Young Justice #10

This issue, this entire series is BEYOND excellence, and let me tell you why. First off let me start by commending Todd Nauck as the brilliant artist, like i always do. Half the time, on a day i'm not as happy or open, the anime effect on a superhero book throws me off a little, and i find it not quite disgusting, but taking away from what it could be. But I've had a couple decades to get used to it, and I believe the big eyes and cute or sexy features (never quite both, or perhaps, depending on what characters we talk about)

There are several amazing things that happen in this ish. SPOILER WARNING, obviously. It's a RE-view, not a PRE-view. This comic is old. but read it. Definitely READ IT! It is the BEST thing i have read,.... ok i won't say ever. But it's pretty great. And i've read (or accidentally stumbled upon) Schopenhauer and Saints Tom Aquinas and Augustine, some P.F. vs Galen Strawson and heard about Leopold & Loeb, Alan Turing, Descartes and stuffs, and Peter David is high quality stuff! I mean, Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams went all political but the PAD's like, let's skip the very regional and circumstantial ground of politics, and go straight up to the objective, idealist, universal topics like Free Will and the existence of God! Anyway, the 3 things: 1- Bart hits his head, and wakes up thinking he's actually-..., 2 - Super Boy and Wonder Girl have their first date and 3 - Problem of Evil, and Thugs.

Let's start with the most light hearted (right after i mention part of the plot, in the last issue, we found some evil toys and a tv show that resembled Telly-Tubbees which were sending subliminal messages to children and other rare blank-minded people like Bart, organizing a parent-massacre to bring back their evil God Kali, an actual Hindu deity btw, to rule the whole fucking planet! Pla-nuts! Unless,... the YJ boys and girls go to Calcutta, and stop them) So Bart is supposed to distract the Thuggees (which are huge purple robotic- read the comic actually, you'll see how they come to be) WITHOUT putting himself in danger. But he does, and then he falls, and he hits his head badly. What this results in is....

..is total comedy! Oh my godd! This is, really, amazing! So funny, and even though i've come across these pics on a google search a few years ago, reading the story, at 27 years of age, i was laughing uncontrollably.

SB and WG, it is no secret to most, dated for a while. It wasn't necessarily the best idea as i am not in that school which prefers or encourages the Superman/WW relationship over say, Lois & Clark, and because TANA MOON ANYBODY? And Roxy Leech? Well, SB was never one to have a steady girlfriend or a single gf at a time. He was kissing Roxy and Sparx, even hitting on Lois, before Engine City died and Superman took back the red cape, and flirting with Tana, Roxy and Knockout all at once in his solo series, (did i mention Triplicate Girl of the Legion of Superheroes?) Tana dies, but SB is way too happy in YJ to have Tana already killed off. In fact, Tana died in an issue in 2000, NEXT YEAR subjective to this comic. So,..why and how are we happy? Anyway, in the long run, SB+WG is one of the celebrated couples among Teen superheroes of the YJ generation. It's important to YJ. And although SB is more fond of Arrowette when he first meets both girls, (while WG is already a huge swooning SB fan, i mean come on, those charms, that jacket, practically being a younger, single and available version of Superman) but everything from the gloves to the jacket to the being-part-of-the-most-super-duper-legacies-of-DC thing, SB and WG look great as a team up. This is before WG switches up to the real red WG costume, given to her by Donna Troy, and reveals her true blonde face. So what better way to get together than over kicking bad guy robot-butt?

Part of you ought to see that they look great together and were meant to be. I got nothing against Arrowette, in fact i like her more, and Secret too, but SB and WG match. Poor choice of words? Match?

Well I already mentioned the larger plot, Calcutta, Hindu deity, worshippers of said Hindu deity and an evil Blue Devil who makes a living out of calling cult-Gods into existence to replace the "current" Abrahamic one (who happens to be newer and younger than all the polytheistic Gods, but ok,) So here's the thing, when Arrowette asks why replace the existing God, the blue Devil looking guy who serves as this issue's villain (and was never seen again) explains, in one panel, three amazingly mind blowing atheist arguments.

The first is the problem of Evil. If God is omnipotent (that is, he's in control of everything) and omni-benevolent (that is good to all people) then why isn't he saving the starving kids in Africa? If he's unable to save those starving kids in Africa, which is unjust, then does God exist, or is he not as powerful as he is supposed to be? which is it? It's the same thing we're asking by saying why does he save a handful of animals while letting millions of beasts die? I mean of course, I have my own answers to these, (like hey, not everyone's supposed to make it, too many people in the world already, and extinction and evolution and nature and maybe there's no such thing as God?) but these are the biggest of questions.

And then that bit about Sodom and Gomorrah, Sodom the city where they practiced free sex, without marriage or asking about gender, talks about political issues like gay marriage, sex out of or without marriage, even abortion, feminism and basically the freedom found within United States and other developed nations vs the extremism of say, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It's Pride Week, gay marriage has just been legalized, people are rainbowing their Facebook profile pictures and so this becomes very relevant.

Thirdly, Free Will and determinism, and the existence of God? Does God create humans and say "you're free to do whatever you want, which means you can go crazy with drugs and date anyone you want and stuff, but you have to stick to these rules". I mean it makes all the sense to me to have a set of rules so that there are less killings and other bad stuff in society. I mean, if you like staying alive and living safely, then you want these rules. Then again there are some rules like... idk mostly rules that were ancient and medieval where people thought whistling calls the devil or dancing and playing guitar was evil. Still, these are the big problems, problems to which people have no perfect answers, and debates could go on for years and years. I find stuff like this to be educative as well as interesting/entertaining.

They are well structured too, i mean, instead of just trying to argue like a child, let's see the arguments that have already been made, and see if they work. Is teaching that stuff to children evil? I mean, isn't Wertham's "seduction of the innocent" going on about that same avenue? Why was Socrates thrown in Jail? But doesn't that kill the potential of comics, to censor them? I mean, a magazine is a way of reaching out and communicating. Denny O'neil's Green Arrow, Batman's Anarky, and a thousand other characters and comic books were revolutionary ideas, but all built on free thought. What about Q of Star Trek? I wonder if the image of Kali and the children's toys/show sending subliminal messages to kids was a kind of joke made to parry the accusations that would come from parents and adults concerned about the manipulation of this book's primarily teen audience. Nah, that would be pushing it off the board,