Teen Titans #11

Wonder Wonder Who

Story by Scott Lobdell
Pencils by Brett Booth
Inks by Norm Rapmund
Colors by Andrew Dalhouse
Letters by Dezi Sienty
Cover by Booth, Rapmund, and Dalhouse
Assistant Editor Darren Shan
Editor Eddie Berganza

Our cover shows Wonder Girl completely consumed by her armor, which is ... alive, or something? I don't know, it's a whole deal, and I don't care too much about it. Mainly because Lobdell is incapable of giving a straight answer about anything. And for those who were worried he'd break that trend and tell us who, exactly, Wonder Girl is and how her armor works in this issue, you can rest easy. No such questions are answered here.

Wonder Girl is holding Kid Flash, Bunker and Solstice captive in her lasso, while Red Robin and Superboy look on in horror. This is very close to what actually happens in this issue. The main differences being Wonder Girl actually beats up her teammates worse than this, and Superboy has finally shed his stupid Tron outfit. In fact, all of the Teen Titans have, and that's a good thing.

Our story begins with Wonder Girl's armor painfully growing spikes all over her body, while Kid Flash, Bunker and Solstice battle a big blue guy named Loose Cannon in Tim Drake's penthouse. The fight eventually spills into Wonder Girl's room, where she was trying to quietly endure her crisis. Wonder Girl snaps when she sees Loose Cannon, and she takes him outside to defeat him and drop him in the water. Oddly, none of her teammates actually saw what she did, and Wonder Girl herself doesn't know how she beat the villain, as she seems to have blacked out during the fight.

Regardless, Wonder Girl flies back to the penthouse and demands to know how that villain got in. Bunker says that when they were on the mystery dinosaur island, Red Robin considered quitting the Teen Titans. So Bunker took it upon himself to seeks out new members. He placed an online ad, and thought he found a good candidate, who obviously had no intentions of joining the team. In an amusing, but out-of-place bit of breaking the fourth wall, Kid Flash wipes away Bunker's flashback with his arms to berate him for being an idiot. Kid Flash then asks Wonder Girl how she defeated Loose Cannon, but she declines to say she doesn't know herself, nor does she tell her teammates about the troubles she's having with her armor.

Later that night, Bunker and Kid Flash are eating pizza and popcorn while watching TV. Poor Solstice is trying to clean and repair the penthouse by herself, but Kid Flash assures her he'll take care of it before Red Robin gets back. Suddenly, the power goes out, so Kid Flash races down to the basement to check the fuse box. He sees that someone has deliberately destroyed the box, and as he investigates, he gets punched in the side of the head. Oddly, yet sort of remarkably, Kid Flash manages to run all the way back to the top of the building before passing out because of the punch.

Solstice calls Kid Flash her love, and explains to Bunker that they made out on the island — but nothing more. They see someone turning the door handle, so Bunker tries to block the entryway with a wall of bricks, but the intruder easily smashes through them and knocks Bunker out. Solstice is shocked to see Wonder Girl is the one causing all this trouble, and she engages in a pretty intense battle, before being knocked out, as well.

Tim was riding in the back of limo from some event or other when his phone alerted him to the trouble at his place. So he ditched the car and flew back. On his way, he's joined by Superboy, who's now staying at an apartment across town. He happened to be outside when Tim's penthouse lost power, so he decided to go check it out, clad in jeans, a black Superman T-shirt and a leather jacket. When the two boys enter the trashed apartment, they find Cassie looking much like she did on the cover. Except she's sadly kneeling down in a pool of blood, begging her teammates to help her before she kills again.




Yawn! This is a really boring series. I don't like the art. I don't like the humor. And the story is hampered by Lobdell's refusal to provide a straight answer on anything. How am I supposed to care about Wonder Girl when I don't know anything about her? Was I supposed to be amazed that she overcame Solstice's attack, even when I don't have the foggiest notion as to where her powers came from or how they work? Ugh. It's just more of the same, month after month. Constantly running in place and never getting anywhere. Luckily, we do have a backup story to shake things up.

When Dinosaurs Walked the Earth

Fabian Nicieza – Writer
Jorge Jiménez – Artist
Dezi Sienty – Letters
Brad Anderson – Colors
Darren Shan – Assistant Editor
Eddie Berganza – Editor

It's unclear whether this story takes place before or after the story we just read. But either way, we open up in Chinatown — Danny the Alley, to be precise — where three humanoid dinosaur teenagers decide it's finally safe to come out. They begin running and flying through the street, causing quite a scene. Luckily, Kid Flash happened to be in the area eating some noodles. He had nothing better to do, so he decided to throw on his uniform and glean as much information on the dinosaur people he can from bystanders' cellphones. Kid Flash concludes that these individuals must have followed the Titans back from the mystery island.

This story was incredibly brief, but promising. Fabian Nicieza was the writer on the Red Robin series before Flashpoint, and I thought he did a great job there. And Jorge Jiménez's art so far looks very good. In any case, this is a fresh reprieve from the Lobdell-Booth stuff we've been slogging through.

Next time, this backup story is continued in DC Universe Presents #12.