Teen Titans #83

A Rift in a Haystack

Felicia D. Henderson – Writer
José Luís – Penciller
Mariah Benes – Inker
Marcelo Maiolo – Colorist
Travis Lanham – Letterer
Rachel Gluckstern – Editor
Joe Bennett & Jack Jadson with Rod Reis – Cover

Our cover shows several of our heroes in what appears to be another dimension, trying to save Raven from ... her soul-self? I don't know — it's rather confusing. And nothing at all like this happens in this issue. I don't think this is a particularly good cover, but I am happy, at least, that Bart has brown hair. Far too many artists decided he needed red hair once he became Kid Flash.

Our story picks up where we left off last issue with all our heroes falling out of the crashing T-jet. Last issue showed Bombshell flying and holding Cyborg, but in this issue, our creators remembered that she can't fly, so now she's riding on a bit of shrapnel with Static Shock, while Beast Boy has turned from a fire-breathing dragon into an enormous condor to carry Cyborg. Blue Beetle is carrying Aquagirl, Superboy is carrying Kid Flash, and Wonder Girl is carrying Miss Martian, who still seems injured after the fiery fight with Holocaust.

Anyway, the important matter, over the Missouri plains, is that the dimensional rift has closed up right after the fat man took Raven through it. Beast Boy begins shouting that they need to find her, but Superboy displays a cooler head, saying they need to regroup and come up with a plan. Kon and Bart also are the only two who decide it might be a good idea to catch the T-jet before it crashes into the ground. Bart cushions its descent with a whirlwind and Kon grabs hold of the plane's nose before it hits the ground. Cyborg examines the damage and says they should be able to patch things up well enough to get them back to San Francisco. Beast Boy doesn't want to leave, but Static points out that Raven is now in another dimension. He also identifies Raven's kidnapper as the Wyld.

So our team patches up the jet, with Bart cooling off the freshly melted metal. They quickly make it back to San Francisco, but Cyborg immediately takes off on another jet to New York, saying he's going to help look for Raven from his lab. He also cryptically says it'll be just like he's here, watching his former teammates' backs. Our heroes make their way into the tower, but they hear someone in the east corridor. Believing this to be a burglar, Wonder Girl tells Bombshell to protect the injured Miss Martian, while she, Kon and Bart put on very serious, angry faces.

But it turns out the "burglar" was just two scientists from Cadmus, sent there by Cyborg. Bombshell is understandably upset that Cyborg didn't tell them about this, but Kon can at least vouch for one of the scientists, remembering her from his old Cadmus days. Beast Boy immediately asks them to get to work on finding Raven, but Wonder Girl says they also need to figure out what's wrong with Miss Martian. So the scientists split up and Wonder Girl tells everyone to get some rest, noting these two projects are going to take a while.

So, everybody just settles in. Bart takes a shower and emerges, wearing only a towel, to talk to Kon about his confusing relationship with Cassie. Bart suggests simply asking Cassie what's going on, but Kon says if she doesn't want to be with him, then she should just say so. Jaime Reyes asks Virgil Hawkins if he'd like to go get something to eat, but when Jaime sees Virgil talking to his mom on the phone, he suddenly gets homesick. In the infirmary, Dr. Rochelle Barnes tells Cassie that Miss Martian is suffering from a kind of neural degeneration she's never seen before, although she's hopeful M'gann will be able to recover with some rest. Barnes' husband, Dr. Vincent Barnes, tells Beast Boy that even though he's isolated the Wyld's extradimensional energy signature, actually tracking that signature to another dimension is like trying to find a needle in a thousand haystacks.

That night, Cassie visits Kon in his room. She begins talking about how hard it is being the leader of the Teen Titans, so he suddenly stands up and gives her a kiss. He asks, "That make it better?" Cassie responds, "No ... make it harder." I don't know if she meant to say "makes it harder" or if she was asking him to ... uh, kiss her harder. In any case, this steamy scene is suddenly interrupted by Rochelle reporting that Miss Martian is now awake.

