Come Together
Script: Art Baltazar & Franco
Pencils: Ig Guara
Inks: JP Mayer with Júlio Ferreira and Mariah Benes
Colors: Wil Quintana
Letters: Travis Lanham
Cover: Guara, Mayer and Quintana
Assist. Editor: Darren Shan
Editor: Rachel Gluckstern
Group Editor: Mike Marts
The Green Team is an old concept of obscenely rich teenagers using their enormous wealth to pass off as some semblance of heroism. This may have worked a bit back in the day of Richie Rich's popularity, but in the 2010s? Not so much. Especially since the wealth of these "heroes" has been exaggerated to astronomical proportions. They're not millionaires or even billionaires, but trillionaires — a concept so foreign even my spellchecker doesn't recognize the word. I mean, we're supposed to believe that just four families possess 99.99% of the world's wealth and they AREN'T the bad guys? How on Earth are we supposed to cheer for people who have destroyed the economy by hoarding all the money.
Anyway, our cover is a generic action shot of our "heroes" in their new superhero identities. It's fine, but unoriginal. I know, it's rather ironic that after I just got through bashing the main concept of this comic, I'm going to turn around and bash this issue for betraying that concept. Look, we don't need another story of teenagers using their unlimited resources to become heroes just like every over DC title. We already got that with Tim Drake on the Teen Titans. So I guess what I'm saying is if you're going to make a comic about unfathomably rich teenagers, then you need to do something different. But I don't know what should be done — I guess it's an unwritable comic.
We're going to skip right to the final two pages of the comic — two pages that seem to have been hastily added once the creative team learned this series wasn't continuing to an issue #9. The Green Team rides up to Teen Titans H.Q. (which has never existed in the New 52) in a Batmobile straight from the 1989 Batman movie.
Red Robin believes this is an attack, but the Teen Titans quickly recognize the kids inside the Batmobile. Kid Flash says he follows #GreenTeam on the "Twits." However, even he is surprised to see the Green Team now has superpowers. Anyway, the Green Team's leader, Commodore Murphy, opens up a briefcase full of money and offers to buy the Teen Titans ... whatever that entails.
I don't know what's more incredible: the fact that DC thought a team of "teen trillionaires" would work, or how aggressively they ignored Teen Titans continuity in this issue. As I said before, there never was a Titans HQ for someone to drive up to in a Batmobile. They've split time between one of Tim Drake's penthouses and his massive private yacht. You know, because Tim Drake is also essentially a trillionaire, even if he doesn't publicly broadcast it like these idiots. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that the Titans are currently trapped in the future, reliving the dark past of Bar Torr?
The only thing I can think DC was doing here was hoping beyond hope that the Green Team could live on somehow in the pages of Teen Titans. And maybe that could have been an interesting concept ... if it was set up properly. And frankly, all that was needed was for a couple of people working on this title to crack open any random issue of Scott Lobdell's run to see what's going on. And that was obviously far too much work for all parties involved.
Channel 52 is all about the Justice League Dark storyline, Blight.
Next time, we'll get back to Bar's origin story in Teen Titans #27.
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