Comics You Should Own – ‘Young Heroes in Love’

I’m as surprised as you are!

Young Heroes in Love by Dan Raspler (writer), Dev Madan (penciler, issues #1-3, 5, 7-9, 11-12, 14-15, 17), Mike Manley (penciler, issue #4), Sergio Cariello (penciler, issue #6), Christopher Jones (penciler, issues #9-10, 13, 17), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (penciler, issue #16), Keith Champagne (inker), Ande Parks (inker, issue #4), Sal Buscema (inker, issue #17), Scott Baumann (colorist, issues #1-8), Noelle Giddings (colorist, issues #9-17), and Bill Oakley (letterer).

Published by DC, 17 issues (#1-17), cover dated June 1997 – October 1998.*

* The “One Million” issue is the final issue, coming out a month after issue #17, but as with most of those issues, it doesn’t have much to do with the regular series. If you’re a completist, it’s something to get, and it’s not a bad issue, but except for cameos by two characters, there’s no reason to get it. Oh, and SPOILERS below, but just really the one, which is spoiled in the first issue so it’s not too big of one. But you’ve been warned!

Bonfire. Hard Drive. Frostbite. Junior. Monstergirl. Off-Ramp. Thunderhead. Zip-Kid. LEGENDS, ALL! THEIR NAMES ARE ETCHED IN THE MIGHTY HALL OF HEROES FOR ETERNITY!!!!!!!

Well … maybe not. The Young Heroes, as they’re called in the pages of this comics mag (they’re not just “young heroes” who happen to be “in love,” that’s the name of the team, as well!), might not be legends, but they do star in a – somewhat shockingly – excellent series that obviously ended before Dan Raspler could really explore all he wanted to (as evidenced by the somewhat rushed ending) but still gave us plenty to chew on. In many ways, Young Heroes in Love was ahead of its time, and it’s too bad it doesn’t get more – wait for it – love. Such are the vagaries of comic book publishing!

YHiL came along in the late 1990s, at the beginning of the tail end of DC’s post-Crisis Golden Age, when they were still trying a lot of interesting things and letting creators do what they wanted, but during a time when the reaction had crept in, as perhaps readers weren’t quite ready for so much new stuff or DC execs were getting a bit gun-shy. I would say that the book never stood a chance, but it made it 18 months, which considering its pedigree, isn’t that bad. You had a writer who was usually an editor (YHiL is his only long-running series, as he usually did one-offs), you had a relatively unknown artist who hadn’t been working in the industry that long, and you had eight heroes created from nothing – no legacy heroes, no former sidekicks, just brand-new characters. Raspler and Madan did what they could, but it was a hard sell, and an appearance by Electric Blue Superman in issue #3 (and briefly in #4) and inclusion in the widely-adored “Genesis” crossover did not raise their stock very much. By the time the “DC One Million” thing came around, the book was done, and inclusion in that crossover didn’t move the needle. Perhaps the only interesting thing that came out of it in terms of publishing oddities is that these characters are creator-owned, which probably accounts for why they haven’t become cannon fodder in another of DC’s interminable crossovers. The Young Heroes live on!

