I was babbling to my friend recently about how excited I was when the news hit last week that Young Justice had been renewed. He asked me how it compared to Avatar since that's widely considered to be one of the best children's animated shows ever, in particular with regard to storytelling and character development. (It should be obvious by now that we were speaking of this Avatar.) My answer was this: It's better than Avatar: The Legend of Korra because it features more consistent plots, but it falls short of The Last Airbender simply for the fact that it has only two seasons. It does approach that level of character development, but it never had time to get there. Maybe with a third season (and hopefully more) it will.
You may have noticed that I am being intentionally vague about specific plots of Young Justice. That's because we cover a lot of info about the show with the mods below. Be warned, there be spoilers.
1. Since the show ended, the sub has like doubled in size. What's been going on in the last three years?
/u/Shiniholum: This is a loaded question because honestly it was a hodgepodge of "how is this sub going to continue to live while the show and the cursory material was for all intents and purposes dead." For the past three years we've had people rewatch the show, new watchers who found it on Netflix but never saw it before, people discovering the tie-in comics/game, people looking for advice for similar shows or comics that have the same theme or maybe even the same characters and honestly that's the biggest indicator of how good this show was. I'm not going to lie and say the sub didn't stagnate, but that's to be expected when the property it was based on was, as far as we knew, KIA. Around this same time we also saw the community band together to try and save the show through petition, crowd funding, letters, social media campaigns, contacting companies, and I think personally this allowed the sub to keep moving forward and gaining mass. Early on the mods decided that we would try to create our own fan comic to continue the stories in this universe and it went through multiple iterations before it eventually and sadly fell through. But this is my favorite thing about all of it; because at the end of the day "We" did it, the type of people who have been visiting this subreddit since the show was on or even after it ended who constantly pestered Netflix to add Season 2 or if they could pick it up, the people who organized letter campaigns, the people who talked about whenever they could, the people that would tell people to go out and buy the Blu-Rays and DVDs even if they were on Netflix just to show the people in charge that there was still an interest all mostly gathered and came from our little corner of the Internet; and ultimately we succeeded.
/u/wisesonAC: We've mostly been keeping hope alive tbh. Hope alive through community rewatches on Netflix, fan art, theories, etc. The sub did get stagnant a bit. And that's to be expected but adding the show on Netflix really did give it a second life. Even if at that time we didn't know that all the fans efforts would work. But we did it!
2. Wally. He ded?
/u/Shiniholum: I hope not. Unfortunately it looks like it is, while recent developments in the comics over the past twenty years fleshed out the Speedforce and saw speedsters be absorbed it into many times (including Wally in the original Justice League show) if I remember correctly the show runner for Young Justice doesn't like the Speedforce and to him Wally has sadly passed. I still hold out hope however because after the big reveal in DC Rebirth I hope he has had a change of heart and out lovably little souvenir keeper is just stuck in the Speedforce!
/u/wisesonAC: Ha! Doubt it lol my theory is he's in the speed force. He's gonna come back faster than everyone!
3. Do you want to see another time jump between seasons, or would you rather that it pick up closer to where it left off? Or maybe between seasons? What do you want to see?
/u/Shiniholum: The time jump I between Season 1 and 2 wasn't the worst and I'm glad we got it because it means we got to see some growth to characters, specifically my favorite character Dick as he was now Nightwing. It also allowed for the tie-in comics to have material and free reign in telling tales that happened in between the seasons without having to worry about getting something wrong and contradicting themselves about plot points taking place in the "present" (Season 2) or the Future.
If it was up to me I would rather Season 3 pick up right where Season 2 ended or at the very least a little while after, maybe using it as a vehicle to introduce Spoiler, have Tim become Red Robin and introduce Damian, etc.
/u/wisesonAC: Personally I'd rather see it pick off from where we left off. The time skip worked for season 2 but doing it again after so long could alienate fans.
4. What's your favorite post of all time on /r/YoungJustice?
/u/Shiniholum: Gosh, the first one I saw confirmed season 3 maybe?
