Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day #2

Part Two: Commencement

Judd Winick Writer
Alé Garza Penciller
Lary Stucker Inker
Jeromy Cox Colorist
Comicraft Letters
Associate Editor Lysa Hawkins
Editor Eddie Berganza

Our cover shows a fairly shocking image: Superman, looking quite angry and evil, beating up Nightwing, Troia, Robin and Superboy. Don't look too closely at the proportions or the anatomy — you will start to lose your mind. Well, let's try to find out what's going on here.

Our story picks up after the disastrous fight with the blue and pink robot girl against the Titans and Young Justice. Nightwing has decided to bring all the injured heroes to San Francisco General Hospital, yet he is adamant that everybody keep their masks on ... unless it's medical. Cyborg proves problematic, as the hospital is not at all equipped to help him. And Impulse does not like being restrained by Tempest.

Eventually, Dr. Sarah Charles of S.T.A.R. Labs shows up, and one hour and 26 minutes later, she has everybody "out of the woods." And she is preparing to transfer the wounded to S.T.A.R. Labs Facility SJ-1, 63 miles away. But before that can happen, our favorite blue robot teleports into said facility. She fights through a bunch of guards, smashes her way to a big vault, but by the time she gets it open, she's running at only 1.78 percent power and collapses. Superman steps out of the vault, picks up the robot, and flies away with her.

Back at the hospital, Robin is complaining to Superboy about how dumb the fight with the robot was. He blames Impulse and Empress for charging in, causing half the Titans to get injured while looking out for Young Justice. Robin is embarrassed to have made such a showing in front of the team that inspired them. Superboy says he's sure the Titans were a lot like them when they started, but Robin darkly says he doesn't think so.

Troia and Nightwing are watching this conversation from a distance, and Troia points out how similar Robin is to Nightwing. She asks him to tell Robin that he's wrong, reminding Nightwing of all their failures when they were younger. But Nightwing refuses, saying Young Justice needs a leader more than a kind word. Troia suggests Nightwing could lead them, but he darkly says he can barely lead the Titans. He then abruptly changes the conversation by asking Troia if she's consulted Wonder Woman about her nightmares. She hasn't, which angers Nightwing, so Troia calls him on his hypocrisy for refusing to talk to Robin or Batman.

They find Wonder Girl sulking in a closet, so Nightwing leaves Troia to try to comfort her. Wonder Girl admits that she's considering leading a normal life as a high school girl, getting involved with sports and the yearbook staff and such. Troia asks if that's what she really wants, and Wonder Girl realizes such a boring life would drive her crazy. Troia tells her they didn't choose this life, but it is their destiny and they have to rise to the challenges. After a moment of silence, Wonder Girl says she's scared most of the time. Troia says she'd be stupid not to be.

Cyborg is awake now, and he tells Arsenal that he learned a bit about the blue robot when it connected to him. She's from more than 2000 years in the future and was damaged in a previous battle. Cyborg says the robot was simply looking for similar life forms, but she inadvertently fell into defense mode, which is why she attacked them.

One of the S.T.A.R. Labs people gets everybody's attention and turns on the news, showing reports of explosions at computer gaming store called Contesto. Impulse asks why they should care about a toy company, and Dr. Charles explains that was just a front for a S.T.A.R. Labs facility. The newscast reports that Superman is on the scene, prompting local responders to keep their distance. The cameras allegedly also show the blue robot (although we don't see it in the comic) because Impulse comments on how weird it is to see Superman working on "the bad girl that laid us all up." Nightwing asks Dr. Charles how soon she can get them there, and she says her hover craft will make the trip in eight minutes. So Nightwing rounds up everyone who's healthy enough to fight — Robin, Impulse, Superboy, Wonder Girl, Arsenal, Troia and Omen.

Our heroes arrive at the facility and find Superman repairing the robot's circuits with his heat vision. But they instantly realize something is wrong, as Superman refuses to acknowledge their presence. Impulse thinks he's "off his nut" to be playing doctor on "C3PO," while the whole place looks like Godzilla whacked Tokyo. Robin says they can't try to make Superman do anything he doesn't want to do. Tempest agrees with Robin, but also acknowledges Impulse has a good point. Omen tries to read Superman's mind, but is unable. Believing he's in a trance, she tries to touch him to restore his senses. Nightwing, ever the worrywart, warns her not to, but Omen proceeds with her plan.

Superman suddenly turns, grabs Omen's neck and crushes it, killing her instantly. Impulse was the only one who could have tried to save her, but he hesitated out of shock. And the narrator tells us that Impulse wouldn't have made a difference even if he didn't hesitate. The narrator also explains to us that this is a Superman robot that was built to resemble the original's powers as much as possible, but was deemed unreliable, deactivated and put in storage. Until today.



This was another lackluster effort in this miniseries. Even Lary Stucker's inks couldn't fix Alé Garza's problems with proportions, anatomy, heads and faces. And the story is just so ... melodramatic. We spent most of the time sitting around in the hospital with everybody acting like they've never lost a fight or been injured before. Look, that little stint with the blue robot girl was not a big deal. At all. It was a quick fight, a couple of people got electrocuted ... so what? Stuff like that happens all the time for these people, right? And why are they all treating that fight like it was the biggest mistake they've ever seen? That robot was killing Cyborg, despite her intentions. Somebody needed to do something.

This issue spent so much time on the hospital sob fest and the robot girl hopping around, that we weren't left with any time for the promised fight against this Superman robot. I also think it was incredibly lame for a narrator's box to tell us this was a Superman robot. A significant detail like that should organically come from the story. And as for Omen's death? Sure, I guess you could call it shocking. But I don't know anything about her, nor do I care about her.

Next time, we're going to take a very quick look at JLA: Welcome to the Working Week.