Adaptation Sneak (or "How To Screw Up A Perfectly Good Concept")

I'd like to think I'm already on record for disapproving of, lacking a better term, "adaptation sneak". This is what I call it when an adaptation basically exerts any level of influence over a given comic book or other type of franchise, such that the enterprise changes in some way or another to accommodate the adaptation. Adaptation sneak. It's not necessarily bad... it just usually is.

You can see it in a lot of Batman ads in DC comics right now. "The Dark Knight comes back to Gotham City", "The Dark Knight embarks a new adventure", "The Dark Knight has crabs (issue includes free collectible lice comb!!!)" and all that. Adaptation sneak.

Or another one was when Superman comics regularly featured an embossed S-emblem on the shirt starting in mid 2006. Once it became apparent that Singerman 2- Man of Pleather wasn't ever going to happen, you began noticing the embossed S going away. But the embossed crapola basically started only because of the Singerman hackjob, discolored bikini of a costume. Adaptation sneak.

Well. Same thing seems to be happening to Young Justice. I liked YJ, the comic, because it was a series that was never at risk of taking itself too seriously. It seemed to be a sort of loose riff on the concept of the Teen Titans (albeit much updated and using the then modern incarnations of those characters) but it always kept a believable sense of drama going under the humor.

Sadly, the YJ comic has been marginalized quite a bit over the years, arguably starting with Arrowette. Frankly, I like Cissie King-Jones, both as a general concept (a not-too-obvious metaphor about stage mothers) and as a specific character. She sort of got tossed out the window when Kevin Smith brought in Mia though. Not because anything was wrong with Cissie, you understand, but because, hey, it's Kevin Smith and he f**king sells books so to hell with the better character, we're going to let Silent Bob ruin everything.

So there's that. And then there's the cancellation of YJ itself. The way I've always heard it, it was basically axed because a certain Superman rebooting/DC Entertainment honcho/occasionally SV-writing/Barry Allen-retconning/Hal Jordan-stroking puketard wanted to bring back the Titans using their then modern incarnations, and YJ kinda sorta stood out like a turd in a swimming pool.

But whatever, YJ was still the taster's blend of late 90's/early 2000's goodness. If you knew about it, you knew about it.

*sigh* But now, the brand itself is getting diluted by being basically remade as Teen Titans-lite. Adaptation sneak. Granted, this Arrowette may well be Cissie for all I know... but it doesn't matter anyway because she's apparently not even a regular member of the animated version of the team!

Impulse? Nope, Kid Flash. And hell, it's not even Bart, it's Wally!

Robin? Dick Grayson. Tim Who?

Apparently it's not anybody's fault that it ain't Wonder Girl on the show but this still rankles me. Still, I'll let it slide.

Miss Martian is only there for PC gender balancing. "Let's add another chick!"

And, of course, you've gotta have someone from Atlantis on the team... not because there was such a member in the original YJ book but because, hey, that's how the JLA does it!

Worse, from what I understand, seems the zany fun that defined the original YJ comic is gone. This is basically the Junior Young Teen Titans League of America. More or less, this a teen version of the JLU. Which, sorry, isn't what the original Young Justice was.

All of the above makes me wonder why in the hell they're even calling this thing Young Justice at this point. Look, if you make a cartoon about a team with Ben Grimm, Cyclops, the Silver Surfer, Daredevil and the Punisher, hey, you can CALL it the Avengers until you're blue in the face BUT IT DOESN'T MAKE IT THE MF'ING AVENGERS!!

Anyway. My point is that Young Justice, the REAL Young Justice, is probably going to be forgotten now. The subsequent comic book version of the animated show seems to follow the same basic tone as the YJ show itself.

If Marvel is The House of Ideas, DC is The Crematorium of Ideas. On that basis, I fully expect a Young Justice comic book for the mainstream DCU to come along soon that is basically more or less this animated show given horrifying legitimacy in the mainstream continuity, removing the final vestige of the comic book that allegedly spawned all of this f**king nonsense.

This is adaptation sneak. At it's worst.

I enjoy the show for what it is. I just think "Young Justice" was easier to title it than "Junior Young Teen Titans League of America".