Teen Titans #24

Caught Up in Circles!

Written by Scott Lobdell
Pencils: Angel Unzueta
Inks: Art Thibert
Letters: Travis Lanham
Color: Pete Pantazis
Cover: Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira & Pete Pantazis
Assistant Editor: Anthony Marques
Editor: Mike Cotton
Group Editor: Eddie Berganza
Superboy created by Jerry Siegel
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family

Our cover is a nonsensical mess that barely represents this nonsensical mess of a story. Looming in the background is ... evil red Raven? But Raven doesn't turn evil and red in this issue. Quite the opposite, actually. Anyway, in front of her are three random shards of our heroes in different times and places. The only one we care about is Kid Flash battling what appears to be the New 52 version of Inertia. But it's not, which is probably a good thing, for the same reason I'm glad this isn't the real Bart Allen. It would have hurt me too much to have Lobdell mess up another character. So yeah, this cover is boring, poorly executed, and shows two major things that don't happen in this issue.

Our story begins with Lobdell realizing belatedly that he should have set up the whole storyline with Bunker's boyfriend falling in a coma. Before he joined the Teen Titans, Miguel went to a church to pray about his boyfriend, his new powers and to ask for a sign. Right on cue, Red Robin appears in a flash of lightning. He realizes that the Titans are being flung through the timestream as a result of Johnny Quick's attack, and they're appearing randomly at significant moments he dubs "touchstones." Tim tells Miguel how to find him, but insists that Miguel can't ever tell him about this. As soon as Red Robin delivers this message, he's pulled back into the lightning and disappears.

Red Robin then appears in ancient Egypt, where Superboy and Wonder Girl have to defeat an army of red-skinned aliens, like we saw on the cover. And these random events keep happening to our heroes. Of course, the only one we really care about is Kid Flash and Solstice, conveniently ending up together on a spaceship in the future. Kid Flash instantly realizes where they are, and he promptly runs away from his girlfriend, worried about her finding out more about his past than he knows.

Led by his memory, Kid Flash runs right to the bridge and encounters a young man that Kid Flash claims is his past self (even though the boy has blond hair and looks nothing like Kid Flash). The young man is apparently in the process of destroying the ship they're all standing in, and Kid Flash begs his younger self (whom he addresses as "Bart") not to go through with his plan. "Bart" explains that this ship is full of reinforcements, and if it reaches the outer colonies, all of his people will die. And now that he has powers, he refuses to stand by and watch the government stomp on the necks of innocent people. Kid Flash tells "Bart" he's just going to make things worse, and if he carries out his plan, he'll never get to see a girl named Shira again.

Even though Kid Flash has super speed, Solstice was able to catch up fairly quickly. However, she is too shocked to add anything substantial to the conversation. Kid Flash tells "Bart" the soldiers he plans to kill are people, too, and he needs to be better than this. But before he can make a more compelling argument, or do anything of any real consequence, Kid Flash and Solstice are sucked back into the timestream. "Bart" decides that he is better than the soldiers onboard, and proceeds with his plan to liberate a galaxy.

Our issue ends with Raven finally putting an end to the time-hopping (or at least attempting to) by reaching out to the Teen Titans through space and time and grabbing them with her soul-self. Or something like that. I don't know ... Lobdell just needed to find a way to end this issue and set up the annual issue, which involves more time-hopping, but not Kid Flash, so we'll skip it.




So much squandered potential. All the ingredients are here for a killer story, but the writing and artwork have ruined everything. Look, it's pretty basic. If you're going to give us a younger version of Kid Flash, he needs to actually look like him. And maybe some consistency would be helpful. Like, if Kid Flash can suddenly remember this Shira character, why does he still call himself Bart instead of Bar? And, and, and ... ugh ... why should I care about this story? This creative team obviously doesn't care. We haven't had a steady artist on the book since Brett Booth left. And Lobdell's just going through the motions at this point. Well, maybe that's not entirely fair. I mean, Lobdell has never been particularly focused to begin with. The important thing is this story sucks. And it could have been so good. So sad.

Channel 52 seems to back to before Forever Evil, talking about Calendar Man disappearing and the Joker's daughter. This is rather odd, since this issue came out a couple of weeks after Forever Evil #2. But then again, Channel 52 has never had great continuity, either.

Next time: Teen Titans #25.