If we ignore the mountainous obstacles the book faced to become a success and focus solely on the comic, this becomes a fascinating superhero book with a relatively fresh spin on the superhero comic: YHiL stars superheroes who happen to be superhero fans. This is most notably the case with Bonfire (Annie Fletcher), who knows the history of DC’s heroes inside and out, but it also applies to the others, who geek out when they meet Superman and discuss the DC heroes like, well, fans. It’s a refreshing take on superheroes – granted, most DC heroes geek out when they meet Superman, but because our team is made up of newbies, it just feels more real, because they really don’t have a pedigree so Superman can’t say much to them about their track record (which he always does with more established heroes, leading them to get hearts in their eyes and say things like “Gee, Superman has noticed my career!!!”). In this book, Superman says nice things, but he can’t really comment on their long and storied careers, because they don’t have any. Superman even has to offer them advice when Hard Drive has a meltdown after Supes declines to join the Young Heroes. Raspler does a good job handling the interaction, showing us how anyone would react to meeting Superman without going overboard with it. The idea of new superheroes trying to make it in the world of DC is a good one, though, and Raspler does well with it throughout the series. Some of them are still figuring out their powers, while others are more in control of them, and still others are even hiding some abilities. They don’t reveal their secret identities to each other at first, and some never do. They discuss their costumes and how cool or uncool they are (although this is a positive book, so nobody says anything harsh about another’s threads). They talk about Superman’s “Electric Blue” phase in terms pros and cons. They have a media center so they can monitor where they’re needed (which lets them know about the Genesis Effect and why their powers are acting wonky). In the vein of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League era, Raspler veers away from big fights – the Young Heroes do fight some menaces, but not too many – in order to focus on character development. Perhaps the gambit didn’t work because the book didn’t last too long, but it does make it far more interesting than a standard superhero comic. They fight a mummy in issue #2 and then again in issue #3 (they’re two separate battles, as they think they defeat it in issue #2), they fight Kalibak very briefly in issue #5, they fight a rodent-based supervillain group in issue #6, again very briefly (the so-called Ratpack is, frankly, awesome), they fight the Scarecrow in issue #8, they fight Grundómo, the giant, alliterative, good-smelling jungle lizard in issues #10 and 11 (but the fight doesn’t take up the entire space), they fight Hard Drive in issue #12 (I’ll get back to that), Junior fights a twisted (but non-powered) kidnapper in issue #15, and they fight Monstergirl’s uncle in issue #17 (he’s an alien and it’s more of a test for her than a fight). That’s not really a “good” track record with regard to big fights, especially as the fights rarely dominate the issues. Raspler knows that the book is, after all, a superhero comic, but like the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League, he also knows that superheroes aren’t fighting bad guys all the day long, and it’s usually far more interesting to see what they’re doing when they’re not fighting. So he gives that to us.

But what does that mean? Aren’t these heroes, who are young, in, you know, love? Isn’t this a wall-to-wall bone-a-thon? Well, not quite, although there is more sex than you usually expect to find in a superhero comic. I noted long ago that Justice League Europe was a super-sexy comic, but that came out earlier than this, and DC wasn’t quite ready to make the leap into full-on gettin’ it on, but by 1997, all bets were off! Obviously, this is a “kid-friendly” book, so there’s nothing too shocking or revealing, but Raspler does hook his characters up with some regularity. The interesting thing is that he ties some of that into his first, year-long mega-plot, which is that Hard Drive is kind of the bad guy. He’s telekinetic, but he also has the ability to manipulate people’s emotions, which he does. He uses his powers to convince some of the more reluctant heroes to join the team, which we don’t learn until a bit later, but in issue #1, he convinces Bonfire that she should maybe hook up with Thunderhead instead of Frostbite, to whom she’s drawn in a kind of “fire and ice” situation. Thunderhead digs her, and Hard Drive “pushes” Bonfire toward him. Their relationship remains chaste for a time, but they become a quasi-couple. Raspler does an interesting thing – right after Hard Drive uses his power on Bonfire, which is creepy but only leads to an innocent night on patrol for the two heroes, he ends the issue with Hard Drive in bed with Monstergirl. It’s after sex, and while Monstergirl seems to be the kind of person who would leap into bed with someone like Hard Drive, we can’t help wondering if he used his powers on her, and it makes the scene far creepier. In issue #2, Junior finds out about them, and Hard Drive makes him forget it because Junior thinks something hinky is going on and Hard Drive doesn’t want him talking about it with the others (although Junior’s rationale for suspicion is that Hard Drive and Monstergirl just met, so why are they already having sex, which is a refreshingly naïve attitude to have, it seems to me). Meanwhile, Bonfire and Frostbite are still drawn to each other, despite Hard Drive’s powers, so Raspler is slowly setting up a love triangle. In issue #4, Hard Drive “zaps” Bonfire again because she’s bonding with Frostbite, and he’s a little less delicate about it. At the end of that issue, Frostbite and Junior find Bonfire and Thunderhead making out in a supply closet, which pisses Frostbite off. Meanwhile, Junior thinks Zip-Kid, who joins the team in issue #4, is pretty groovy, mainly because she’s the same size as he is. However, she’s in a serious relationship, and it turns out she can shrink and usually goes around normal-sized, while Junior is stuck as a tiny person. It makes him a bit upset. Off-Ramp figures out he’s been brainwashed in issue #5, so Hard Drive has to do it again, which isn’t terribly nice. Bonfire also seems to remember what Hard Drive did at the end of issue #5, but before she can tell anyone, the issue ends and in issue #6, Raspler doesn’t follow through (which is odd). By the end of that issue, Bonfire seduces Thunderhead (Raspler and Cariello hilariously throw in a panel of someone tossing a condom wrapper away), but on the final page of the issue, we find out it’s really … Monstergirl, who originally could only change from her human form to one other form – a monster – but can now shift to any shape, including, it seems, Bonfire’s. It’s a dramatic if problematic way to end the first semi-arc of the book (“it was a different time” comes into play here, as Raspler never gets into Thunderhead’s ignorance about who he was having sex with – Monstergirl admits it to Bonfire but not him, and even Bonfire doesn’t seem too put out by it).