Everybody runs down to see her, and they're all surprised to learn that Miss Martian doesn't remember Raven being kidnapped. Curiously, though, M'gann does seem to know that Vincent is looking for the Wyld in the wrong way. M'gann advises Vincent to check for ley lines — veins of mystical power that run through the body of existence. This helps Vincent make a minor breakthrough, and he optimistically says this will shorten his search time from several months to just a few weeks or even days.

Virgil visits Jaime's room to take him up on his offer for dinner, but he finds Jaime packing his things. Blue Beetle admits he's pretty rattled after the fight with Holocaust and is not too keen about traveling to another dimension to find Raven. So he's going home. Virgil is supportive of Jaime's decision and casually saunters down to the gym to find someone who also wants to get Chinese food. He finds Bombshell, who agrees to eat with him and discuss the confusing predicament of Miss Martian.

Kon reports back to Bart about his interrupted kiss with Cassie, and Bart tells him not to worry, noting that Cassie is hot and "carries around her own rope," so they'll get together again. Right on cue, Cassie walks through the door and is suddenly furious again. She pulls Kon out in the hall and lays into him, saying the team's never going to respect her as a leader with Kon sharing her business like that. Kon apologizes, but Cassie angrily says, "And that helps me how?"

Naturally, this doesn't go over well with Kon and he promptly flies off into the night. Aquagirl sees this and decides to tell the first person she sees — Bart, who is currently raiding the Titans fridge. Bart says Superboy always leaves fast, and that things between Kon and Cassie are "complicated." Bart adds that he's complicated, too, but 100% available. But Aquagirl is too disgusted by Bart's enormous appetite to feel any attraction toward him.

Back in the lab, Rochelle has joined her husband, while Beast Boy continues to obnoxiously hover over them. Bombshell checks on Miss Martian, who has fallen back asleep. Amy says she doesn't completely trust M'gann for reasons she can't fully explain. M'gann suddenly wakes up again, saying she had a nightmare, but it wasn't her dream — it was the Wyld's. Amy goes to Cassie's room to tell her this latest development, hypothesizing that M'gann has become some kind of transmitter, relating intel without even knowing it. Amy also reports that Superboy flew away last night (which means we've suddenly jumped ahead to the next day). Cassie darkly says that Conner is in a position to act as impulsively as he likes.

We get a quick glimpse of Conner flying high up in the atmosphere, telling himself not quit letting Cassie mess with his head. Back in the lab, the professors make another small breakthrough, saying they've narrowed down their "thousand haystacks" to just 10 haystacks. But the overtaxed equipment somehow literally catches on fire. Inexplicably, Beast Boy turns into a chimpanzee and offers to repair the machinery, provided the professors talk him through it.

Meanwhile, Superboy returns to the tower, stopping by the outdoor pool, where Aquagirl is swimming laps. He asks for an update on Miss Martian and Raven, and relates with Aquagirl's drive to go swimming (or flying) to be alone and think. For some reason, this observation makes both of them laugh, which does not look too good for Cassie, who's spying on them from the monitor room.

Meanwhile, Static Shock suddenly got an idea of how he can help, and he tells the doctors to hook him up to their equipment to give it a power boost. So they put Static in a sort of electric chair, which somehow, someway, boosts the computer's power levels by 400%. Later, everybody gathers in the conference room to hear the doctors' report. Apparently, they have isolated the dimension where Raven was taken, but in order to get to and from that dimension, they need to access a corresponding vibrational coefficient, in what is essentially the dimension's keyhole. The keyhole lies at the bottom of the ocean, deep in a trench with pressures too extreme for any sea craft. The door to the dimension is on a deserted island, which may be littered with old Russian nukes. Bart optimistically says this sounds like a piece of cake.

