"The Lost World of Skartaris, Part 1 (of 3)"
Cover Date: June 1997
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Artist: Dan Jurgens (Pencils), George Perez (Finished Art)
Previously...
Well, okay, these Titans are actually half-alien hybrids sent to Earth to help the aliens conquer it, but they decided to become heroes instead. Also, the Ray Palmer Atom is on the team, except he's a teenager due to some shenanigans leftover from Zero Hour. Beyond that, Prysm, the energy chick on the cover, somehow fell into Skartaris.
Plot
Prysm almost gets eaten by a T-Rex, but then the Warlord shows up to save her. He then goes to kill the T-Rex, but Prysm starts whining about not killing animals. Warlord and Prysm then briefly exposit what's going on: They're in a place called Skartaris, where there are T-Rexes and magic and a bunch of other shit that sold great in the '80s but not so much since then.
Meanwhile, the other Titans are trying to find Prysm. It only takes them about five seconds to crash the jet they were flying right into Skartaris.
Prysm and Warlord then talk about what the Warlord's been up to since his solo title was canceled. It turns out that he has a daughter who's missing and he's trying to find her.
The other Titans leave the wreckage of their jet to find some barbarians, and, as you might expect, get into a brawl. The Atom pulls out a sword, which is supposed to be a callback to the time in the early '80s where they decided that the perfect development for a super-hero who was a scientist and had the power to shrink was to become some sort of Conan-esque hero. I guess you had to be there. It does lead to the line of the issue, where Risk, the Titan who would later go on to be famous for having his arm gruesomely ripped off in Infinite Crisis, explains, "Palmer handles that sword as well as Michael Jordan handles a basketball!" Awesome.
 |
| And that's how Risk ruined similes for everyone |
Anyway, some chick with a fur bikini shows up and realizes that the Titans all speak English, just like the Warlord, so they're probably connected to him somehow, and demands they lead her to him.
Meanwhile, Prysm and Warlord get ambushed and knocked out by an evil-looking sorceress. To Be Continued!
Commentary
Well, I'll give DC this much credit, back in the day, they weren't afraid to roll out new characters to try and revive moribund franchises. I mean, it never seemed to work, but they tried.
These are the Jurgens-era Teen Titans. Marv Wolfman had been writing the Titans since 1980, but, by the mid-90s, it had gotten kind of stale, mainly because Wolfman hadn't created a good new character in something like a decade. Eventually, it was decided that the Titans needed to start over.
So they turned to Dan Jurgens, the guy who wrote "The Death of Superman". Jurgens decided that he'd create a brand new team of teenagers and decided to pair them with a de-aged Atom because...I don't know, I guess because he could. There was only one small problem: no one liked the new characters.
Now, in fairness, comic fans hate new characters for the most part. So, for Jurgens to succeed, he would have had to have come up with some pretty fucking awesome characters. The Titans just kind of ended up being rather bland, to the point where Risk getting his arm ripped off in Infinite Crisis was about the biggest exposure any of this group of Titans would have after their title got canceled.
Also, this book has a Warlord team-up, a mere eight years after the Warlord's ongoing ended. The Warlord, in case I never get around to doing an issue of it, was a story about an Air Force pilot who crashed his jet into a hole in the north pole that led him into a world of fantasy. It ran for a 133 issues, which just goes to show you how fucking different things were back then. Quite why Jurgens decided the Titans and Warlord would make a good team-up is beyond me, but I suppose he gets points for creativity.
Looking at the book now, though, it's not so bad. Sure, the dialogue isn't great, but the writing's good enough that you can pick up this book and be able to tell the characters apart, which, in the '90s, wasn't particularly common in team books. The art's pretty great, too. So, it's got a few things going for it. I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy issues from this run, but I'll say that the Jurgens run is far from the worst the Titans franchise has to offer.
Damage Stars ****
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