Issue #7 is a nice issue, as Raspler gives the team the week off and they go their separate ways. It’s another acknowledgement that these people have lives outside of superheroing, and it’s a fun issue. Thunderhead tries to talk to Bonfire about their night together, but of course she has no idea what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t figure that out. Off-Ramp gets dumped by his latest girlfriend by a “Dear John” letter, while we meet Zip-Kid’s boyfriend, Lou, whom Raspler writes as kind of a stereotypical Mafia guy (it turns out he is a hood, but we don’t know that for a while). He’s very encouraging about her time in the Young Heroes, but Raspler makes sure to throw in some warning signs about Lou, as well. I’ll get back to Lou and Stacy (Zip-Kid), as their relationship is fascinating. At the end of the issue, Off-Ramp heads to Italy to check in on his infant son. Curiouser and curiouser! We find out in the next issue that he gets along decently with the mother, which is nice, but they’re not together. Meanwhile, Thunderhead is puzzled by Bonfire’s seeming ignorance about their night, and he tells Off-Ramp about it while Frostbite is listening in. Later in issue #8, Frostbite talks to Bonfire and kisses her. That leads to issue #9, in which they spend some time alone – Raspler implies by the end that they have sex, but prior to that, they’re just flirting or foreplaying, and it’s a charming diversion from the main story. Thunderhead goes to Monstergirl to talk about Bonfire, but before she can say anything, he gets grumpy about his whining and leaves, so we’re not sure if she would come clean. Issues #10 and #11 are mainly about Grundómo, although Frostbite and Bonfire do explore their “link” a bit before the Off-Ramp zips in, grabs Bonfire, and leaves Frostbite to wonder what the heck happened (the team needs Bonfire and doesn’t realize she’s with Frostbite, so they don’t grab him). They’re reunited in issue #12, and that’s when Hard Drive’s schemes fall apart and the team finds out he’s been manipulating them. He tells them he can’t make up feelings, only encourage ones that are there, which is one way for Raspler to make him not a complete evil dude, and by the end of the issue, he realizes his mistake and willingly goes into a sanitorium, which is another interesting move by Raspler. At the end of the issue, Bonfire worries that he even put her thoughts about Frostbite in her head, but Frostbite tells her not to worry about it. He’s chill, that dude. Another interesting moment comes in issue #13, when Frostbite is trying to keep Off-Ramp on the team, because he’s Frostbite’s ride back to the north country. It’s a funny conversation:

Raspler is laying some groundwork, but for the moment, it’s just a slightly uncomfortable exchange. The next few issues are devoted to the weird kidnapper and who will lead the team, but in issue #16, there’s a weird moment as Junior appears to be spying on Frostbite and Bonfire getting busy (it’s unclear what he’s doing, if he just stumbled upon them or what, but he certainly doesn’t immediately give them privacy), and he realizes that Monstergirl is spying, too, and that she can shrink. Monstergirl has just learned that she’s an alien (her “the Kents reveal Kal-El’s origin” moment goes a bit differently, in hilarious fashion), and she’s not feeling great, so she seduces Junior. It’s honestly the sexiest moment in the book, because Raspler and Wojtkiewicz linger on the seduction longer than they do for any other hook-up in the book. Given that Junior has no powers – he’s just small – and often feels excluded when powers are needed and Monstergirl just learned about her origin, there’s a nice sense of desperation in the sex, as it’s both affirming and the tiniest bit sad. Raspler then picks up on the thread of Frostbite and Off-Ramp, as Frostbite comes right out tells Off-Ramp that they’re attracted to each other, but Off-Ramp doesn’t want to hear it. In true caveman fashion, Off-Ramp gets mad, but there’s that “doth protest too much” vibe, as well. In the final issue, Raspler has a lot to wrap up, but he manages to give Frostbite and Off-Ramp a good coda. Off-Ramp has calmed down and stopped being a douchebag, and he tells Frostbite that he’s definitely attracted to him, but he doesn’t want to hurt Bonfire. Frostbite tells him that it’s over between he and Bonfire, as she’s more interested in the idea of being in love. Bonfire has already moved on to Thunderhead, who’s a better match for her anyway. As always in this series, Raspler manages to address a lot of the interpersonal issues with a bit more maturity than we find in many superhero comics. Frostbite and Bonfire had their thing, but it ran its course. They both move on and get happy endings. (In the One Million issue, Frostbite and Off-Ramp are the only characters from the regular series to appear, Frostbite because he’s an elf who lives a long time and Off-Ramp because he’s figured out how to time-travel. It’s another nice moment, and they’re obviously not together, but they can talk like old friends.)

