I could bore you all with a long ramble about what this blog is, but here's a one sentence version: I grew up with DC Comics in what was called the 'Post-Crisis' continuity, and now they're gone and I am compelled by nostalgia to look at random comics from that era (1986-2011). Hmm...kind of a run-on, there.
Team Titans #23
"Secrets in the Sand"
Cover Date: August 1994
Writers: Jeff Jensen and Phil Jimenez
Pencils: Terry Dodson(!)
Plot
The Team Titans are in Qurac, a country some DC writer made up primarily so he could blow it to bits with a nuclear bomb as part of some earlier story. At the moment, the Titans are holed up in some sort of shelter on the run from the survivors of the nuclear fallout, who have mutated into some sort of beast-men, only to be confronted with their teammate Redwing, who has mutated herself into some sort of bird-person.
Being turned into a bird person freaks Redwing the hell out, but gets calmed down when her brother, the oddly-named Prester Jon, injects her with tranquilizers. Some chick named Chimera exposits that the beast men are the result of a 'radioactive mutant plague.'
But wait, some other woman then uses her magical powers to discover the REAL reason people are turning into beast-men, it turns out that an alien spacecraft landed in Qurac. At that point, Circe, who in this continuity is an evil sorceress, found out that she could use the blood of the aliens to turn people into said beast-men. Got it?
No, you don't, because that's not the real reason for the beast-man plague sweeping the Persian Gulf region! Remember how the alien blood could turn people into beast-men? Well, some of the aliens escaped the crash, only to wander off into the nearby desert and die, but then a nuclear bomb destroyed Qurac, which vaporized the remains of the aliens, which, when combined with the nuclear radiation, created the plague that's creating all of the beast-men.
At this point, Chimera declares that the spreading of the illness is due to tainted black market oil that is somehow being distributed from irradiated ruins of Qurac, and this plot is somehow making less sense with every successive page. They really should stop trying to explain things.
Anyway, the beast men finally get around to attacking the Team Titans, which turns into a stalemate, as the Team Titans don't want to kill these poor victims of the alien-radioactive-mutant-virus. Chimera suggests offering them the chance to leave for another magical dimension, and opens a portal. Prester Jon, who, like the reader, is completely out of patience by this point, and just drives all of the beast-men into the dimension by force, much to the irritation of Chimera.
At this point, Redwing, seemingly out of nowhere announces that her mutation wasn't caused by the virus, but was 'natural' and irreversible, and that everyone has to get used to it.
Anyway, the Team Titans head home and get into a bit of scrap with their government liaison, which ends abruptly when team member Killowatt threatens to brutally murder the man before the rest of the team members stop him and realize that something is terribly wrong. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure watches the Team Titans from behind a tree. To Be Continued!
Comments
The Team Titans, for those who don't remember, were a team of teenage super-heroes from the future who traveled back in time to prevent the rise of a super-powered tyrant named "Lord Chaos". So, they go back in time to before Lord Chaos was born and kill him. But it turns out that Lord Chaos is the unborn child of Donna Troy, and, long-story short, they manage to strip the unborn Lord Chaos of his powers and thus prevent their dark future from coming to pass. And all of that happens in the first three issues, which kind of left the book adrift for its remaining year and a half of existence.
This comic is basically impossible to understand outside of the context it was created. After all, exactly zero of the characters featured in this issue are still in continuity, and, in fact, most of the characters would be wiped from existence within one month of this comic's release. Back in the day, X-Force was big. Really big. And that Titans? Well, George Perez had moved on, but Marv Wolfman was still writing the main book, so, someone must have thought, "Hey, what would happen if we jammed X-Force and Teen Titans together? Also, is there some sort of way we could release five different copies of the first issue to make more money?"
As for this issue itself, well, the primary plot is moved along by the atomized remains of aliens somehow turning into a virus that mutates people into furries. That's probably not apt to be much of a classic, especially if the only way a writer can figure out to relay all of that information to the reader is to literally just have a background character suddenly discover that knowledge from basically out of nowhere.
Bonus Material
Ongoing Subplot Roundup!
1. Who was the shadowy figure?
2. Why did Killowatt suddenly want to kill that guy?
Two questions with one answer. Since the book was winding down anyway, DC decided to fold its conclusion into Zero Hour. So, they decided that the Team Titans were actually sleeper agents created by Monarch, one of the villains of the crossover, in order to help him conquer the world. Killowatt's reaction was his programming showing through. In the end, pretty much all of the team ends up being erased from existence during Zero Hour.
The top three pieces of dialogue least likely to be spoken by a teenager from the future:
3. "Kinda like the Andromeda Strain, eh, P.J.?"
2. "All right, you two, quit the Nixon-Krushchev routine, I've got news!"
1. "Okay, Quincy, do your best Jack Klugman and unravel the little medical mystery you postulated back there."
Damage Stars: *****
A note on Damage Stars:
In the mid '90s, DC introduced a new character named Damage who managed to embody all of the sins of the Post-Crisis era in one character. Convoluted continuity? Check. An unnecessary amount of angst masquerading as character development? Check. A terrible, terrible name? Check. So, he is the standard by which I'll be measuring all of these books. More stars doesn't necessarily mean a book is bad, it just means it isn't very good.
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