrong time and place and having too little build-up (again, a continued flaw with Fitzmartin's writing). In some respects, it can lend weight to Tim's bisexuality, and while this could be an understandable development, shoehorning it into a couple of panels in the last few pages of the last comic of a miniseries while we next see Tim six months later in a marina with Bernard was not the best way to approach this topic at all. It would have been better served as a conversation between Tim and Conner at a point when sufficient time could have been given to a conversation of that nature. But the fact that Tim and Conner don't even seem to interact in this particular issue only makes this a matter of 'things we don't really talk about' or 'these are things we talk around,' and it completely undermines what could have been a very powerful moment between two supposedly close friends. I honestly love Tim and Conner's friendship, and this could have been such a fantastic thing to see between them and a way to explore Tim's own confusion over his sexuality when he was younger and show us how we ended up with him where he is today. Instead, we got a half-assed apology that didn't even need to happen, an apology that was just as easily dismissed by Cassie. (Also, with him being bisexual, it would've been perfectly okay for him just to have some sort of attraction to Cassie and leave it at that.)

And I don't even know why Bart felt the need to apologize. Especially when everything that was said in that particular conversation was a rehashed conversation from earlier in the series with him. Again, it just strips all the genuineness out of the things being said between these characters, and it makes me wonder how someone who claims to love these characters so much can get them so very wrong.

At the end of it all, this series honestly leaves me feeling incredibly sad. Sad for the characters who didn't get the development and appreciation they should have, sad for the comic fans who genuinely love this group and DC comics, sad for the state of comic writing because I know there are better writers than Fitzmartin who could tell these stories. There was a lot of potential here, even in the idea of commenting on the current state of comics and the fandom, but it was so grossly mishandled that I'm left wondering why anyone would want to see this group of characters again, at least as written and handled by this creative team. There was a story here. It's not a new one, but it was one that could have been told, but all its effectiveness was shot and buried by poor writing, poor pacing, and characterization that seemed more intent on proving the writer's points than showing us character understanding, progression, and strength. You can make these points without losing your characters and your audience, but unfortunately, Fitzmartin shows herself incapable of managing this yet again.

But, I sincerely hope we do get to see these characters again for who they truly are and everything they bring to the table as superheroes because they are so much better than what we got in this series. more

Perfect start to the return of these characters! Can't wait to see what's next!