All joking aside I can't really say I have 1 singular favorite post, after all when I created this sub all those years ago it was while I was procrastinating some studying in my university's library, I never anticipated how much this sub would grow and live!
If I had to say what my singular favorite post was, I would have to say that it was every single post that was made to this community since the show ended. Without them I doubt we would be where we are right now and I owe it to them, the community, for making this place so great!
/u/wisesonAC: I think my favorite post was the last discussion post we did for the season 2 finale 3 years ago. At the time the future of the show was uncertain and you could really see how this show effected people. The show was very important to alotta people and wow nothing captures that importance like a live thread as the final moments of the "last" episode passes.
5. A person hasn't watched the show. What's your pitch to get them on board the hype train?
/u/Shiniholum: Okay imagine all those big DC super heroes? Okay now imagine all their Side Kicks? Okay now imagine all those side kicks taking part in some X-Files/Flash Gordon type stories while being incredibly nuanced with their story telling where no moment is wasted and everything is important to the over arching story while also not having to rely on stories that have been done before in the comics or other shows to carry the plot and characters. Watch as the cast which is a group of teenage heroes actually grow and deal with such organic development it would make Uncle Guggy foam at the mouth.
/u/wisesonAC: It's the perfect superhero show. It has action, a great story, great characters, respects the mythos, very diverse without trying etc. This show will have you feeling happy, sad, the mode, and upset. It's great television and i'd put it up there against any animated superhero show.
6. There was a project on the sub a few years ago to continue the story. What ever came of that?
/u/Shiniholum: Okay so this is a pretty complex question, I've actually been planning on making a YouTube video to talk about this more I depth but I'll touch on it a little bit here.
Early on the mods and I got together to try and create a fan comic we went through miniature rations of the the idea one of which being the have a kind of community crowd sourced comic. One week the community would come together and form a story together and the best story would be the one we would use. Then the following week the community would come together and create the art to go with that story and moving forward it would essentially be a project that the community would write and create. Eventually that idea fell through just because of how difficult it is to coordinate entire group of nameless faceless people on the Internet and ask them to put together these complex basic stories, so we changed the idea and we instead relegated to the task to a group of writers that I identified would be the best from the story weeks and then I began looking for an artist.
At this point at the biggest hurdle was keeping in mind fair use and copyright laws unfortunately I didn't want to step on anyone's toes should be sharper be you know restarted or the Titan comics being restarted I don't want that I want to you know cross any lines so became a big deal to try and find people who would do the art or do the story and wouldn't mind not getting paid I know was a big deal because that's a lot to ask for someone to do it to do reasonably and responsibly and week after week and then not really expect anything out of it. Show with our new set of writers we set up a secret little group where we can make posts and talk about potential stories and we could post the Scripps and edit them and really hammer out the details and make sure it didn't contradict anything or can you crossed too many lines we want to keep it in line with the show and be faithful to material. But we kept coming back to the same issue which was the artist finding the artist was arguably the hardest task we went through I want to say three people who said they would be interested in doing the art for the book on Reddit but never follow through I went through two people I know personally who did some more and had to stop because it was too much to do especially when they weren't getting paid I and eventually that's what killed the project.
I wish I was more artistic that way I could've been contributing in that manner but I can barely draw stick figures and I wanted the book to be somewhat respectable. It was an incredibly monumental task to take upon ourselves and honestly I was very happy with where we were going our first story we attempted to reconceptualize the death in the family story and the under the red hood story and kind of tied them into how it would be in this universe with Jason being a member of the team while also being part of the Bat-family. Because I'm over ambitious I even had I think six stories moving forward I pass this because the Jason story would've been taking place in the past in between the time skip tween season one and season two and the other story could be moving on forward from season three done with things like the death of the Green Lantern Corps an introduction of Kyle Rayner to the team I and introducing characters like StarFire and Supergirl and even stories such as the big confrontation with Darkseid drawing strong inspiration from final crisis. Here is the first couple of pages, it's not a lot but we had hoped to form more of it; it's a big weight on my shoulders because I feel as if it's mostly my fault for not being able to follow through for my community, whether it was because I couldn't contribute to the art or for being too ambitious I am sad it never truly panned out.