The darker reflection of the charming romances in the series is the bad one that Raspler presents us with, that of Zip-Kid and Lou. It’s a very well-done portrayal of a bad relationship – we’d call it “toxic” today, but that wasn’t really in the vernacular back in the late 1990s (it was around, but not in use as much as it is today). It’s clear, too, that Raspler is writing it as bad (this isn’t a hindsight thing), which makes it all the more fascinating, because no one calls it out, and it’s clear that it’s partly because they don’t know too much about the relationship and also, back in 1997, they might not think it’s a bad relationship. Stacy and Lou are a compelling time capsule in many ways – Raspler knows it’s not a great relationship, but at this time, the external trappings of the relationship were fine, so even the women on the team might not see the warning signs. It’s excellent how Raspler writes it. He begins, as I noted, in issue #7. Raspler introduces us to Lou in a brief two-page scene. On the first page, he seems like a good dude – sure, he looks like a stereotypical Italian hood, but he dotes on Stacy and asks her how she’s doing … you know, normal “boyfriend” stuff. She begins telling him about her anxiety about being Zip-Kid, and he lets her talk for a bit, but then interrupts her to order wine. Madan draws her with a grumpy look on her face, but she says nothing. Lou begins to undermine her joy a bit by telling her that the heroes might not be trustworthy, especially Junior (possibly because when she’s Zip-Kid, she’s his size, so Lou sees him as a bigger threat than the others). When she tries to tell him that Junior is all right, he interrupts her again to warn her that Junior might go crazy at any moment (how he “knows” this, he doesn’t say) and also, of course, that he, Lou, will have to “teach him some manners” if he makes a move on Stacy. It’s not the worst conversation in the world, but it does have some warning signs. Raspler does a good job showing, in just a few brief words, that Lou considers Stacy his property and that he’s willing to gaslight her to get his way. Not good, Lou, not good!

Lou reappears in issue #9, after the Young Heroes have tangled with Scarecrow and almost completely gotten their butts kicked. Stacy is not doing well, and Lou senses it and comforts her. Good job, Lou! Of course, he comforts her like this, which is one of those “romantic” things that, when looked at just a little bit differently and based on our brief knowledge of Lou, sounds less “romantic” and more “controlling”:

Stacy does not quit the group, and we don’t see Lou again until issue #13, when she surprises him on the phone while he’s talking with “Paulie” (in issue #9, as seen above, he’s on the phone with “Vince” – Raspler really wants us to infer that there’s some Mafia stuff going on). He blows up at her, both for interrupting him and for standing in front of the window with her costume on, and she takes off, weeping as she goes. She goes back to the Young Heroes’ headquarters, where Thunderhead and Junior are both nice to her, perking her up, and we think she’s ready to dump Lou. That’s not the way the real world works, however, and when she goes home, Lou apologizes profusely and proposes. It’s a clever moment by Raspler, because he’s showing all the sides of Lou’s personality and making us wonder about him. Did he just momentarily lose his temper, or is he an angry dude who’s pretending he’s not? Does he really love Stacy, or is he just interested in “possessing” her? It’s very interesting. Of course, the issue ends with the question, not the answer, because that’s the way fiction works! We don’t have long to wait to find out what happens, because Stacy shows up at HQ in issue #14 with the good news – maybe? – of her engagement. The team gets sidetracked a bit by an adventure (I mean, it’s still a superhero book, after all), but in issue #15, we find Stacy out at a bar with Lou, celebrating. Raspler must have known the writing was on the wall with regard to the book’s fate, because he does speed the plot along just a little. We only get one page in issue #15, and we meet a business associate of Lou, who is obviously some kind of criminal. Stacy doesn’t get it, though, and even offers him help from the Young Heroes if he ever needs it. Oh, Stacy. Even Lou seems to be back on their side, although he still doesn’t trust Junior. In issue #16, we get a very fascinating conversation between Junior and Zip-Kid when Stacy tells him she’s meeting Lou’s boss:

