Chances are, the name Young Justice has come up in your life from some corner of pop culture, but with not one but two major returns for the brand dropping this month, the specifics can be a bit confusing. There`s the cartoon, Young Justice: Outsiders, the third season of the cult classic that`s been six years in the making, and there`s the new Young Justice #1, a comic reviving a long defunct superhero team that was shelved back in the early 2000s.To make matters even weirder, the two properties actually have nothing to do with one another. Sort of. Almost. Look, it`s complicated--but don`t worry, we`re here to help.Here is your beginners guide to the world of Young Justice, and a look into what makes both versions of the story well worth your time.Let`s Talk ComicsThe origin of the Young Justice brand at DC was, unsurprisingly, a comic. Young Justice #1 was published in 1998, springboarding three core characters--Tim Drake aka Robin, Bart Allen aka Impulse, and Conner Kent aka Superboy--into one ongoing story. They weren`t specifically a `team` so much as they were three kids with big name mentors who sort of fell into hanging around with one another--the team stuff just followed naturally. Even the name `Young Justice` fell into their laps as a sort of gag as they wound up practicing some public superheroics and trying to explain to the press afterward that they weren`t a new Junior Justice League, they were `young and it`s just us.`Of course, in the name of slapstick `90s humor the explanation got misheard and the name `Young Justice` wound up sticking. That`s when things truly kicked off and the team began to perform in earnest. Tim, Conner, and Bart were joined by other young superheroes from every corner of the DCU and actually garnered a pretty large following both in terms of in-universe notoriety and real life fans. They weren`t specifically designed to be a new incarnation of the Teen Titans, but that`s largely what they ended up being--and later, the ...
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