Maybe I'm being a little too generous by giving the writing a 4, but I can't help but love the quipping that this series does so well. Some people like entertainment sprinkled with (pro-)pop culture references; I like entertainment that sprinkled with complaints about pop culture. For example:

"This lifestyle holds no meaning." "Why do you film us when we do NOTHING...?"

"That's an existential question ... Save it for the cameras."

I can't help but snicker over lines like that. Themes of media-saturation and cult-of-celebrity have been done before, but at least they're given a somewhat original* critical bent in this series.

The behind-the-scenes villains, the media-manipulators funding the Team, provide an interesting perspective on what's going on. This series isn't just about the Super Young Team bouncing around and rolling out mock-ironic one-liners about how goofy and hectic newfound fame can be. No, Joe Casey also lets us in on the not-so-innocent side of the equation: namely, the fact that very conniving, shadowy forces are often behind the most light-hearted pop constructs, there to use the marketing to their advantage, to turn the culture their way and into their control, no matter who gets hurt or mentally screwed-up in the process. Just read what some of the villains say:

"Getting them on TV is a good bet. One season and they won't be able to discern reality..."

"Anything to keep the focus on THEM and not on their homeland." "This generation, they barely question their environment. As long as their pleasure centers are being adequately stimulated."

Joe Casey knows how the game works and how the gullible minds of the masses (that means you, probably, whether you want to admit it or not--we're all a bit brainwashed these days) are manipulated, given instant gratification at the expense of free will, basically. Also, I caught the subtext in this issue about how bad capitalism at its worst can lead to zombifying collectivism (not sure I would call it "socialism", as Casey intimates; not that I'm a fan of socialism, but it just seems incorrect in this instance). The point isn't pushed far in the issue, which is as it should be. This comic knows its limits. It doesn't try to do too much or seem more important than it is. The casual reader might think that there's not a lot to this series, nothing behind the surface, and that the Young Team are paper-thin, but to me it seems that there really is quite a bit right there on the surface, if you know and enjoy the stuff that Casey's pointing at, rolling his eyes at and laughing about.

The series isn't perfect, though. This doesn't provide a revelatory indictment of society to anywhere near the extent that certain dystopic novels of the past have done. It's just a little six-issue comic series that offers a bit of insight. And it's somewhat shottily drawn, too. The artist of the first issue was markedly better, but the art of the current issue isn't horrible by any means. And the subplot with "OXY-gen" was a bit much: it seems like the stuff with Aquazon as spokesmodel could have been cut in half without losing any content. And the ending came on a real dull note: it was basically "Let's see what this drug you just got introduced to does to this character whose well-being you don't really care about--and hey you're not even going to see a hint of what the drug will do--so, no real cliffhanger, just...'the end' all of a sudden." The "Twitter"-boxes are also unnecessary at this point. They were cute once. Now they're annoying. Every time I see one, I think, "You want me to think this cheap gag is still interesting, relevant, cool. It really isn't." Same way I feel about Matt Fraction re-introducing the X-Men in every issue, with lame irreverent jokey text blurbs.

I like this series, though. It's a little different. Sort of original*, which is really admirable to me in this day and age.

*As the Doctor in this issue says, "You'd be surprised at what it takes to be original in this game."

P.S. D'oh! Originally I thought this was written by Joe *Kelly* not Joe *Casey*. I think I replaced all the errors. I haven't read anything by Joe Kelly or Joe Casey in like ten years, so I got the two guys with similar names mixed up. Apologies to those who read this review before I fixed that up.