52 Week Forty-Seven

The Origin of the Teen Titans

Writer – Mark Waid
Artist – Karl Kerschl
Colorist – Stephane Peru
Letterer – Ken Lopez
Asst. Editor – Harvey Richards
Assoc. Editor – Jeanine Schaefer
Editor – Michael Siglain

We have another cool cover by JG Jones, focusing on the Batwoman story of this issue. But that doesn't concern Bart Allen, so we'll skip right on by. Same with the main story, with the only moments marginally concerning us are Tim Drake and Bruce Wayne concluding their training at Nanda Parbat and Natasha Irons turning down Beast Boy's offer to join the Teen Titans. All we really care about is the backup story, which is sadly only two pages long.

Waid chose to focus the origin of the Teen Titans around Cyborg, showing how the early days of the team gave him a purpose that he saw was missing after the disastrous events of Graduation Day.

So Cyborg decided to honor the past by creating a new version of the Teen Titans for the remaining members of Young Justice. As Waid says, "Victor Stone always pays his debts." We then end with a group shot of the current membership of the team, along with a list of essential storylines, which is just Geoff Johns' run on the Teen Titans, starting with Graduation Day.




I'm pretty bummed out that this Waid-Kerschl collaboration was so brief. I really like both of them and think they could have turned out something amazing had they been given a chance. As such, the brevity of this "origin story" almost renders it worthless. It doesn't tell longtime readers anything new and I doubt it gives new readers anything to latch on to — especially since the suggested reading list basically just said, "Pick up every single Teen Titans story Geoff Johns wrote."

Next time, we'll continue the Titans East story in Teen Titans #45.