Teen Titans (v3) #2

Teen Titans (v3) #2
 "Child's Play"
Cover Date: October 2003
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Mike McKone

Previously...

DC took their fifth shot at trying to resurrect the Titans as an A-list franchise.  For sake of reference, here are the previous four listed with the fatal flaw that did them in:

1. New Titans (1994)  (Used Damage as cast member)
2. Teen Titans (1996)  (Was generally terrible, had nothing to do with Titans to begin with)
3. Titans (1998) (Used Damage as cast member)
4. Titans (2000) (I like Tom Peyer, but I'm about the only one)

Anyway, so DC turned to Geoff Johns to sort it out. Johns decided to emphasize the 'teen' in Teen Titans, showing these young heroes growing into adulthood and finding their place in world. A noble goal. So Johns held over a few of the older Titans as mentors, roped in Superboy, Robin, Impulse, and Wonder Girl, and set them up in San Francisco. The idea was that the teen heroes would live their normal lives during the week, and then all hang out together on weekends. I'm not sure what happened if a supervillain struck San Francisco during the work week. I'd assume the police would show up and politely ask them to please reschedule at such time as the Teen Titans would be available to contest them.

In Teen Titans #1, the team had assembled, and they were all bummed because being a teenager is so hard. Also, Superboy found out that his human half came from Lex Luthor, which must have almost seemed like a good idea at the time.

Plot

Deathstroke is chilling in his pad, admiring the mounted head of his former valet, Wintergreen, and discussing how 'Deathstroke hunts alone'. Personally, I've never understood the appeal of Deathstroke, but hell, he's the biggest name villain the Titans ever had, so you might as well throw him out there.

At stately Titans Tower, Superboy is going for a swim when Robin starts bugging him about doing a DNA test to figure out whether or not Superboy has Luthor's DNA. Superboy doesn't really want to know, but Robin manages to take one of his hairs while he's not looking. This must have been more interesting at the time it was published.

Elsewhere in the tower, Impulse and Beast Boy are horsing around, as they are wont to do. Starfire shows up and, since it is not yet the New 52, does not offer to blow either of them. Ah, Starfire, it is amazing how quickly one bad moment can ruin a character. She breaks up the fight.

Wonder Girl, who has been watching this, decides to get up and leave the Titans. I can't say I blame her. Impulse pursues her and we are treating to an life-changing exchange between the two:

Oh, man, really? Well, at least it can't get any wo-

Why must you hate subtlety, Geoff Johns?

But this conversation is cut short when Alcatraz Island is attacked. The Titans spring into action, clearing the tourists who are there as the island explodes around them.

Impulse gets separated from the rest of the team and runs into Deathstroke, who had set all of this up as a trap. He manages to hit Impulse with a tranquilizer dart, which apparently is all a villain needs to completely shut down the kid's super-speed, then trots up to Impulse, explains his scheme, as well as his larger intention of discouraging teen vigilantism, before blowing out Impulse's knee with a shotgun. In fairness, it wouldn't be a Geoff Johns comic without some act of hyper-violence, now would it? To Be Continued!

Commentary

You know, I don't dislike Geoff Johns, it's just that he typically has the subtlety of...well, a shotgun blast to the knee, I suppose. For example, in these first few issues, Superboy learns that Lex Luthor is his father, and then Wonder Girl learns that Zeus is her father. I can't help but feel that Johns could have pushed the 'reveal of paternity causes teenager to re-evaluate place in the world, ultimately coming to the conclusion that they are not defined by there parentage' theme with just one of them.

I guess the real problem with a book about teenage super-heroes is that it never really seems like these characters are real teenagers.  Let's be honest; teenagers are, by and large, assholes. They'd be terrible heroes.  Fuck, I know if I had superpowers as a teenager, I'd use them in all sorts of irresponsible ways. But instead, you've got these guys, who essentially never do anything even remotely selfish with their powers except angst. A lot.

Damage Stars: Three Shotgun Blasts the Knee!

Teen Titans (v2) #9

Teen Titans (v2) #9
"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 ****