It’s a terrific scene because Raspler keeps Stacy bubbly, as befits her personality, but it’s clear she doesn’t have much self-esteem, and she feeds off Lou’s controlling love of her for her self-worth. Raspler might not have needed to be so overt with it, but this isn’t too obvious, either. The implication is that she was raised this way, and she’s simply repeating what women have been told subliminally throughout history, and it’s quite a heavy thought for Raspler to put in a superhero comic. It’s certainly appreciated, but it’s also too bad he was never able to go anywhere with Stacy and her problems. Still, it’s neat that we get even this scene.

The final scenes of the Stacy-Lou romance begin at dinner. First, Zip-Kid shows off her ability, which the many men eating dinner with them are impressed by – it seems like they’re going to trick Stacy into committing some kind of crime, but it’s not clear. Lou tries to keep her out of it – again, Lou is a good character because he’s not completely a douchebag – but his bosses want her to come along wherever they’re going. They arrive at a warehouse full of trucks, but a cop pulls up and wants to know what’s going on. Zip-Kid actually vouches for them, which placates the policeman. Lou’s boss finally lets Lou take her home, but before they can leave, a rival of Lou’s boss pulls up, and Lou knows something bad is about to go down. He tells Stacy to get out of there and not to look back, and she does. After some pages with the other heroes, we’re back at Lou’s house, and Stacy is a bit freaked out. Lou is wounded somehow, and Stacy thinks they should break off the engagement because he’s obviously not telling her everything. She says he doesn’t respect her – he might love her, but he doesn’t respect her. He, of course, thinks that Junior has been putting “ideas” into her head, so he storms out to head to the Young Heroes’ HQ so he can beat Junior up. He starts his car … which explodes. Oh dear. Rest in peace, Lou Piccone: You were a jerk, but you probably loved Stacy in your own warped way. Stacy comes to terms with his death as best she can in issue #17 – Raspler introduces a weird bit where she seems to have a split personality, or at least problems keeping her “civilian” identity and “superhero” identity in the same box, but obviously, that never goes anywhere. She confides in Junior about Lou and how he was a career criminal and everyone he was hanging out with on that night is dead, which is a bit bleak for this book, but they were all mobsters anyway. She doesn’t start a romance with Junior or anything, but at least she’s beginning to understand how bad Lou was for her. Raspler does a nice job with this relationship – it feels real, despite the superheroic aspect of it and the clichéd Mafia part of it. Lou wants to control Stacy and Stacy lets him – to a degree – because that’s how they were both raised and shaped by the societies in which they live. Stacy has to figure things out on her own, and it takes a cataclysmic event for it to sink in. It’s not a good romance, certainly, but it is far more realistic than the ones we usually get in superhero books.

While there’s quite a bit to say about the writing on the book, there’s not too much to say about the artwork. It’s not that it’s bad, because it’s not, it’s that Madan and the guest artists aren’t really called on to do anything too spectacular, and it tends to be a slightly text-heavy book anyway, so it’s hard for them to find places to make a mark. Despite the fact that it’s a superhero book, there aren’t, as I noted, a lot of big, epic fights, which is where artists can really cut loose. Madan designs a cool-looking “mummy” in issue #2 (it looks like a mummy, certainly, but it calls itself by a German name, which is odd), but ol’ Totenjaeger doesn’t last very long, which is too bad. Jones is the guest artist when Grundómo debuts, so it’s unclear if he or Madan designed him, but they both have fun drawing him (putting him in purple pants à la Fin Fang Foom and giving him a belt buckle that’s shaped like a “G”) as he wreaks havoc in the rain forest. When the Young Heroes get put into a manga in issue #14, Madan has a good time “manga-izing” them. When Monstergirl’s uncle shows up, Madan and Jones do well making him both horrific but also not too scary, as he’s not exactly there to fight Monstergirl. Really, the only time Madan gets to cut loose a bit is in issue #8, when the team fights the Scarecrow. He draws an excellent Scarecrow, as he’s all long-limbed and herky-jerky, and when he screams, Madan makes sure his stiched-over mouth doesn’t open but forms a terrifying maw. When the team confronts him, he makes them experience their fears, and Madan does wonders with that, leading to this page, in which Hard Drive is really not enjoying himself:

