Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #284: The Young Heroes

I have a subscription to DC Universe, but have only recently taken advantage of the huge library of DC back issues in there.  For the most part, that’s meant rereading Superman: Red Son after seeing the recent animated adaptation.  But then I remembered a briefly-run DC book from the late 90s.  A buddy had been a fan at the time, so I asked him how much he remembered.  Not much, it turned out.  However, I thought to check DC Universe, and my friend and I were both surprised to see the full 18 run of said series was on there because this particular series is actually creator copyrighted while still being set in the DC Universe.  Heck, that means I can actually check out the series in the form of actually reading it and not just what I can gleam either from my own memory or from Wikipedia.

The series?  Young Heroes in Love.  The characters, well, the Young Heroes.

Young Heroes in Love, according to my friend at the time, suffered due in part to an admittedly terrible title.  In reality, the series was something of a YA romantic comedy with superhero elements.  It ran for 18 issues, the last of which was the One Million tie-in issue with the DC One Million crossover.  That was the only issue I read back in the day since I read all the One Million issues, and I didn’t know who any of those characters were so it meant nothing to me.

Anyway, who were the Young Heroes?  From the looks of things, they worked out of Connecticut in a warehouse the superwealthy team leader and organizer gave them in the first issue.  The team was made up of eight characters, all new.

• Hard Drive (Jeremy Horton), a telekinetic with some minor mind control powers who really wanted the team to gel and brought them all together
• Monstergirl (Rita Lopez), originally only able to change between a human and single monster form, she later turned out to be an alien with more shapeshifting powers than she thought, and was a longtime friend to Off-Ramp and Thunderhead
• Off-Ramp (George Sloan)  could open portals, often driving his car through them for team transportation purposes, but he could also use them to find information by looking around places
• Thunderhead (Scott Tucker), a former rocker whose sudden superstrength robbed him of his ability to play guitar, he developed some electrical powers on top of the muscle after the Genesis event
• Bonfire (Anne Fletcher), a pyrokinetic, she was a meta-fangirl who aspired to journalism
• Frostbite was a snow-elf from the icy wilds of Canada with ice- and temperature-based powers
• Junior (Ben Newton), the scientist of the group, technically didn’t have any superpowers but a lab accident left him six inches tall
• Zio-Kid (Stacy Taglia), a late joiner, she could shrink and, when smaller, fly at high speeds and fire energy blasts

Hard Drive brought the team together out of what appears to be a genuine desire to make an actual superhero team, but he had some secrets.  For one, despite the fact Monstergirl appeared to be meeting him for the first time with Off-Ramp and Thunderhead in the first issue, it turned out the two were involved with each other romantically.  He also arranged the accident that allowed him to meet Off-Ramp, though he did so in a way that meant no one got hurt.

That, in and of itself, is what if anything redeems Hard Drive.  He decided early on that Bonfire should be romantically linked to Thunderhead instead of the more compatible Frostbite because, he though, Bonfire would leave the team if she and Frostbite got together.  That wasn’t true, but Hard Drive still believed it.  Hard Drive also reacted like an angry child when Superman politely declined joining up.  When Junior discovered Monstergirl and Hard Drive had known each other longer, Hard Drive made Junior forget the whole thing.  Same with Off-Ramp later.

That said, the idea seemed to be Hard Drive could never make anyone do anything that, deep down, they didn’t want to do anyway.  His secret was out in issue 12, after which he went away until the last issue to get help and Monstergirl and Bonfire shared leadership duties.

Truth be told, the series had a lot of potential.  Off-Ramp, for example, was a member of some kind of clan of travelers with similar powers while having an infant son in Italy.  Hard Drive left behind a special guitar so Thunderhead could play again when Hard Drive left the team.  Zip-Kid was dating a guy with mob leanings.  And when the team did fight a supervillain, the fights were mostly short and somewhat comedic, even with established DC bad guys.

Perhaps most interest for a series that ran between 1997 and 1998, the series even set up a same-sex couple when Frostbite came out as bi, implying a hook-up with male teammate Off-Ramp in the One Million issue.

Will the Young Heroes return?  Doubtful.  The series creators, Dan Rasplar and Dev Madan, actually own the copyright to the art and stories, so DC would need their OK for any return appearances.  And yet, the book exists in its entirety on DC Universe, a fact that does not extend to similar creator-owned DC books like Keith Giffen’s Vext or The Heckler or Chris Claremont’s Sovereign Seven.  Young Heroes in Love is actually a fun series, nothing great, but well-done and fairly appropriate for a younger audience…well, except maybe the issue where Frostbite and Bonfire hook up.

Yeah, that all happened.

Why haven’t I done Vext or the Heckler yet?