/u/wisesonAC: From what I remember we couldn't ever get a steady artist but there was progress made story wise. Honestly shin could give yall more info about that he was more over that and I just helped however I could.
7. Artemis or Tigress? Pick one.
/u/Shiniholum: Tigress. I love Artemis as a character but with her family history Tigress just fits so much more.
/u/wisesonAC: Artemis of course.
8. Same as the last question, but Dick or Tim?
/u/Shiniholum: Dick. 100%. I love all Dicks so much. Dick Tracey, Dick Grayson, Dick Rider. I love Dicks of all kinds and companies.
I love Tim too, I feel like while I like Dick more Tim is the MOST important Robin as he was the one to start Dick and Bruce fixing their relationship as well as being the one Robin who saved Bruce rather than him trying to save them.
/u/wisesonAC: Dick, no question.
9. What are your predictions for season three? Think we'll see Arsenal and Red Hood together?
/u/Shiniholum: I love the entire Bat-Family, I love Dick, I love Tim, I love Jason and I love Damian. Do I want to see Jason appear? Yes. But Jason if Red Hood hasn't been around while everything else was happening would not be in a good place to make friends with any of them not even Arsenal, he would need a lot of development and I would rather see that happen in a relaunched tie-in comic.
/u/wisesonAC: I think the new team we saw at the end of season 2 will take center focus. I doubt they will go down the red hood road but if they did.... I'd be hype for it. I think static will get more shine and aqualad gets a new name. He's out grown "aqualad" tbh
I'd also like to see the universe expand. Seeing other heroes who might not be in the league yet get a cameo or two.
10. Who is your favorite character? Which character do you think the subreddit admires most?
/u/Shiniholum: Oh the subreddit definitely appreciates Lagoon Boy the most!
I kid I kid. Honestly it's a tough pick I would have to say it's a hard tie between Kal'dur and Wally. Maybe Garth or Jaime, but they aren't near the others in my opinion.
/u/wisesonAC: My favorite character is definitely static. And like three others tied for second place (bumblebee, Mal Duncan, and Rocket!)
But the sub mos Def admires dick 😂
11. What are we going to be doing moving forward with this sub and this community?
/u/Shiniholum: First and foremost I think I want to finally record and edit that YouTube video I wanted to make for a while. Originally it was going to be about how this show is unlikely to come back but I want to thank this community I want to share some of these ideas I had for the future community comic ideas and just a big thank you and now I'm very thankful because the tone of that is completely changed; now its a thank you so much because you are the people who made this happen! I'm still gonna share some of the ideas in the community comic and a few funny stories I want to tell about the sub and my time here but the tone has completely changed.
Next order of business is hammering out some new mod responsibilities I'm looking at some new talent because a lot of our mods are absent or vacant and a few mods in there are from when the sub was first created that haven't been a mod in for five years or so now, I just don't like removing them as I feel like it's part of the history of the sub so I'm looking at some new talent. I already added one new mod last night I use or 8flight that he is now our kind of tech and comms guy he'll be running the official discord chat for the sub Reddit. Next is setting up a auto mod to hopefully and potential post discussion threads for the new season when it eventually comes out rather than we have done manually in the past.
And finally the last order of business that I hope to achieve in the next coming months is I'm gonna be putting out some feelers to try and talk to some industry people and the people who are responsible for DC comics in the show by maybe having a sit down with us on the sub, DC is really been turning it around lately and I have high hopes that when they see this community and they see how strong it's been even after the show it ended they will be open to potentially having a sit down maybe an AMA or maybe even allowing the people who were writing the community comic to come in and maybe meet the people who were responsible for the show. It's a pipe dream but I'm going to try.
12. Favorite couple on the show?
/u/wisesonAC: Definitely mal Duncan and Karen Beecher. Aka guardian and bumblebee. They are just the cutest. And I loved how their relationship grew! It was one of the more realistic relationships I've seen in a super hero show.
A close second is definitely wally and Artemis!
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