Teen Titans #52 Review

I don’t know about you, but I was not a fan of the Teen Titans relaunch. Young Justice filled the spot of “young superhero team” admirably well, and so for that team to be broken up (and the book canceled) in order to capitalize on the Teen Titans name, well, I at least expected the new Teen Titans to deliver. It wasn’t meant to be. For me, it was as if Peter David (writer of Young Justice) was a master chef and had the recipe honed to perfection, and Geoff Johns inherited the recipe only to add his own ingredient of “failsauce,” be it the Superboy baby daddy drama, the abandonment of the Bart Allen readers grew to love as Impulse, and the abandonment of a Wonder Girl who actually had her shit together. The One Year Later jump didn’t help matters much, with our boy Robin experiencing his very own obsessive Clone Saga, and fights with Slade I couldn’t bring myself to care about. So when I heard that Sean McKeever, writer behind “Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane” (at least, that is the title of his which I’m most familiar with) was taking over at issue 50, I was practically jumping for joy. SMLMJ demonstrated he was an excellent writer of teenagers, and I looked forward to what he would bring to the characters.

Spoilers after the break

Issue 52 picks up from a cliffhanger, where we left Robin facing off his future Batman persona. As much as I complained about Johns’ run on TT, I will admit that the introduction of the future “raging bastard” Titans made for good entertainment, and was one of his stronger storylines. McKeever reintroduces these characters, going to the present (or their past? Whatever) to make sure that the Teen Titans don’t try to stop themselves from being raging bastards. This involves tying up the Justice League and sending the young group to fight Starro; since they’re from the future, they know something is coming after Starro which they are trying to put their younger selves in a position to take advantage of.

That sentence makes me realize how much I can hate time travel storylines sometimes, but I digress. The issue was at the fair to good level; I really can’t say it’s “must read” material, but McKeever has a good handle on some of the characters and their motivations. Future Tim Drake-Batman trying to emotionally manipulate his younger self made for the most compelling pages, reminding both Tim Drake the younger and the audience of the major losses he might be able fix (after all, the future Titans include Kon-El and Bart Allen, brought back by Tim’s clone mojo). The parts with Blue Beetle were also memorable (although fleeting); watching Jaime trying to play it off and keep cool around two of the Big Three was another high point.

Of course, it ended with another cliffhanger– an older Lex Luthor showed up, flanked by future Titans and making a creepy spanking joke. I don’t know if it would make a good jumping on point for new readers, but I definitely hope that this new arc is the start of a sorely needed upward trend in the Teen Titans line. To continue my crappy cooking metaphor, Sean McKeever was able to serve both action and teen drama in serviceable and sometimes tasty portions, and I would order seconds.