Part Three: Recessional
Judd Winick Writer
Alé Garza Penciller
Trevor Scott & Marlo Alquiza Inks
Jeromy Cox Colorist
Comicraft Letters
Associate Editor Lysa Hawkins
Editor Eddie Berganza
Our cover shows Nightwing holding the dead body of Troia. It is a rather morose image, although it does spoil the story inside, and confirms my fears that this miniseries is just a Titans story with Young Justice as the guest stars.
Our story picks up with several members of the Titans and Young Justice battling a Superman robot at a S.T.A.R. Labs facility in Silicon Valley, California. Tempest takes a big hit that sends him flying into a nearby firetruck. The Superman robot then grabs Impulse, prompting Nightwing to order Bart to go limp.
Impulse chooses instead to break free of the robot's grasp and tie it up with its cape. But the robot punches through the cape, hitting Impulse in the back, and sending him into the wall. Wonder Girl rushes to Bart's side, notes that he's unconscious, and wonders aloud why he can't ever listen. Next to her, a random pile of purple goo starts bubbling.
The Superman robot flies into the air and prepares to throw a large piece of machinery at our heroes. Arsenal fires a few arrows at it, destroying the chunk of rubble, but otherwise doing no damage to the android, which fires back with some heat vision blasts of its own. Troia flies up, grabs the robot, and manages to push it out to an open field.
The blue robot girl with pink hair says she's programmed to protect humanity, but she's only operating at 35 percent of her normal capabilities and still requires more repairs. So Arsenal pulls out a screwdriver and asks Robin to help him fix up the robot, while everyone else chases after Troia and the Superman bot.
The Superman robot throws Troia off him, hits Wonder Girl with a blast of freezing breath, then puts Superboy in a headlock. Nightwing frees him by placing a couple of explosives on the robot's back, but once again, very little damage is actually done to the android. Meanwhile, we discover that the purple goo on the floor was actually the hero Metamorpho.
Troia quickly returns to the fight, and manages to take off one the robot's arms. She then pins it under her begins pummeling it. But before the Superman robot is completely destroyed, it blasts Troia through the heart with its heat vision, killing her instantly. Immediately after, the blue robot girl plunges her fist through the Superman robot, finally destroying it. However, she also collapses right after.
The narrator then tells us that Omen had very few friends and family, so her funeral service was very small. Donna Troy's, however, was massive. Nearly every hero imaginable showed up to pay their respects to Donna, who was honored with a statue of herself labeled, "Friend, Princess, Warrior."
After the funeral, Wonder Girl retreats to a lonely tree to cry under. Superboy and Robin approach her, telling her that this wasn't their fault and they did was try to help. Cassie says that's the problem — all they do is try to help, but they never do. She angrily says they've never known what they were doing and now their ignorance has led to the murder of two people. Kon admits they have a lot to learn, but Cassie cuts him off, saying they'll never learn enough. Cyborg was watching all this from a distance, and he says to himself, "You're wrong ... and I'll show you why ..."
Arsenal and Nightwing are having a similar conversation, with Nightwing insisting this was all their fault. He shouts and whines, and Roy quietly answers with, "I loved her, too." He then tells Dick he can't throw away everything they built with Donna, but Dick insists the Titans are finished and walks away. We then get an epilogue showing Donna waking up on the world she saw in her nightmares. Luckily, she's wearing more than her underwear this time.
This was the story of how the Titans became the Outsiders. Nightwing, who was clearly unstable before any of this began, was simply unable to keep the team going after witnessing two of his teammates be killed. That's completely understandable. Overlooking the incredibly lame way Omen and Troia were killed, and the incredibly confusing shenanigans Donna Troy is constantly put through, and we have an adequate origin story for this new Outsiders team. Unfortunately, setting up the Outsiders was only half the goal of this miniseries. It was also supposed to show how Young Justice disbanded and became the Teen Titans. And that really didn't happen.
Young Justice started this story by visiting a large corporation late one night to discuss a potential sponsorship deal. We don't know what any of them thought about this. Then, a random robot attacked Cyborg and was legitimately killing him. So Young Justice tried to save Cyborg, which started a bit of a fight that inexplicably wounded half the heroes involved. Later, this same random robot activates a random Superman robot. Everybody goes to fight it, and two members of the Titans are killed. Tragic? Sure. Especially for Wonder Girl, who was fairly close to Donna. But was this a strong enough reason to disband Young Justice? Heck no! Maybe let Cassie take a break for a bit, but there's no reason for Superboy, Robin, Impulse or Empress to want to stop what they're doing.
This was a disappointing miniseries through and through. The artwork was never particularly good. And the story jumped around like crazy — being annoyingly specific with times and locations, yet quite inconsistent in other aspects. And so much time was spent on things that ultimately didn't matter. We didn't need to have that prolonged Titans debate at Optitron, as there was no payoff whatsoever in this story. In the end, I was looking for something to ease the disappointment of Young Justice's cancellation. Instead, I just got a sloppy story that cared more about other characters.
Next time, we'll continue the Blitz storyline in The Flash #199.
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