YOUNG JUSTICE #40

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Thursday, December 27, 2001

Ah, the joys of "'Twas A Night Before Christmas" spoofswhat could be more entertaining? A big sewing needle in the eye, usually. I generally can't stand spoofs of Clement Moore's poem, mainly because people always seem to do such a poor job of them. However, I'm pleased to say that apart from the sort of occasional metrical errors that make college poetry teachers like myself cringe involuntarily, Peter David has pulled off a good one in YOUNG JUSTICE.

In "The Night Before Doomsday," Robin writes of the Yuletide night when, after being massively sick because of Arrowette's experiments in cooking, he and the other YJers intercept a message from Mordrek of the Great Khund Alliance. Mordrek has decided to ram into the Earth inside a sentient bombbut little does he suspect that a certain jolly old elf is in his flight path. The rest...well, let's just say this is a family-oriented website, and we don't want your kiddies to cry. In the wake of the...um...accident, Young Justice must deliver all the toys that this...um, late person would have delivered. You can imagine the rest. Or you could always buy the book and enjoy it yourself.

David's quirky sense of humor is sometimes at odds with the weightiness of his plot, but here that quirkiness has full rein, dear. And while David's pun are often as horrific as...well, the puns of other writers who shall remain nameless (unless you look up), here they fit right in with the fun and frolic of the poem. Yes, you heard me"frolic." It's Christmas, damnit. When else are you allowed to frolic, I ask you? Besides, you've got to love any poem that rhymes such things as "still-aching bod'" with "Porcelain God" (his caps, not mine), or "Comet" (the reindeer, not the toilet cleanser) and "vomit" (don't ask). No matter what those last two rhyming pairs might have you thinking about this book, it's far funnier than you'd imagine.


Oh, and it's illustrated, too, in true storybook stylethough it's the sort of storybook that MAD MAGAZINE probably would have done back in the 1950sby regular artists Todd Nauck and Lary Stucker. They also use a device that I have to admit I didn't catch the first time through, I was laughing so hard: the poem itself is told on a piece of parchment that gets lower and lower with each page. By the end of the book...well, let's just say there's not much page left for our heroes to appear on. And by the end of the book, you'll be thinking just how silly and perverted the whole thing is. It's silly, all right, and it's pervertedbut it's also a bit of fun.

YOUNG JUSTICE

Grade: A-

Issue: No. 40

Author(s): Peter David, Todd Nauck, Lary Stucker

Publisher: DC

Price: $2.50