This kind of work shows that Madan could do more, but that’s not the kind of book it is. What he does do is give us interesting characters who interact well with each other. They’re all very Nineties, of course, but they’re still well done. They have different body types, different hair styles, and different faces, and Madan does a good job showing their personalities simply by how they relate to each other. This is evident from the first scene, in which Thunderhead, with his windblown, flowing, blond hair, is more laid back than Off-Ramp, who’s aping Wolverine a bit with his scruffy sideburns and his oh-so-Nineties bandanna, which hides his eyes. Monstergirl is black-haired, which is a long-time signifier of eeeeeevil, but in this book, it’s more that she’s edgier than Bonfire (who is, naturally, red-headed and far more vivacious than Monstergirl) and Zip-Kid (the innocent blonde). Frostbite is very much coded as gay or, at least, bisexual, with his longer-than-most-manly-men ponytail (you could have a ponytail if you were a manly man in the Nineties, but it couldn’t be too, too long) and his nipple piercings, so when we find out that he’s interested in Off-Ramp, Madan has visually clued us in already. (Obviously, Frostbite’s design signifying bisexuality is a stereotype, but that’s the way it was – and, sometimes, still is.) Hard Drive is the most traditionally “superheroic” of the group (his face is a bit squarer than Thunderhead’s, and his nose isn’t quite as bent), so his manipulation of his teammates and his eventual breakdown hit the reader a bit harder, as we’ve been subliminally trained to think of his type as the “hero” (which has been subverted quite a lot over the years, even before this, but it’s still a trope, which is why it tends to work when writers subvert it). Madan does a nice job juxtaposing Hard Drive’s looks with Raspler’s actions, and it works well. Obviously, in a book set in the regular DC Universe but one that deals with characters having sex, Madan and the other artists have to walk a fine line, and they do a good job with that. The sex scenes are PG, of course, but they’re still pretty steamy. In issue #9, when Frostbite and Bonfire go off and do some serious flirting that leads to (presumably) sex, Madan gets to draw full-pagers of them touching each other without any words, and it’s well done:

Just the expressions on their faces, moving from playful to serious to coy to joyous, are excellent, and Madan implies a great deal with the pictures without being explicit. In issue #16, Wojtkiewicz gets to be a bit more explicit (still PG, of course!), and he messes up Bonfire’s hair a bit to show that she and Frostbite are, you know, having some fun:

He also draws a tryst between Junior and Monstergirl, which is also erotic without being obscene. The artists on the book do a good job walking that line:

As you can see, the art is good, but not amazing, and it’s also clear that it’s partly because of the tone of the book and partly because of how Raspler writes the story. The artists have to be good at the smaller stuff – the way the characters look at each other, in a series that rests on its relationships – and generally, Madan and the others do a good job with that. Had this been a more bombastic superhero comic, perhaps the art wouldn’t have worked as well, and if a more bombastic superhero artist worked on it, perhaps the interpersonal stuff wouldn’t have worked as well. It’s good, solid art, and it fits the tone of the book nicely, and that’s what we need.

If you think Young Heroes in Love has been collected, you live in a far more off-beat and interesting world than I do. I can believe that DC has forgotten they’ve ever published this, much less thought about collecting it, and while a nice 18-issue hardcover (or 17, if you want to skip the One Million issue) would be a nifty package, it’s probably never going to happen. As I noted, Raspler and Madan own the characters, so perhaps that’s part of it – even if DC did want to collect this, they’d have to pay the creators, and that’s just a bridge too far for them! Even so, the single issues aren’t expensive and aren’t rare, so this is probably an easy series to collect. It’s definitely worth it. Young Heroes in Love is a strange curio, one that is far more mature than we usually see superheroes get – remember, ultra-violence doesn’t necessarily mean you’re mature! – and takes the concept of sexy superheroes in a fascinating direction. It’s very entertaining, has quite a bit on its mind, and even today feels a bit ahead of its time. That’s not a bad combination!

You can take a look at the archives if you’re so inclined. We’re so close to the end of the alphabet! Won’t it be fun to start over?!?!?