Naturally, Aquagirl is the best pick to swim to the keyhole to open the breach. The doctors do warn, however, that every time the Wyld has entered this dimension, it has activated extradimensional energies that have likely mutated nearby sea creatures. This means that Aquagirl's task of opening the keyhole to allow the search party to go through the door and reopening it to bring them back has just become more dangerous. Also, the doctors add that in the other dimension, the Wyld is likely to have god-like powers, meaning the search party needs to be pretty powerful.

So Wonder Girl tells Bombshell to go with Aquagirl to the keyhole, noting her armored skin should protect her from the ocean's pressure. Everybody else will be on the search party, except for Blue Beetle because Jaime didn't answer his phone when Cassie tried calling him. Miss Martian is up and about now, but says she'll stay home, worrying that she's no longer trustworthy. Cassie agrees, and then insanely says that she can feel the Wyld worming around in her brain, and that her presence would put them all in jeopardy, but she can show everybody what they're up against. Cassie then has everybody hold hands as she leads them in a kind of psychic seance to show them the Wyld. (I'm 99% sure Miss Martian was supposed to be saying those last few lines — not Cassie.)

Anyway, the Wyld's story began on another dimension that looked a lot like the African savanna. One day, Raven passed through on a search for her father, but in her distressed state, she inadvertently left behind a residue of aggressive extradimensional energy. Somehow, this energy fused a bunch of random animals together, creating the Wyld. Cassie (or Miss Martian) explains that only the energy that created the Wyld — i.e., Raven — can destroy it. She also says the Wyld was weakened by being in this dimension, so it returned home to regain its full strength and devour Raven to become powerful enough to destroy the Earth. Cassie then vows that they will not allow the Wyld to accomplish its goal and courageously shouts, "Titans together!"




What a mess. First, the Cassie/M'gann thing. It makes absolutely no sense for Cassie to suddenly have a psychic link with the Wyld, let alone have the ability to share this vision with the rest of the team. Part of the problem was letterer Travis Lanham didn't separate some of Cassie's lines from M'gann's, making it all one big, nonsensical dialogue from Cassie. The other part of the problem was penciller José Luís drew M'gann to look exactly like Cassie. Same hairstyle, same face shape, same tank top (everyone wears a tank top in this issue, by the way — kinda annoying). So when colorist Marcelo Maiolo came in, he couldn't tell who was supposed to be who. And we ended up with a very confusing and frustrating ending that was supposed to be the big explanation to set up our next adventure. Sadly, I have to put a lot of the blame for this on editor Rachel Gluckstern. We've seen her before on this blog, and unfortunately, she hasn't been associated with the best comics.

As for the rest of the story, it was just short of an incoherent mess. The pacing is out of control, with so many quick jumps in between scenes. And all of a sudden somebody refers to "last night." When was last night? How long have you guys been chilling in your rooms? How come Cassie had to be told that Superboy flew away? How come nobody made a big deal of Blue Beetle leaving the team? Why didn't Cyborg simply tell the team he'd asked two scientists to help them out? And, seriously, what is going on with Cassie? She has become completely unbearable.

As for Bart? Well, I'm glad that he and Superboy have so far proven themselves two of the more experienced members out in the field. They were invaluable in the fight against Holocaust, and they were the only ones who thought to save the T-jet from crashing into the ground. Life in the tower will take some getting used to for them. It's fitting that Bart is the only one Kon can turn to for advice with Cassie (even if talking to an undressed Bart was slightly awkward). And I kind of liked seeing Bart eating a large amount of food. Comics rarely mention the fact that speedsters need to eat a lot, and they show it even less.

All in all, this was a rough and frustrating read, leaving me with way too many questions. And I'm not talking about the mysteries of Raven and Miss Martian. I'm talking about the basic logistics of the organization of the team right now. Geoff Johns neatly set up the Teen Titans as a weekend-only club for our young heroes. Is that what's happening now? Does this whole issue just take place over the weekend? Will Bart go back home (wherever that is) after Raven is found? Or does he just live at the tower permanently now? Sadly, I suspect these questions will never be answered.

The new backup feature is called Coven of Three, and it has nothing to do with Bart, so we'll skip it. Next: Let the battle begin!